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FREE EASY PIANO LESSONS


Practice this piano chord voicing in many keys (even all of them!)
It's one that you'll want to use when it comes to adding "dazzle" to your tunes

 

A Great Sounding Dominant 13th Chord Voicing That's Easy To Play!

Hello! Dave here... I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you so very much for your continued support of the site. I know it had been a while since Sneak Peeks 7 was created and I had so much been looking forward to putting together Sneak Peeks 8. Your interest in this latest session has been outstanding. I am really grateful to have the opportunity to share my passion with people like you. Let's get to our free lesson. Ready? Okay... since the dominant 7th chord is the most important chord in a given key (outside of the I Chord), we see it appearing ever so often. Sometimes, too, some added color is called for. That, of course, depends on the musical situation and your personal taste. That said, we can consider the 13th to be a colorful extension you'll want to play again and again. There are many ways to voice any chord and that's a good thing, considering it's one of things that I have so much fun with (learning and using them!). Below is one very common way to voice a G13 chord. Just before we get to it, let us present the G7 chord in its basic form here:   G  B  D  F   There we have the 1, 3, 5, and 7 of the chord in its most basic, root position. If we continue building in 3rd intervals all the way up to the 13, we have this:   G  B  D  F  A  C  E   There, we have the 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13... Now, if you were to play that entire series of chord tones as it is presented there, you would arrive at a sound that contains lots of color. However, there are times when we want less density that results from lots of color tones and would like to place more of a focus on certain colors. So, we can play a bit of a game with those tones by just selecting a few very important ones. Along with the Root (G), the 3 (B) and 7 (F) are the most important chord tones. So, let's say we save that G to play in the bass area separate from the chord voicing itself. We'll play that 7 followed by the 3 followed by the 13... Sidebar: the 13 and the 6 are really the same pitch. As you can see, the 6 is E. Once octave higher we have the 13, which is also E... G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G F  B  E   There it is! It's a very commonly played G13 chord voicing. It's been played time lots and lots of times by great jazz pianists like Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson. You'll notice that we did not include the Root (G) in the voicing. This is what is commonly called a rootless voicing. However, we can have some fun with playing this voicing in conjunction with the Root in the bass area of the piano keyboard. The short excerpt below (from Sneak Peeks 8 ) will demonstrate how to do this in the context of actually performing a favorite standard tune: G13 Jazz Piano Chord Voicing Demonstrated You are highly encouraged to do a couple of things:   1) Learn that piano chord voicing in all the keys, even if just a couple at first. Gradually get yourself to a point of being able to play that chord voicing whenever you have the opportunity to play a 13th chord. You'll learn other voicings for a 13th chord, of course, and applying yourself in this fashion will always be conducive to increased confidence on your part. 2) Incorporate the voicing into songs that you know. Look for dominant 7th chords that you can perhaps add color to by using this 13th chord voicing. Whatever level you are at, you can always have fun with chords and voicings!     Remember, Always... ALWAYS... PLAY WITH PASSION! Musically, ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Copyright  PianoAmore.net / PianoAmore.com  All Rights Reserved