Your Favourite Voicings for a Chordal Turnaround (1-6-2-5)

[jamiehenderson1993]

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[grahambop]

Joe Pass did a good video showing lots of chord movements on the 1-6-2-5 progression, I think it was called ‘Solo Jazz Guitar’ (in the Hot Licks series), might still be available somewhere.

[grahambop]

Looks like Hal Leonard have it as a transcribed book with video download.

It’s very good, I have the original DVD version, Joe gets a lot of mileage out of this progression.

[Tal_175]

Joe Pass did a good video showing lots of chord movements on the 1-6-2-5 progression, I think it was called ‘Solo Jazz Guitar’ (in the Hot Licks series), might still be available somewhere.

I am a big fan of Joe Pass books, I can't believe I've never seen this one before. Looks great.

[grahambop]

Joe did another one in the same series, ‘The Blue Side of Jazz Guitar’. Also very good, it takes a similar approach on jazz blues progressions.

[Tal_175]

Joe did another one in the same series, ‘The Blue Side of Jazz Guitar’. Also very good, it takes a similar approach on jazz blues progressions.

That seem to be only DVD, right? Maybe just with a transcription of a couple of choruses?

[grahambop]

My DVD copy (which I got a few years ago) has quite a detailed booklet, it’s a small size but has about 20 pages of transcribed music, looks like they transcribed quite a lot of the content.

[fep]

[PMB]

Brett Willmott's excellent Complete Book of Harmonic Extensions for Guitar opens with this progression in the same key. The voicings are mostly rootless so it gets you thinking about possible subs for each chord (useful for soloing purposes as well as comping):

[Mick-7]

Joe did another one in the same series, ‘The Blue Side of Jazz Guitar’. Also very good, it takes a similar approach on jazz blues progressions.

The booklet (pdf) for this video and for "Chord Encounters for Guitar" is attached.

[PMB]

Those examples from the Willmott book kick off with a I rather than III7 so you might like to experiment where necessary by changing the 'G's to 'G#'. The opening chord may even contain both (I'm thinking of something like an E7#9).

If the voicings are either too unwieldy or harmonically rich for your palette, maybe try playing descending guide tones on the inner strings (xx67xx, xx56xx, xx45xx, xx34xx) and add spice to taste on the first two strings. The uppermost voice should ideally creating an interesting melody or pedal tone. A simple example of the latter would be E7 - xx675x, A7 - xx565x, D9 - xx455x, G13 - xx345x.