Piano Voicings Part 1: Left Hand Voicings

Left hand piano voicings enable you to play the basic progression of jazz harmony, II-V-I, with good voice leading while freeing your right hand for soloing. The most important notes in these chords are the third and seventh because they determine the chord quality. The root and fifth of the chord don’t require much attention because they are implied by the rest of the chord. Here are the basic left hand voicings in first position:

left hand voicings

Here are the left hand voicings in second position:

left hand chords

Try substituting the tritone (augmented 4th/diminished 5th) for the V chord. This substitution is sometimes called a Valt (#5,#9) chord (depending on the root in the bass):

jazz voicings

Try altering other scale degrees:

jazz chords

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3 Responses to Piano Voicings Part 1: Left Hand Voicings

  1. Paul Pival September 30, 2006 at 1:42 pm #

    Graham,

    This is very cool. I’m passing this along to a friend (Steve Summers), who will certainly appreciate advice on guitar voicings for standards.

    Paul

  2. Graham English September 30, 2006 at 5:30 pm #

    Awesome. I hope it’s useful for Steve. Here’s a cool and free . It’d be cool if they made one of these for the piano.

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    […] Piano Voicings Part 1: Left Hand Voicings Left hand voicings enable you to play the basic progression of jazz harmony, II-V-I, with good voice leading while freeing your right hand for soloing. Here are the basic left hand voicings… (tags: piano jazz harmony improvisation tips) If you found “Links for 2006-08-10” helpful, please leave a donation for the author, or share it with others by bookmarking it at the following sites:                                     […]