Musical Theory VIII

George Shearing Voicings

Now that we have some basic Jazz chords down, it's time to play around with voicings. Voicings are how you arrange the notes in a chord. As I demonstrated in the last couple of posts, a chord name simply tells you what notes comprise that chord, not which order to play them in. Different voicings have different effects, and it is just as important to choose the right voicing for your chords as to play the right notes.

George Shearing was a piano legend, and if you are interested in more information the man he can be found here. Essentially, the concept of what he did was relatively simple. On a lead sheet, a jazz musician is given a melody line and indications of the chord changes as seen below:
This is a sample of the kind of thing you would see in a "fake book". The history of the fake book is an interesting one in and of itself. One of my favorite fake books, and a very famous one, is called "The Real Book". Yes, some guy had a sense of humor. That same man with a sense of humor was also a godsend to the jazz community. My very first "Real Book" was an amateur-bound set of photocopies of every lead sheet from every band this funnyman had ever played in. It was extensive, and for my purposes may as well have been complete. There are some songs in that book I STILL haven't heard. (Which is a sin, yeah, I know.) That copy had to be bought out of some basement in LA, and I'm not sure entirely how "legal" such a beast was at the time. It didn't really matter, because if you were serious about playing Jazz, you had to have one. Now, "The Real Book" is published by Warner, and you can have it ordered for you from any music store. Things have changed, but it still remains a must have for anyone serious about playing Jazz. Get the fake book, be able to play every song in every key, you are now a Jazz monster. Simple as that.

The Shearing voicings are more aimed towards piano players, but it may be applicable to other chord chairs such as guitar. Bass players probably don't need this information as much, similarly horn players, and if you happen to be a drummer and are still reading this, I'm impressed. (Would you like a gig?) For our purposes here, I will explain how to play Shearing voicings on the piano.

George Shearing voicings are the musical equivalent of the mathematical squeeze theorem. The basic idea is to play the melody on the top and bottom of the chords, and squeeze all of the other notes inbetween. Sounds simple? It doesn't stop there. You also have to find the closest inversion from one chord to the next, to minimize moment around the keyboard. The first thing anyone does when asked to play chord changes, is automatically play everything in root. This, of course, has you hopping around the keys like an idiot with their ass on fire (a phrase I always loved from my piano teacher), and doesn't sound very exciting either. The next progression from there is Shearing. It is very structured, yet gets the player thinking about chords in more than just one note order. My recommendation? Take a straight ahead chart, like Straight No Chaser, and play through it in George Shearing voicings. Don't worry about playing slowly at first, the exercise is for your brain, not your fingers. Chords need to be thought of as constantly shifting entities, not root position rocks.

There you go, and get to it! Next weeks quiz question may be related to voicings.

Quiz Question
This one is going back to a previously mentioned concept. What is tritone substitution?