From our free, Jazz Guitar Lessons Daily Series: Lessons 4
Thursdays - How Chords Move
1/14/21

Today’s lesson is all about delving deeper into one of the “simplest” types of jazz chords we have available to us. Shell voicings are three note chords that are generally comprised of the root, 3rd, and 7th of a chord (with some variation) which state all of the necessary information to convey the basic structure of a harmony. The root tells us what chord we’re hearing, the 3rd (or possibly 4th) tells us the quality of the chord (major, minor, diminished, sus, etc), and the 7th (or possibly 6th) tells us whether the chord is stable (tonic) or not (traditional speaking 6 chords are stable, chords with a b7 want to move, and major 7 chords are stable - unless we’re thinking from the Barry Harris perspective which recognizes the instability of the major 7th as wanting to resolve… but this is a lesson for another day).

Generally that’s as far as this topic gets covered, and most guitar players will QUICKLY leave shell voicings behind to study drop chord voicings and chord scales. I personally think this is a mistake. Just like I think it’s a mistake to overlook the simple, humble triad so quickly in favor of more advanced melodic concepts. Often times the real way to advanced playing is not by chasing the intellectual, academic shiny objects of advanced IDEAS, but rather the full surrender to the fundamentals… learning them, mastering them, being able to make music with them, and then learning to think creatively and outside the box using them.

So here’s the idea we’re exploring today… what if we invert our shell voicings? Can we play four different inversions of a CMaj7 shell voicing in the same way we would four inversions of a CMaj7 drop 2 chord?

Why would we want to do this? Inverting a CMaj7 drop 2 chord gives us four different chords, each made of the same four pitches but placed in a different order. It’s like going to a restaurant, ordered a four course chef’s special, and then realizing that each course is made of the exact same food, they’re just reordering the ingredients on the plate. Every dish is chicken, broccoli, carrots, and rice. But in the first course the chicken is on the top left, in the second course they move the chicken to the bottom right, maybe they get fancy and slice up the chicken and put it on top of the rice. But it’s all still the same flavors course after course after course. It’s pretty boring, right?

With shell voicings, we’re only presenting three pitches. Which means one ingredient is missing. So we’re always going to be missing an ingredient, and then as we move, occasionally, that ingredient will show up and one of the other ingredients will disappear. A much more interesting “dining” experience. On top of this is just the physical practicality of the guitar. It’s EASIER to play three note voicings quickly on the guitar. One less finger to deal with.

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