Jazz Chord Voicings - The 9 Different types you should know

Once you start having a vocabulary of Jazz Chords it becomes clear that there are many different ways to play any jazz chord on the guitar. For that reason it can be very useful to star working with different categories of chord voicings. If you have categories you have an idea of voicings that may work well together and you have an overview of the chords you know where you can also fill any gaps or chords you don't already know.

In this video I will go over 9 very common types of chord voicings that I use a lot when comping and playing chord melody.

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0:00 Intro
1:15 Drop2 voicings - Diatonic set in C major
1:37 Construction of Drop2 voicings (even though it doesn't matter..)
2:50 Inversions of a Cmaj7 Drop2 voicing for jazz chords
3:14 Drop2 videos playlist - adding extensions, altered dominants
3:28 Drop3 Voicings - construction
4:08 Where you use Drop3
4:32 Drop3 voicings - Diatonic set in C major

4:41 Drop2&4 Voicings - Construction
5:14 Allan Holdsworth Lessons with Drop2&4 chords
5:35 Shell Voicings - Construction
5:56 Diatonic set of Shell voicings
6:05 Different places Shell voicings are useful
6:27 Shell Voicing Based Chords - Construction
7:00 Diatonic seof of Shell voicing based chords
7:28 Shift from Voicings with a clear root in the chord
8:16 Triads as Jazz Chords - Basic use as upper structure
8:41 Triads through the scale
9:08 II V I example with triads
9:40 Spread Triads or Open-voiced triads - Construction (triad drop2)
10:08 Diatonic Spread Triads
10:18 II V I example
10:57 3-part Quartal Harmony
11:10 Diatonic Quartal Voicings
11:17 How we use Quartal Voicings as Jazz Chords
11:33 II V I example
12:17 4-part Quartal Harmony
12:25 Diatonic Quartal Voicings
12:36 m13 voicings and How we might use Quartal harmony
13:51 Inversions and detailed way sto use these voicing types
14:10 Did I forget a type of voicing?
14:45 Like this video? Check out my Patreon Page!

My name is Jens Larsen, Danish Jazz Guitarist, and Educator. The videos on this channel will help you explore and enjoy Jazz. Some of it is how to play jazz guitar, but other videos are more on Music Theory like Jazz Chords or advice on how to practice and learn Jazz, on guitar or any other instrument.

The videos are mostly jazz guitar lessons, but also music theory, analysis of songs and videos on jazz guitars.

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[JapsieV]

Your lessons are the reason why I finally got into learning to play jazz.

[brysonmartin]

Every time I look at your lessons i end up making something really groovy sounding right after.makes me feel like I'm floating in an indestructible cloud of confidence and intrigue

[brettpenza]

In life it's not always easy to find someone who is so willing to share in Jazz Chord/ Theory voicings in a straight forward and humble way, one of my favorite discussion points. The doors you are opening here for many are infinite. As someone who no longer (if ever) has the ability to stretch and twist fingers out and around 5-6 frets, I especially like the "shell" concept. I've heard explanations of Drop 2 that would give Einstein a headache. Beautiful work here. Thanks .

[xavierbaniel]

Best jazz teacher and very approachable on

[theyearwas]

By far the most helpful jazz material on YouTube! Thank you for laying out so much of the important material in a short amount of time and completely comprehensive

Repasando tus vídeos después de 5 años y me parecen igual de sinceros, rigurosos y estimulantes.Gracias

[justinjonesexperiencejje]

I always like how you ask if theres anything you missed or to explain how to use these methods in our own playing its very open minded

[AgileJazz]

Jens, I've seen a lot of lessons. Yours are among the most useful. Thank you.

[matthewscheiper]

Thank you for providing such a great resource for theory and jazz! Absolutely excellent!

[pixelatedparcel]

Had always skipped over quartal harmony in my reading but, listening to this, realize it opens up some really cool, subtle, sounds...I mean, they sound much more laid back to me, like giving more space to the listener. Thanks so much for having turned me on to this as I feel much more comfortable with this type of sound.

[kevinpatrick]

WOWWW!!! Just ran across this video. I saw a video you did about arpeggios and soloing techniques... And was unclear on the Drop voicings Shell voicings and Spread Triads.. this video explains it and even includes quartal harmony which sound beautiful. Thanks Jen's you're one of the best out there... Keep up the good work.🥂

[brysonmartin]

Much thanks Jens! easy to follow and well arranged

[MattSilvermanMusic]

This is very helpful for classical players like me who don’t know jazz terminology. I knew most of these voicings but not the jazzy names. Thanks! Now I will be able to communicate with my jazz friends!

[melvinchan]

Dayummm this is so good! Very informative, so glad to have stumbled upon this video!!

[petercicco]

Jens, there are 2 areas of chord study I've spent a lot of time exploring I'd like to mention that include voicing types you've demonstrated in your video. They are pentatonic and hexatonic voicings.

For the pentatonic voicings, if you take the C major pentatonic and stack every other note in the scale (C, D, E, G, A becomes C, E, A, D, G) and then build voicings from the other notes in the scale, you get 5 voicings which could function as C6/9 or Am11 or D9sus or Fmaj9add13, etc. Moving the basic 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 formula through a C scale diatonically you could arrive at Dm6/9 or Am(b6/9) which could function as F Lydian.

Change the basic pentatonic formula by one note to 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and you come up with all the variations of 9th chords.
Any 5-note voicing could be reduced to 4 or 3 notes, many of which are quartal voicings. Any 3-note voicing could be inverted to include more cluster-like voicings. Example: E A D inverts to A D E or D E A.

Constructing voicings from triad pairs yields many intriguing voicing possibilities. Taking an F and G triad, you could combine notes from both triads: example, (from bottom to top) F A C G,
G B D A, A C F B, B D G C, C F A D, D G B F.
Any combination of 3 from one triad, one from the other, or 2 from one triad, 2 from the other are possible and may include some beautiful clusters: example, from bottom to top, F G C D, G A D F, A B F G, B C G A, C D A B, D F B C. Some of these are physically difficult to play but could be made easier by reducing a set of 4-note voicings down to 3 notes.


For either chords from the pentatonic or hexatonic, every manner of spread voicing is possible by simply dropping a voice down one or two octaves. Example from F and G triad pair (skipping a string between the lowest note to the triad on top: G - F A C, A - G B D, B - A C F, C - B D G, D - C F A, F - D G B.

I have spent years exploring these sounds and don't see anyone discussing them on the internet.
Hopefully, I've given you some food for thought.

[mariobarrela]

the name given by Mick Goodrick to the shell voicing with the 9 is “Spread Cluster” because Cmaj9 is BCDE.
Others chords I use for auto comp is just the 3th and 7th or 7h and 3th.
Jim Hall use it a lot in the record with Sonny Rollins “The Bridge”.
Thanks for the videos

[JensLarsen]

Do you work with categories like this? Another system? Did I forget a category? 🙂

[alexey.sibirtsev]

Awesome lesson! I just opened for myself shell voicing a week ago, but this video gives me much more options on how to play chords. Thank you for this!

[beckholland]

Thank you so much Jens. You have truly helped my jazz learning experience after years of searching.

[mattiebarker]

I really love your style of breaking things down. Would be great to see you do a video or even a live stream just showing what a typical practice session looks like while exploring one of these concepts. I find it really challenging to catalogue these ideas in a way that I can apply them to a variety of contexts easily.