From our free, Jazz Guitar Lessons Daily Series: Lesson 49
Thursday - How Chords Move
3/18/21


In today’s lesson we’re going to use the famous turnaround from Lady Bird…
(CMaj7 - EbMaj7 - AbMaj7 - DbMaj7)
as a means to practice some Maj7 shell voicing liquid harmony.

Let’s break down what Maj7 shell voicing liquid harmony is.

Maj7 you probably already understand if you’re reading this. Just in case, it’s a four note chord built with the 1, 3, 5, and 7 of a major scale. For example, in the key of C major, the CMaj7 chord would be spelled C-E-G-B.

A shell voicing is a simplified, three note voicing that implies all of the essential basic components of a jazz harmony. Nothing fancy, no extensions, just the basics. It’s usually the 1, 3, and 7. So for CMaj7 it would be C-E-B. No 5th.

Liquid harmony is a term I use for any technique that allows me to create melodic movement in one or more of the notes of a chord voicing while one or more of the other voices stay still. In classical theory we could call this a pedal or oblique motion - or motion where some things are staying still while other things move. This is one of my favorite effects to play with in music.

We’re going to explore the liquid harmony potential of the shell voicing by resolving the major 7th of the chord down to the 6th. Technically we would probably want to think of these as 6 chords now, because we’re treating the 7th as a tension note and the 6th as the resolution. But let’s focus on getting the sound in our ears and the shape of these movements on the fretboard first.

If you look at the first part of our notated example, you’ll see the chord charts where one note (the major 7th) has a white circle, and then on the same string you’ll see another note marked with only the black dot (the 6th). The idea is to play the entire chord using the “white circled” note first and then resolve that note to the “black dot” not on the same string without disturbing the other two pitches. There are two different shapes worth looking at - root 6 (where the root note of the chord is on the 6th string) and root 5 (where the root is on the 5th string).

Play around with each of these two shapes first. Make sure you can see them and pull of the liquid harmony technique...


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