Moving notes within chords

[SammieWammie]

CESH: Contrapuntal Elaboration of Static Harmony, basically moving a note withing a chord. A common one is:

Dminor | D minor major 7 | D minor 7 | D minor 6

...just moving the one note down chromatically. My question is how you play this on a guitar, what voicings do you use for things like this? Just learning in a sentimental mood, here's how I was voicing the chords.

x53763 x53663 x53563 x53463 then 3x52xx 3x42xx 3x32xx 3x22xx

What do you use in this scenario?

[TruthHertz]

Sometimes you might see this referred to as a line cliche, or a moving voice. Try looking at the chord not as a block, or a grab, but look at your root, your D on the 5th string and build a scale there. Build a chromatic scale, or a minor. See the way the chord fits in there? Now you can simply voice so it includes a descending note of the scale for each new chord. This way you can move it to a different string and still maintain the surrounding voices.
Is this what you're asking for? Forgive me if I'm not understanding you correctly.
David
Your chord stretches are a little to challenging for me, and the doubled voices are a personal choice I see. Have fun

[SammieWammie]

Originally Posted by TruthHertz

Try looking at the chord not as a block, or a grab, but look at your root, your D on the 5th string and build a scale there. Build a chromatic scale, or a minor. See the way the chord fits in there? Now you can simply voice so it includes a descending note of the scale for each new chord

What do you mean? And yes the D chords are a little stretchy but they were the only thing I could think of where the only changing note was the 1 7 b7 6. I've always been one for working out stretchy chords, got a nice 6 string F major 7 or F major 9 (the 9 is trickier) that cramps my hand after a couple seconds.

[mtierney]

A really great player in my area gave me a gem of wisdom about the "minor cliche" a few years ago. Instead of a Dm(Major 7), he usually plays the dominant of the chord (A) as a #5 chord. Then, he subs the fourth chord to be a dominant built on the fourth scale degree, making the whole thing a ii-V.

Dm-DmM7-Dm7-Dm6
Turns into:
Dm-A7#5-Dm7-G7

That opened a lot of doors for a four chord series that's easy to sound boring on for me. The other way that I would handle that would be to keep every voice but one static (like you did), but I'll usually accentuate it by putting it in the bass if possible:

x5776x-9x776x-8x776x-7x776x

I'll usually use both ideas to keep it fresh sounding though.

[bako]

Here's 2 out of too many possibilities.

generic:

X-D-A-D-F-X-----X-D-A-C#-F-X-----X-D-A-C-F-X-----X-D-A-B-F-X

with color tones:

A-F-A-D-X-X-----X-D-F-C#-E-X-----X-D-G-C-F-X-----X-X-F-A-B-G

[JakeAcci]

Originally Posted by SammieWammie

CESH: Contrapuntal Elaboration of Static Harmony, basically moving a note withing a chord. A common one is:

Dminor | D minor major 7 | D minor 7 | D minor 6

...just moving the one note down chromatically. My question is how you play this on a guitar, what voicings do you use for things like this?

some options I see:

simple but solid:
x5776x, 5766x, x5756x, x5746x

a little more sparse

x5x76x, x5x66x, x5x56x, x5x46x

a little more sparse

x5x7xx, x5x6xx, x5x5xx, x5x4xx

You might be thinking "well that's a little obvious" but I think sometimes simple goes a long way.

For all of those examples, probably omit the low note if you are playing with a bass player who is playing the roots. Sometimes when I'm comping over something like this ("In Walked Bud" is a good example) I might even just play the single note line.

other simple ones I like:

xx323x, xx322x, xx321x, xx320x

how about just

xx375x, xx365x, xx355x, xx345x,

here's one from McCoy Tyner (Body and Soul):

x8775x, x8765x, x8755x, x8745x, (x8748x)
that sequence is a bit easier on the high 4 strings rather than middle four
Also sounds nice with the A (third voice from the top) transposed up an octave

here's my attempt at being clever:

the line cliche is the third voice:
x 12 12 9 6 x , x 8 11 9 10 x, x 10 10 10 13 x, x 8 9 9 10 x

x x 7 9 6 10, x x 8 9 10 9, x 12 x 10 8 8, x x, x 10 x 9 6 7

[TruthHertz]

Originally Posted by SammieWammie

What do you mean?.

Never mind. I had an idea that maybe I could show that there is a correlation between when you play a descending line in a scale and when you play it in a chord, but it's nothing like that, really. Now if we were piano players...
David