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

[dconeill]

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?

[Jimmy blue note]

They're well known and widely employed in the venacular of pianists and arrangers, with whom the terms had their origins. They are ways to get a more spread span of notes, and how to extend the inversions and how they can be voice led.
The drop system can be used to assemble your own chord choices on individual chords, and this idea of chord voicings can be part of an integrated voice leading system whereby chord families can be treated horizontally too.
And it's not only chords in tertiary form that can be voiced, chords in 4ths, clusters and triads over bass notes open the doors to many more sounds and possibilities, although it's the arrangers and piano players who can really run with those balls.
Guitarists have to make different conceptual leaps than the arranger and pianist, especially after being steeped in the harmony and chord grabs approach that permeates the traditions of guitar playing.
Good luck!

[Reg]

They are teaching tools, mechanical teaching tools. They help develop your ears as well as, (with guitar) force one to learn the fretboard mechanically.

By themselves they're vanilla and sound... mechanical.

But when combined with, range and melodic guidelines, harmonic organization, styles etc... help one to understand possible approaches for arranging how one can play, perform etc...

They help one develop musically organized choices for voicings, (and combinations of voicings) that reflect voice leading concepts and how to expand voice leading with harmonic guidelines for different styles.

It's another one of those.... Oh yea I can hear that now.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

I'm a leetle surprised you're familiar with Drop-2 voicings but not Drop-3.

Simple Drop-2 example:

Gm7: xx3333
C7: xx2313
FM7: xx2211

Simple Drop-3 example:

Gm7: 3x333x
C7: 3x231x
FM7: 1x221x

Ring a bell?

[Reg]

yea those are guitar voicings organized from root position movable chords.

Generally from diatonic organized Rt, 6th, 5th and 4th movable chords. Then dropping or raising notes.

Like Bar chords just using different voicings, not just Caged organized etc... I still use them all the time, especially like how Big Daddy posted with Chord pattern of II-7 V7 Ima7.

The actual arranging concept is a little different organization and terminology.

[David B]

Jimmy Blue Note and other posters above are right on the money.

I always recommend Roni Ben-Hur's instructional DVD 'Chordability' for the clearest practical guide to these sounds that I've yet found. There's an eBook on the disc that lays it all out in a few pages too.

The bulk of the DVD content is now available as a download from Mike's Masterclasses: Drop 2 and Drop 3 Voicings - by Roni Ben-Hur

[dconeill]

I'm a leetle surprised you're familiar with Drop-2 voicings but not Drop-3. ...

I guess I wasn't clear in my original post. I'm familiar with the drop- voicings, but my issue was that I couldn't find anything referencing drop3, drop2&3, or drop2&4 that wasn't written by a guitarist. That caused me to wonder if these drop voicings were used primarily by guitarists.

Thanks for the reply.

[pauln]

To the degree that the keyboard is linear, drop-2 for example is a simple perspective. It is a quick and easy mechanical approach to converting a lead sheet into a fingering/voicing that begins to sound like music:

- number the fingers of the right hand counting left from the right-most finger (pinky is #1))
- look at the chord and the scored melody note on the lead sheet
- play the melody note with the highest finger of the right hand (pinky) and form the chord under it building down from the pinky, using whatever voicing/inversion that results
- still counting the fingers as numbers, lift the ring finger (#2) and play that note an octave below with the left hand thumb (that is the "drop-2")
- fill down whatever you like with the rest of the left hand fingers, depending on having a bass player taking the bottom

This is a strictly mechanical way of deciding how to interpret what is on the lead sheet; with these advantages:

- it is easy and fast
- it starts to sound like music
- the gap (missing note) left by lifting the ring finger (#2) sets the melody note apart
- both the pinky (#1) and the ring finger (#2) are available to articulate the melody line
- it encourages keeping the hands close together, less concern for sounding roots

Once good at it, the construction steps aren't apparent as the hands approach and hit the keys together. Musicians that play other instruments than the piano can learn to do this and sound OK enough for exploring and analysis.

Real actual pianists don't use intentional drop-n voicing so much as produce similar results of drop-n as incidental artifacts of thinking about other things. Drop-n stuff on the guitar has a different perspective to the degree that the finger board layout is "folded" rather than strictly linear (or "zig-zag" if you imagine the finger board as six parallel keyboards progressively offset by the intervals between the open strings). The construction mechanics are a bit more abstract; however, some of the same advantages apply in many situations, especially in chord voicing and chord-melody playing where one may gain a usable free finger to articulate the melody independently from the underlying chord. I think the more abstraction required to do drop-n on the guitar is likely why you see mention of it, where keyboards just note drop-2 and let the simplicity of the other drops on the piano go without mention.

[Jimmy blue note]

I guess I wasn't clear in my original post. I'm familiar with the drop- voicings, but my issue was that I couldn't find anything referencing drop3, drop2&3, or drop2&4 that wasn't written by a guitarist. That caused me to wonder if these drop voicings were used primarily by guitarists.

Thanks for the reply.

There's a double drop 2, drop 3 permutation too. Not all of these are playable on guitar (and some, not without risking harm to your hands), but in their spread nature, they can accentuate the nature of intervallic combinations normally overlooked. Even, and especially the very spread voicings when played as dyads or played linearally or fingerstyle can open up comping and soloing textures you never used before.
The guitar is full of underutilized sonic possibilities that can be explored through 4 note combinations that are traditionally overlooked because they're not "convenient" to an easy to grab vocabulary.
By exploring the various permutations with which a 4 part chord can be voiced and voice led, you can find textures and sounds that occupy the possibilities beyond merely thinking of "linear" and "chordal" alone.
A study of these drop arrangements can lead to a polyphonic approach to the guitar as each family opens up distinct voice movements.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

I guess I wasn't clear in my original post. I'm familiar with the drop- voicings, but my issue was that I couldn't find anything referencing drop3, drop2&3, or drop2&4 that wasn't written by a guitarist. That caused me to wonder if these drop voicings were used primarily by guitarists.

Thanks for the reply.

This terminology didn't originate with guitarists nor is it primarily used by guitarists. 5 second search on YouTube:

[Alter]

If one learns drop 2 and drop 3, thus becoming familiar with following 1357 voicings on the guitar, this opens the road to learning 1257, 1347, and 1247 voicings (in drop 2 and drop 3 also). Having played these, one has covered pretty much all practical voicings there are on the guitar (quartal, tensions, triads over bass notes, inversions of course, etc). It's kind of a theoretically simplified approach to Mick Goodricks methods of learning chords.

[RobbieAG]

Drop 2 and 3 voicings are frequently used in big band horn arrangements.

[dconeill]

This terminology didn't originate with guitarists nor is it primarily used by guitarists. 5 second search on YouTube: ...

Thanks for the pointer. You must have asked a better question than I did because that didn't turn up for me.

[rpjazzguitar]

If you're arranging for horns and you want the horns to create a chord, you have to decide which notes to specify. Drop 2 sounds different from closed voicing. Drop 3 sounds different still and so on. So, for the arranger, it may help find the notes for the various horns. I believe this is where you are most likely to read about Drop-n without particular reference to guitar.

I've seen it used in approaches to teaching guitar beginners -- as a way of dividing up chords into supposedly more manageable chunks of info. Maybe piano too? I don't know about that.

Not that you asked, but I haven't found the concept useful. Apparently, others have.

I learned lots of voicings before I ever heard the term drop-anything. When I did find out what the drop-n meant, I couldn't figure out any way to make the idea useful. My thought is that I know the notes in the chord I'm trying to play, I know what I want on top of the chord and that leaves really only a handful of playable choices. And I pick one. I'm never aware of its identity as drop-n.

In the example given above xx3333 is drop-something and 3x333x is drop-something-else. All I think about is Gm7 (or Bb6) and do I want the G on top or on bottom?

One top pro told me that he avoids drop-2 because they sound old fashioned. This is the most specific use of the term that I've heard. What not to play. Of course, he knows all the drop-2s perfectly well and does, in fact, sometimes play them.

[dconeill]

... Not that you asked, but I haven't found the concept useful. Apparently, others have.

I learned lots of voicings before I ever heard the term drop-anything. When I did find out what the drop-n meant, I couldn't figure out any way to make the idea useful. ...

I stumbled into this drop-x stuff in a roundabout way. I worked out fingerings for diatonic seventh chords starting with diminished chords, and noticed that there were groupings of inversions. Eventually I stumbled on the term "drop-2", and thereafter onto the related terms I asked about. I also have not yet found the drop-x concept to be useful as a guitar pedagogical tool per se, though I can see how it could be applied in arranging. But at least so far for me, grouping the chord fingerings by the parent diminished chord fingering produces better collections, better in the sense that they helped me learn the fingerings.

So my original question was an attempt to learn more about the ecosystem, if you will, of drop-x voicings. All of your responses are providing me with lots of food for thought.

[rpjazzguitar]

I stumbled into this drop-x stuff in a roundabout way. I worked out fingerings for diatonic seventh chords starting with diminished chords, and noticed that there were groupings of inversions. Eventually I stumbled on the term "drop-2", and thereafter onto the related terms I asked about. I also have not yet found the drop-x concept to be useful as a guitar pedagogical tool per se, though I can see how it could be applied in arranging. But at least so far for me, grouping the chord fingerings by the parent diminished chord fingering produces better collections, better in the sense that they helped me learn the fingerings.

So my original question was an attempt to learn more about the ecosystem, if you will, of drop-x voicings. All of your responses are providing me with lots of food for thought.

That's an interesting way to work them out. I learned them by starting with G7, played xx3433. From there I moved notes a halfstep or whole step up or down to find Gm7 Gm6 Gmaj7 etc etc.

Then I moved that first G7 up the neck by moving each note to the next chordal tone on the same string. So I got xx5767 and I did the same thing.

Since G7 has four notes, there are four voicings.

Then, the same thing on the middle 4 strings and eventually the lower 4.

That, btw, is from Chuck Wayne.

Later, as I learned the notes in the chords I use in 12 keys, and worked out chord melodies, I learned other ways to play these chords.

I don't know which ones are drop-x unless I do the math.

[Lionelsax]

I never understood these drops.
I prefer thinking SATB or kind of.

[mr. beaumont]

That's an interesting way to work them out. I learned them by starting with G7, played xx3433. From there I moved notes a halfstep or whole step up or down to find Gm7 Gm6 Gmaj7 etc etc.

Then I moved that first G7 up the neck by moving each note to the next chordal tone on the same string. So I got xx5767 and I did the same thing.

Since G7 has four notes, there are four voicings.

Then, the same thing on the middle 4 strings and eventually the lower 4.

That, btw, is from Chuck Wayne.

Later, as I learned the notes in the chords I use in 12 keys, and worked out chord melodies, I learned other ways to play these chords.

I don't know which ones are drop-x unless I do the math.

Exactly how I did it too. I didn't know they were called "drop" anything until I started joining internet forums

The "magic" of course on guitar is that they are playable. They also can be used as shells and other notes can be added. That's when stuff gets really interesting.

[Reg]

Yea... I used arranging techniques with names like.... Drop 2,3 etc. Depending on the melody note, range. Open, close spread etc... They were mechanical terms for being able to arrange a tune.... fast. Like arrange a standard for BB in a couple hours.

I even remember working in studio in LA recording BS music... and having to fix a score, not mine, I was reading the guitar part, LOL. Anyway I reworked the horn section... in live time using those types of mechanical voicing techniques. Which have guidelines for how to use based on instrumentation, range etc... very vanilla. But easy to do fast. (back in the 70's)

Again they are not the end result or goal.... they're just a tool to help.

Personally they sound boring and... well they suck. But they are a step in the process of learning how to comp on guitar... at least one would hope.

[princeplanet]

I always think it's lazy not to know all your drop chords in all positions. I divide up the neck into 5 positions (like most do) and for each position I assign all 4 inversions of drop 2 chords plus a drop 3 for the 5th position for each chord type (including various subs for dom). So for each chord inversion you have associated scales, arps, pentatonics, devices and "licks" etc, but to anchor all this stuff, you need to think about the chord first, then all the rest of the other stuff corresponds to the associated chord shape. You learn it in one key well enough that every other key follows easily (it's just a sliding scale, right?).

From there, you can choose more modern sounding chords in your comping, but for visualising the board, the above seems a pretty good system. Otherwise, how else do you get to know the fingerboard well enough to comfortably move around for all chord progressions in all keys? I'd be interested to know any other ways you guys have learned to do it.

[Jimmy blue note]

Before I came to a town that had a music school, I never knew about this kind of terminology. What I did care about was knowing about all possible permutations of a 4 part chord and having as much command over the options that were available. So I made chord grids of all possible chords and their inversions.
I got to music school and found out they had a system that coincided with mine, just different names.
Then I got into arranging and that helped me organize sounds and chords that worked really well with one another and I increased my functional vocabulary and started to organize my chord progressions in ways I wouldn't have known or tried out simply through chancing across chords that were familiar to me.
Then I got introduced to the concept of voice leading and through that I found out that Bach and modern pianists drank from the same well.
Then I found a modern guitar player who played with an unimaginable facility on the instrument. I asked him what he worked on, and he told me Bach chorales. And what did he get from them? Voice leading?
It's not the name that the chords have, and it's not the collection they come from, it's the system you learn to connect them into a flowing progression we call music.
Drop is a synonym used to think of a single chord, that's OK.
When it forms a related grouping and that grouping has certain rules of elegant movement applied to the voices, it becomes harmonic texture I can learn to control through chord families, scale origins, intervallic associations and root movement cycles.

Call it ash. Call it a carbon molecule. Call it C. Learn what you can do with it and it's the difference between a match stick and a diamond. Drop system is common elements that can be part of a larger system.
But here's the secret: When I'm playing it, it's not a drop chord, it's my choice of sound. The name doesn't matter.

[Jimmy blue note]

I always think it's lazy not to know all your drop chords in all positions. I divide up the neck into 5 positions (like most do) and for each position I assign all 4 inversions of drop 2 chords plus a drop 3 for the 5th position for each chord type (including various subs for dom). So for each chord inversion you have associated scales, arps, pentatonics, devices and "licks" etc, but to anchor all this stuff, you need to think about the chord first, then all the rest of the other stuff corresponds to the associated chord shape. You learn it in one key well enough that every other key follows easily (it's just a sliding scale, right?).

From there, you can choose more modern sounding chords in your comping, but for visualising the board, the above seems a pretty good system. Otherwise, how else do you get to know the fingerboard well enough to comfortably move around for all chord progressions in all keys? I'd be interested to know any other ways you guys have learned to do it.

You can navigate by finding the root movement as it moves from string to string up and down the borderless fingerboard. Those root movements can move in correspondence to the integral voices of the root and inversions. That way all inversions are integrated into a voice led progression that spans the entire playable range of the guitar and uses only 4 inversions.
You need to know all roots for a given chord scale and all inversions for a given chord. Apply a cycle of movement and you have all possibilities.
That's one way. It's written out if you want a reference in Mick Goodrick's Almanacs of Voice Leading, Vol 1 and 2.

[Reg]

Yea... Jimmy, that's how I play, kind of. No magic... just nuts and bolts.

I see a chart or I'm playing a tune in some key that I know, And I play voicings that are generally Standard Chord Patterns... but I usually play some type of lead line on top that implies the style of tune and works with the melody if that's where I'm at, and then when we solo etc.... I create Musical Relationships with the Basic tune and style and Develop them.

I generally hear voicings from my lead line down. The type of voicings, reflects the style of the tune and works with the lead line on top.

I haven't needed to really think drop 2 or whatever... What I can Play, I can generally hear. And obviously what Play works with whatever the ensemble is doing. Generally we somewhat bounce off each other, right.

I kind of think like Prince... but I use 7 positions . But different styles usually mean different style of voicings with lead lines. You do need to have chops... that's just the way it is.

I'm also not a traditional melody first kind of guy. By that I mean the whole voiceleading thing is really just about traditional reactions between notes... but without a Tonal Reference it's almost mute. So generally I hear and play with a Tonal Reference.... which implies a "ROOT", played or implied. I expand tonal references because I know how to and can pull off playing Live... I would think just how anyone would... using whatever they have the skills to do within the context.

Don't get me wrong... melodies are it etc... but a melody doesn't work without a tonal and harmonic reference. But for most of you it does because you already know or can hear the harmony implied by melody licks.

Years ago I would play real reharms of standards on this forum.... Many times members couldn't recognize the tune...LOL, because of different changes. Who cares. Anyway,

The goal should be.... be able to play any chord with any note on top...anywhere on the fretboard.

[rpjazzguitar]

'd be interested to know any other ways you guys have learned to do it.

Chuck Wayne's way for the basics, as noted in my earlier post. That pretty much allows you to get any note on top of any chord.

But, to answer the question more fully, I'd add this. After doing the above for many years, I started drilling myself on the names of the notes in the chords I play in all keys. At first, that was mostly helpful to find chord tones and extensions when soloing. But, over time, I became better able to find notes from the chords on the fly, sometimes within practiced grips and sometimes not. A lot of the time it's 3 note chords or maybe I should call them chord fragments. This facilitated getting a better flow (ie voice leading) from one chord to the next.

I can't necessarily do it when seeing a big band chart for the first time without even a moment to scan the entire thing. Then I'll use practiced grips. But, for the small group stuff I do, where I have the chart at home and can go over it without time pressure, I'm more able to use the knowledge of the notes in the chords.

All that said, I don't recommend this approach to others. There are probably better ways. I'd encourage the student to watch Reg's youtube videos to see and hear how he comps. Check out how he moves from one voice to another with great time feel and a classic jazz sound.

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

It’s just a way to be specific about voicing.

“Close” or “closed” voicing is what it is. But once you say “open” then it’s “open how?”

Is it random? Are there conventions? Does it include inversions? Is there something repeatable that I can exploit/leverage?

No.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.