Creative Chord Construction
BY Julian lage
Julian Lage is one of those rare musicians who
feels equally at home in acoustic and jazz cir-
cles. He has been a member of legendary vibra-
phonist Gary Burton’s group since 2004, and
also regularly collaborates with pianist Taylor
Eigsti. Lage’s latest album, Gladwell, reflects
his wide-ranging musical interests and talents
by incorporating chamber music, American folk
and bluegrass, Latin and world music, tradi-
tional string-band sounds, and modern jazz. For
more information, visit julianlage.com.
CHOPS: Intermediate
THEORY: Intermediate
LESSON OVERVIEW:
• Learn to generate new voicings.
• Experience harmony’s
gravitational force.
• Explore octave displacement.
Click here to hear
sound clips of
these examples.
a few key concepts that really helped me
to understand harmony as a living breathing organism rather than a fixed theoretical
concept. It started to seem that voicings
were no longer something I had to learn and
then apply, but rather the consequence of a
deeper understanding of the tug of war that
exists within harmony’s gravitational force.
This realization came largely from a lesson I
learned from vibraphonist Gary Burton.
In response to asking him about comping and voicings, he told me that he learned
the most about how to construct voicings
from guitarist Jim Hall. I was amazed that
another instrument looked to the guitar for
harmonic direction—we always seem to
be the last to know how this stuff works! I
was fascinated by what it was he took from
Jim’s approach. Because Gary plays with
four mallets, he found that the structure
of his voicings had more in common with
what guitarists play than the larger-structure
approach used by pianists. Both vibes and
guitar have similar restrictions and therefore
note choices become increasingly important.
Gary proceeded to show me an exercise he’d
developed after checking out Jim Hall, which
quickly became an invaluable tool in teaching me how to build stronger voicings.
The first step is to pick a tonality—let’s
say A major. With this key in mind, you
set the metronome to a comfortable tempo
for quarter-notes, maybe something like
100 bpm. With these parameters in place,
you practice alternating between closed and
open voicings within the chosen key.
Just as a reminder, we think of closed
voicings as being built with intervals of a
third or smaller and open voicings using a
fourth or larger. You are essentially improvising chord shapes the same way you improvise
melodies. The key to this exercise is that any
note in the A major scale is fair game. It isn’t
necessary to always play the root, 3rd, or 5th
of the chord, and in reality, if you are playing
with a bass player or other accompanist, you
usually don’t need to double these fundamental pitches. The only guideline to keep
in mind is that whenever you double a pitch
an octave above or below, it usually has the
effect of canceling out the fundamental overtones and results in a weaker overall voicing.
In Fig. 1 you can see an example of something I might improvise using this idea. I
began with a closed voicing (B–C#–E) and
then move to an open voicing (A–E–B–G)
and then alternate between the two all while
staying within the key of A. When I first
This month I’d like to explore several approaches to generating new voicings on
the guitar. Harmony is often a mysterious and
clouded subject for guitarists. We know the
importance of playing interesting and supportive voicings, but the way to go about finding
these isn’t always obvious. When I first started
getting seriously into jazz and learning how to
comp, I was really committed to learning as
many voicings as possible. Often I would refer
to Ted Greene’s seminal book, Chord Chemistry,
as the all-encompassing source of cool chords
and unusual shapes. As I worked through the
book I ran into a conundrum. I would learn
interesting chords, but I wasn’t sure how to
apply them in a playing situation. It was as
though I was always looking for the right place
to try them out. More times then not, the
result sounded like I was forcing the chords
onto the music—whether it needed them or
not—rather than allowing my ear to lead me
into the appropriate harmonic territory.
On my newly initiated journey to discover
the inner workings of harmony, I came across
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Fig. 1
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