Drop3, Drop2&3, and Drop2&4 chord voicings

[Christian Miller]

I've read about Drop2 voicings and at least (think I) understand where they come from and how they work. Besides their use as an arranging tool, Drop2-voiced chord fingerings lay well on guitar.

I've also seen mentions of "Drop3", "Drop2&3", and "Drop2&4" voicings. But I've only seen them in articles by guitarists, despite searching for the terms. I understand how these voicings are constructed. But the postings have the feeling to me of attempts to associate certain guitar fingering patterns to a theoretical framework to help with understanding where these fingering patterns, and therefore chord voicings, come from. Drop3 voicings, and to a lesser extent Drop2&3 and Drop2&4 voicings, yield playable chord voicings on guitar.

Question, and the point of my posting:
Does anyone other than guitarists use the terms, or ideas, of these other "drop-" voicings?

Orignally they are from big band arranging - a sax choir has four parts, and when the melody is harmonised in a standard seventh chord - eg 1 3 5 7 it’s call four way close. Drop one or more of those voices and you have the relevant drop numbered from the top voice, which always remains on the melody.

it’s a good way to organise chords if you are focussed on harmonising a melody.

Pianists also use the terminology for ‘block chord’ styles such as that used by George shearing. Drop 2 block chords are pretty common on piano actually and Wes adapted it to guitar. It probably makes more immediate sense on the piano.

People learn drops on guitar but not all viable or useful seventh chord voicings fit into this category. For example, some grips double the third and omit the fifth.

[princeplanet]

OK, but Drop 2's usually automatically give you decent voice leading if you're in position and looking for the next chord in the closest position.

Plus they lay on the guitar rather well (apart from just a coupla stretchy grips and a bad sounding maj7 with 7th in root).

Plus you can alter each shape to get your more exotic sounds. You need Dom7b5? Just lower the 5th in each inversion etc

I should have worked this out from the start instead of coming to it years later. Works great with the BH dim6 thing as well, what's not to love?

[rpjazzguitar]

Seems to me that whether you learn drop-n terminology or not, you still can learn the grips and, more important, how they sound. I don't see what the terminology adds if you know the sounds.

[Christian Miller]

Seems to me that whether you learn drop-n terminology or not, you still can learn the grips and, more important, how they sound. I don't see what the terminology adds if you know the sounds.

yeah - iirc Ben Monder just lists the combinations and doesn’t use drop notation for example.

Tbh I think it’s not that intuitive (I always middle up drop 2 and 3 and drop 2 and 4) esp on guitar. Otoh ‘dropping’ is a procedure you can use on any chord to generate more voicings. You chord use it on quartals for instance.

I also like the thing of thinking about the chord down from the melody. That’s good to get into I think

[princeplanet]

Seems to me that whether you learn drop-n terminology or not, you still can learn the grips and, more important, how they sound. I don't see what the terminology adds if you know the sounds.

Surely knowing the concept enables you to find those sounds sooner, or work them out for yourself instead of learning from a sheet of chord diagrams?

Honestly, I thought everybody learns this stuff as bare basic foundation for comping functional tunes. You can't easily move through all the positions easily using closed forms, you gotta drop something. I mean if it was good enough for Wes...

[Reg]

Yea understanding how to organize putting notes together... to imply whatever your seeing or hearing helps. But it's just one of the early steps etc... a step in the learning process. Context also has guidelines of how to put notes together. Also just mechanical but there are very real reason why and how one should voice notes under a melody note. Range, instrumentation and basic rules for how to combine those notes.

There are also other approaches, Which work well, more of an intervallic relationship approach. Where again with rules, the interval and context can become as or more important than the harmonic function or function of the note to the chord. Anyway I learned these concepts back in the 70's from Herb Pomeroy classes and his ensembles. (collection of rules).

I've always somewhat related his concepts as somewhat blues approach. Not really but if something sounds great and works... there must be something there.

[Christian Miller]

Surely knowing the concept enables you to find those sounds sooner, or work them out for yourself instead of learning from a sheet of chord diagrams?

Honestly, I thought everybody learns this stuff as bare basic foundation for comping functional tunes. You can't easily move through all the positions easily using closed forms, you gotta drop something. I mean if it was good enough for Wes...

it’s not how I learned it. Systematic fretboard harmony came later. There’s a lot that can be done with just grips as quiet as guitar teachers keep it..

i don’t actually think drop2s are very good for comping… well they are ok sometimes. Nothing sounds good or bad all the time. And you’ll want to mix it up. I mean everyone knows x 3 5 4 5 x obviously (not a very good sounding major seventh voicing imo.) I quite like drop 3s…

I know some really good compers who just use ‘standard grips’ which are often not systemised in this way. I’m sure they could play you the drops if they wanted but a lot of the time it’s just the 30 or so standard grips everyone learns and they sound killing doing it because they are 100% in the pocket and listening to the soloist. You know the stuff

x 5 3 5 5 x
3 x 3 4 4 x
x 3 2 2 3 x

3 x 3 2 1 x
3 x 3 4 2 x
x 3 2 2 3 x

10 x 10 10 8 x
x 8 9 9 9 x
8 x 9 9 8 x

etc etc

it’s not bad to know the drops at all… I just don’t really relate it to the ‘standard grips’ working players often use. They are really good to know though.

[mr. beaumont]

it’s not how I learned it. Systematic fretboard harmony came later.

i don’t actually think drop2s are very good for comping… well they are ok sometimes. Nothing sounds good or bad all the time. I mean everyone knows x 3 5 4 5 x obviously (not a very good sounding major seventh voicing imo.)

I know some really good compers who just use ‘standard grips’ which are often not systemised in this way. I’m sure they could play you the drops if they wanted but a lot of the time it’s just the 30 or so standard grips everyone learns and they sound killing doing it because they are 100% in the pocket and listening to the soloist. You know the stuff

x 5 3 5 5 x
3 x 3 4 4 x
x 3 2 2 3 x

3 x 3 2 1 x
3 x 3 4 2 x
x 3 2 2 3 x

10 x 10 10 8 x
x 8 9 9 9 x
8 x 9 9 8 x

etc etc

it’s not bad to know the drops at all… I just don’t really relate it to the ‘standard grips’ working players often use. They are really good to know though.

It's kind of like you learn it as a map...and then never actually play them

I can't remember the last time I played a fifth string root drop 2 maj7 voicing. That one never sounds...right.

[dconeill]

Thanks, everyone, for the replies. As a result, I have a viewpoint on where the drop-x voicings come from and what can be done with them.

A couple of people said the drop-x voicings were mechanical. I think they’re correct, at least to some degree. The drop-x voicings are an easy way to extract all the possible inversions from a four-note chord.

As for their application to guitar, it could be that’s a happy accident (I doubt it – I don’t put much stock in coincidences) or it could be that the people who came up with guitar tuning had these in mind when they determined how to tune the thing.

The mechanical: Thinking back to high school math, you’ll recall that a grouping of a selection of objects, where the ordering matters, is called a permutation. For a four-note chord where all the tones are unique within the chord, it turns out there are 24 permutations of chord tones, or in more usual musical terms, 24 inversions of the chord.

It's pretty tedious to work through a set of permutations by hand without omitting something or making a mistake. It turns out that the “drop-x” process makes it easy to extract all the possible inversions from a set of chord tones. The classical “close-voiced” inversions capture 4 of the inversions of a four-note chord; “drop-x” voicings of the classical inversions capture 16 more; and upside-down “close-voiced” inversions get the final 4. It only takes seconds to extract all these inversions from a set of 4 chord tones, with slight opportunities for mistakes. I think this might be the real utility of “drop-x” voicings.

So, to those who said that the drop-x thing was “mechanical”, you’re absolutely right. But it seems to me it’s a technique for producing all the inversions from a set of chord tones in a relatively straightforward way, which is just what something mechanical is suited for.

Thanks again for all the replies – this helped me further my understanding.

[princeplanet]

...30 or so standard grips everyone learns and they sound killing doing it....

I'm curious about these "30 or so standard grips", maybe I should get to know them What are they / where can I find them tabled out?

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

I'm curious about these "30 or so standard grips", maybe I should get to know them What are they / where can I find them tabled out?

I'll take a wild guess.

Plot out the drop-2 and drop-3 inversions from the 6th and 5th strings, for "the big 5" chords, then scratch out impractical fingerings and less pleasant sounding voicings.

[dconeill]

I'm curious about these "30 or so standard grips", maybe I should get to know them What are they / where can I find them tabled out?

Dirk Laukins, the proprietor of this often-useful discussion group, has done that for you, as a web search would have revealed. But you'll learn more if you figure them out for yourself.

See:

Dirk Laukins' Laudable List of Drop-2 chord fingerings for guitar

Dirk Laukins' Laudable List of Drop-3 chord fingerings for guitar

[princeplanet]

Dirk Laukins, the proprietor of this often-useful discussion group, has done that for you, as a web search would have revealed. But you'll learn more if you figure them out for yourself.

See:

Dirk Laukins' Laudable List of Drop-2 chord fingerings for guitar

Dirk Laukins' Laudable List of Drop-3 chord fingerings for guitar

These are stock standard drops, I think Christian was referring to something different?

[dconeill]

These are stock standard drops, I think Christian was referring to something different?

Maybe so, as he seems to like chords with lots of alterations and extensions beyond the plain-vanilla seventh chords. But one has to start somewhere.

[princeplanet]

I'll take a wild guess.

Plot out the drop-2 and drop-3 inversions from the 6th and 5th strings, for "the big 5" chords, then scratch out impractical fingerings and less pleasant sounding voicings.

Honestly, the only drop voicing I don't like is where (for maj7) the top and bottom voices form a min 9th. All others for maj7, min7, dom 7, m7b5 etc are all playable and sound OK to me. I often sub these forms to play rootless chords (doesn't everybody?), but with a bass player underneath you, drop 2's sound fine, or at least no worse than drop 3's much of the time. Having said that, sometimes I'll prefer a closed voicing, or one without a 5th, or that doubles a 3rd etc. I've often wondered if I need to expand my forms, but haven't felt the need, yet. I used to think making more out of less was a cop out, but now I think I can cover 90% of functional (non quartal) stuff with just drop 2 and drop 3 grips.

[NSJ]

The Drop “2 and 4” are not used or mentioned as much, but I dig them a lot.


1536
3651
5163
6315

I use it to harmonize the top melody notes, many times.

The great thing about playing an 8 string guitar (or a Lenny Breau version of a 7 string) is you have an extra string set of Drop 2s, Drop 3s and Drop 2 and 4s.

Thus, you can play the 6th string drop 3s (eg, 1635) an OCTAVE up, starting on the 4th string (D string). You can play the 5th string drop 2 (eg, 1563) an octave up, starting on the 3rd string. You can play the 6 string drop 2 and 4 (eg, 1536) an octave up, starting on the 4th string. Can’t do that on a regular 6 string.

As always, recommend the Barry Harris acolytes to learn these: Andrew Kingstone or Roni Ben Hurr. Ronnie has a 3 hour DVD!

[Christian Miller]

I'm curious about these "30 or so standard grips", maybe I should get to know them What are they / where can I find them tabled out?

Randy Vincents Guitarists Introduction to Jazz has them. I really can't recommend that book enough.

I just sort of learned them by osmosis - often watching other guitarists play, hanging out etc. Go watch Reg - he plays almost entirely standard grips. Or Peter Bernstein for that matter who is adroit at getting maximum mileage from jazz 101 grips!

Some of them are drops, some of them aren't. It's also stuff that falls under the fingers. It's easier for a guitarist to finger a 6/9 chord often than a 6th chord inversion for instance. The m9 sounds better as a II or VI chord than a drop 2 root position m7. Etc Etc.

IMO drops aren't what you learn to comp. Drops are what you learn to increase your knowledge of the fretboard and harmony in general. Start by being a guitar player and learn some cliche shapes and comps... IMO don't bother with Mick Goodrick or Barry Harris etc until you can play the gig.

[Christian Miller]

Also if you focus to much on the drops yo may come away wit the feeling that voicings should be 'complete' - ie have all four notes 1 3 5 7. This absolutely not true even for seventh chords and when you extend chords of course you omit notes depending on the voicing (it's best IMO to stick to 3 or 4 voices except in special cases). One of the most useful stems to learn for 'jazz 101' dominant voicings is the 7th shell

3 x 3 x x x

of course you can play

3 x 3 4 3 x (ie G7 drop 3)
but no-one plays that banjo stuff. You generally want your dominants to be more juicy in jazz harmony. So the top two notes can be a part of some voice leading scheme.

3 x 3 3 1 x
3 x 3 4 2 x (G7b5 drop 3 - MUCH more common jazz voicing than the last)
x 3 2 2 3 x

But there's no rule that you have to have a fifth or even a seventh. Add a 9th for instance

3 x 3 2 x x = G9 (or Gm9)
3 x 3 1 x x = G7b9

Or a 13th

3 x 3 1 5 x = G13b9
etc

Or do the same with a 3rd/7th tritone shell

x 8 9 x x x
x 8 9 7 8 x IS useful TBF (G7/F drop 2)
Or you could have
x 8 9 6 8 x (G7b5/F drop 2)

but I think yo would be more likely to have
x 8 9 9 8 x (G13/F)
but you then realise
x 8 9 8 9 x is not just Fm7b5 drop 2 but also G7b9 (no root)
and we could also have
x 8 9 8 10 x G7#9 rootless
And of course
x 8 9 9 9 x G13b9 rootless
As well

I think of these all of these are more 'standard grips' than some of the strict drops.

You can systematise all of this stuff. For instance you can practice drops as parts of upper structures and swap in alternative notes (sb a 2 for 3 and/or a 13th for 5th for instance) but this is all a bit down the line. You can put them through voice leading cycles and Barry Harris scales and what have you, but it's amazing how many pros just use the meat and potatoes voicings.

[princeplanet]

Also if you focus to much on the drops yo may come away wit the feeling that voicings should be 'complete' - ie have all four notes 1 3 5 7. This absolutely not true even for seventh chords and when you extend chords of course you omit notes depending on the voicing (it's best IMO to stick to 3 or 4 voices except in special cases). One of the most useful stems to learn for 'jazz 101' dominant voicings is the 7th shell

3 x 3 x x x

of course you can play

3 x 3 4 3 x (ie G7 drop 3)
but no-one plays that banjo stuff. You generally want your dominants to be more juicy in jazz harmony. So the top two notes can be a part of some voice leading scheme.

3 x 3 3 1 x
3 x 3 4 2 x (G7b5 drop 3 - MUCH more common jazz voicing than the last)
x 3 2 2 3 x

But there's no rule that you have to have a fifth or even a seventh. Add a 9th for instance

3 x 3 2 x x = G9 (or Gm9)
3 x 3 1 x x = G7b9

Or a 13th

3 x 3 1 5 x = G13b9
etc

Or do the same with a 3rd/7th tritone shell

x 8 9 x x x
x 8 9 7 8 x IS useful TBF (G7/F drop 2)
Or you could have
x 8 9 6 8 x (G7b5/F drop 2)

but I think yo would be more likely to have
x 8 9 9 8 x (G13/F)
but you then realise
x 8 9 8 9 x is not just Fm7b5 drop 2 but also G7b9 (no root)
and we could also have
x 8 9 8 10 x G7#9 rootless
And of course
x 8 9 9 9 x G13b9 rootless
As well

I think of these all of these are more 'standard grips' than some of the strict drops.

You can systematise all of this stuff. For instance you can practice drops as parts of upper structures and swap in alternative notes (sb a 2 for 3 and/or a 13th for 5th for instance) but this is all a bit down the line. You can put them through voice leading cycles and Barry Harris scales and what have you, but it's amazing how many pros just use the meat and potatoes voicings.

Cheers Christian, yeah, there's a few grips there that I don't use and perhaps should. And yes, the Shell + spice thing is something I should explore a bit more to sound a bit more hip. Interesting to hear your thoughts about Drops not being necessary to get basics together, but I still say it helped me make sense of everything, so I can't say I regret learning that way.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

The Drop “2 and 4” are not used or mentioned as much, but I dig them a lot.

You need them if you want to have every possible distinct pair of top and bottom notes. For example, Dm7:

Drop-2:
xx0311 (bottom=1, top=3)
xx3535 (bottom=3, top=5)
xx7768 (bottom=5, top=7)
xx10.10.10.10 (bottom=7, top=1)

Drop-3
1x031x (bottom=3, top=7)
5x353x (bottom=5, top=1)
8x776x (bottom=7, top=3)
10.x10.10.10.x (bottom=1, top=5)

Drop=-2,4
x00x11 (bottom=5, top=3)
x33x35 (bottom=7, top=5)
x57x68 (bottom=1, top=7)
x8.10.x.10.10 (bottom=3, top=1)

[Christian Miller]

Cheers Christian, yeah, there's a few grips there that I don't use and perhaps should. And yes, the Shell + spice thing is something I should explore a bit more to sound a bit more hip. Interesting to hear your thoughts about Drops not being necessary to get basics together, but I still say it helped me make sense of everything, so I can't say I regret learning that way.

yeah and it’s important to know them imo. It’s more a matter of what I would prioritise if someone asked me to write a basic jazz guitar syllabus.

[pcjazz]

Learning how to move 4-voice drop-2 chords through the 6-dim scales twenty years ago taught me a lot about inversions, chord synonyms and how to use them.

[rpjazzguitar]

Surely knowing the concept enables you to find those sounds sooner, or work them out for yourself instead of learning from a sheet of chord diagrams?

Honestly, I thought everybody learns this stuff as bare basic foundation for comping functional tunes. You can't easily move through all the positions easily using closed forms, you gotta drop something. I mean if it was good enough for Wes...

As far as comping functional tunes, I learned how to do that from a 30s-50s era big band guitarist. He wrote out what he called "muted string chords" because the first and fifth strings were muted. My assignment was to learn them in all keys. He might have done something similar with muting the 6th string and putting the root on the fifth. Those were the beginning of the foundation.

Then, each week, we took a tune and he showed me a chord melody. Don't Blame Me. Moonglow, Stars Fell on Alabama, Stompin' At the Savoy, etc. He had terrific voicings and voice leading. My job was to find the root of each chord and learn the voicing in 12 keys.

I'd think about harmony in terms of the melody on top, a logical bass line flowing on the bottom and a couple of notes in the middle. You know the basic chord of the tune, you've picked the bass and melody note -- so there are a limited number of notes you caln reach that will fit the situation and even fewer when you consider the voice leading.

When comping with a band, it's often a good idea to make a melodic statement with the comp by paying attention to the top note. You don't need the bass line that you might use in a chord melody -- the bassist has that. So what you're doing is trying to enhance the harmony with interpolated chord sequences and nice voicings -- all with good voice leading. For me, this is about knowing the notes I'm playing, knowing the next target and interpolating how I'm going to get there, all by thinking about which note I want to hear on which string. Again, drop-n wouldn't help me. Obviously, it might help someone who learned that way. I should also mention that there's a matter of jazz guitar vocabulary which is a whole other post.

Over time, listening, jamming, reading music and books about guitar, and watching Reg's youtube videos, you get exposed to all the useful basic voicings and you know how they sound. You can do that with, or without, ever thinking about drop-n, IMO.

Later on, when I learned the names of the notes in the chords and scales I used and the sound of each note in a harmonic context, I could find the sounds I wanted, still without ever thinking about drop-n. Tbh, I've never had the thought "knowing drop-n would be helpful now". I've had that thought about many other aspects of guitar.

I've arranged for horns, just a bit. Fortunately, never in a hurry. I put the lines in notation software and I'd pick notes, listen to the playback and adjust them to get the sound in my mind. Even then I didn't think about drop-n, but I do think it's an important concept in arranging horns that a real arranger can use to advantage.

[Reg]

Yea... Drop voicings are a learning tool, generally they suck. And when you play a few in a row.... now what's the point. Your sure not playing anything musical.

Many of the voicings posted above can be useful... but they need to be part of an actual comping concept. By that I mean... they are a mechanical tool to help you imply something musical. Voicings are not the point. They're tools.

The context obviously has huge weight when comping. For almost all the comping guitarists ever do on this web sight... if your part doesn't sound Good, your doing something wrong. What I'm saying is... we're not playing a single note part in a section. We should be implying the harmony. That's the starting point, the basic reference.

You can choose to do whatever you want... but that starting point needs to be played... or Implied. The better one gets... the less you need to play to have the harmony implied. Be heard without actually being played.

I've always been from the perspective... we hear, feel or imply from the bottom up. But once the bottom is established or implied.... we play from the Top, then the rest. This depends on how or what style your playing.

The top line, which can have a voice underneath, like thirds is most important, then the lowest note and then the rest in between.

The next step is developing a melodic style of playing voivings, chords. They're called Chord Patterns.

Learning drop style voicing is just a learning tool. Maybe like learning scales... they help you have harmonic organizations for playing melodically, implying a style etc...

The main point for drop style voicing is probably really just to help become aware of how the fretboard works.

[princeplanet]

Yea... Drop voicings are a learning tool, generally they suck. And when you play a few in a row.... now what's the point. Your sure not playing anything musical.

.......

The next step is developing a melodic style of playing voivings, chords. They're called Chord Patterns.
.........

The main point for drop style voicing is probably really just to help become aware of how the fretboard works.

But what about using drop voicings as part of chord patterns? Would that "suck" to your ears? As for using drops to learn the fingerboard, yeah I found that to be the thing that helped me most. But If I'm honest, I used them mainly to visualize my single lines better in various positions. No wonder my comping sucks...