remembering chord voicings

[coolvinny]

I pretty much use Jazzyteach65's method at post #23 above. What I do in addition is practice the scale within each chord from the lowest to highest chord tone (or highest down to lowest, or in 3rd's, or whatever), after I've played the chord. This adds a lot of time at first until the scales are under your fingers, but it's worth the effort as it helps to memorize the chord and then your scale practice is also taken care of. Joe Pass suggests this approach in one of his videos.

[Bloomworks]

I've always found it's a combination of events to achieve good chord melodies and good comping.

The post about the 20 voicings of CMaj7 above is the right thing.
Also, the post about moving a chord up the neck in a scale, modally, is also great. Those two ideas alone will keep you busy for ages.

That said, all of this stuff needs to be applied to tunes. So, take 4 voicings of CMaj7 for example in each spot up the neck and make the related ii-V-I in each area of the fingerboard, same string group, etc. Then add the dominant and/or minor7 VI chords for the complete VI-II-V-I progressions. Extremely common progression that you will use all the time.

In the end one has to learn many tunes. As with any form of music, it's all about the songs. The more songs you know, the more you will be aware of the most commonly used chords progressions and you will see the patterns over time.

[gersdal]

I try to organise the voicings in a intuitive system (for me that is typical progressions), and remember them by practising these progressions. I've included a version of a ii-V-I as an example.

This example is heavily inspired by the work of Jeff Brent WholeNote - The On-Line Guitar Community - with guitar lessons OLGA guitar tab music chords scales and other goodies... and Joe Bianco II-V-I Tutor: Major II-V-I Rootless Drop 2 Voicings On Strings 4 3 2 1 . Please refer to these sources for details.

[Bloomworks]

Here's a PDF I forgot I had made a while back. All different forms of G major scale chords. Notes and Chord diagrams. Different string sets, all up and down the neck.

Of course, all of this stuff needs to be practiced in all 12 keys. See you in 6 months........heh heh.....

Enjoy!!