Advanced voicings using triad pairs!

[jordanklemons]

I've started messing around with a few harmonic techniques to turn triad pairs into really cool voicings.

Moving up and down through THE BASIC version of triad pairs breaks apart the parallel vibe of pure, diatonic chord-scale movement... as they're missing (at least) one note.

Take any of the notes (I recommend starting with the top voice) from the first triad and moving it up or down to the nearest note from the other triad does a couple of cool things....

*It hides the "vanilla" quality of the basic triads
*It jumbles up the six notes into some really hip voicings while while still letting our brains and eyes focus on the simple shapes of the triads
*It (usually) creates cluster voicings if we move the top voice down to the nearest triad note below
*It creates more "spread" and sometimes quartal style voicings when we move the top voice UP to the nearest triad note

The other really cool thing it does is allows us quick and easy access to create contrary and oblique motion in our harmony by simply switching between moving the top voice UP vs DOWN
*see example 2*

I notated out a few voicings and movements through a V7 i showing altered dominant, diminishied dominant, and minMaj7 variations.

Check them out and let me know if you dig them as much as I do!
If I hadn't have explained that there was a triad pair hiding beneath each of these... would you have ever even known that's what my eyes were focused on?

Hope they give you something fun to chew on this weekend!

[Jimmy blue note]

This forum has just gotten so much richer. Welcome back Jordan. I'm so glad you're doing this thread, I was getting ready myself to organize a thread and Zoom group around the Triad Pairs book that Mick and Tim Miller did. This can be so cool!
Thanks for the fresh ideas and thoughts! I'll be a part of the party here. Woo hoo!

[rlrhett]

I know it has been discussed elsewhere and in books, but for the uninitiated do you want to start by explaining what two triads you are picking to play over a chord and why?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Mick Wright]

Hi rirhett,

the 'two triads' in the triad pairs book are just a start - there are then nine further options in the book 'Creative Chordal Harmony for Guitar Using Generic Modality Compression' by Mick Goodrick and Tim Miller.

The GMC theory, in a nutshell, uses a chord's root plus ten different three-note pairs (some of which are triads), each root+pair unit fully define a whole scale - so an easy example would be C root plus a Dm and Em triad. The book works through the changes for Stella by Starlight, applying this to each of the chords, with some very interesting (and sometimes very abstract) results.

It's too much to put into a single post but I hope that this will get you into the ball park.

Best wishes
Mick W

[Bop Head]

Hi rirhett,

the 'two triads' in the triad pairs book are just a start - there are then nine further options in the book 'Creative Chordal Harmony for Guitar Using Generic Modality Compression' by Mick Goodrick and Tim Miller.

The GMC theory, in a nutshell, uses a chord's root plus ten different three-note pairs (some of which are triads), each root+pair unit fully define a whole scale - so an easy example would be C root plus a Dm and Em triad. The book works through the changes for Stella by Starlight, applying this to each of the chords, with some very interesting (and sometimes very abstract) results.

It's too much to put into a single post but I hope that this will get you into the ball park.

Best wishes
Mick W

Is this the method Jordan is using for triad pairs (serious question)?

[jordanklemons]

This forum has just gotten so much richer. Welcome back Jordan. I'm so glad you're doing this thread, I was getting ready myself to organize a thread and Zoom group around the Triad Pairs book that Mick and Tim Miller did. This can be so cool!
Thanks for the fresh ideas and thoughts! I'll be a part of the party here. Woo hoo!

Sick! Hey where do I find the thread you told me about a few months back? Is it in the improv section? Do you remember what it was called? I know I'm late, but I'm still curious to check it out!

[jordanklemons]

I know it has been discussed elsewhere and in books, but for the uninitiated do you want to start by explaining what two triads you are picking to play over a chord and why?

Sure. I just didn't want to inundate anyone with the background/theory side of things if they just wanted to try out the voicings or tinker with the concept from their own imagination.

This is just another gem I've discovered in the 8 year journey of exploring Stefon Harris' method... combined with a few other brilliant piano players/educators.

It stems from the way piano players will oftentimes put a SIMPLE shell voicing in their left hand and a SIMPLE triad in their right hand... and create the illusion of complexity. Mark Levine talks about this in his industry standard "Jazz Piano Book."

Stefon had a whole way of organizing triad options for different chord families that I'll skip over here to avoid getting TOO academic and boring. But it's f'n brilliant.

Once he showed me how to play these voicings on the piano, he also showed me how to identify them by the emotion and personality each created... so no need to sing intervals or try and hear specific upper extensions. This was great because it helped me realize that these weren't JUST academic and theoretical ideas. You could not only hear them ALL when listening to Bill Evans and all the other hip post-bop piano players... but you could also start to realize that two different dominant harmonies that BOTH exist in the same "chord scale" relationship (like all of the different diminished dominant options) actually sounds wildly unique. And so you can start to use them as colors and sonic flavors... putting in the harmonic herbs and spices you want to "cook" with.

THEN he showed me how, simply by adding a "tension note" to the triad my right hand was playing... we can melt down those harmonies into ridiculously precise melodic phrases. I'm a terribly piano player. I can't play any scales or arpeggios in any sort of tempo on the keyboard... let alone through changes... but because I could see the triad in my right hand, I was able to improvise some really wonderful lines through complex tunes by this point in his method.

I know he takes it beyond JUST one tension note. But even once he moves beyond it... he still treats the 2nd tension note as its own, standalone sound to explore... and this grows into a a triad with two tension notes he can control... which creates a "pentatonic scale," but not really... because it's just the stable triad and then two different drama/emotion/tension notes that allow for more phrasing freedom. Of course... chromaticism is always allowed to connect all of these notes, so we're using all 12 notes by now. But we're starting with the sweet spot money notes and growing outward.

He and I never made it to working on the double tension note pentatonics... he had me working on the 4 note structures (plus the chromatic passing notes giving function and access to all 12 notes to improvise with). We spent the entire year there. BUT he DID mention that he eventually adds in more tension notes. They're just not really that necessary.


SO ANYWAYS...

After my year with him ended, I continued exploring his concepts but applied directly to the guitar and taking them farther and farther... not only continuing on with the additional tension notes... but also dreaming up new ideas. Like THIS one in this thread.

The starting point of how I pick my triad pairs begins with the basic shell/triad piano harmonies he was showing me. Most of these aren't brand new inventions. They're all over every great record. Guitar players just don't tend to study piano harmony, so they seem intimidating and complicated.

But the initial starting point is just taking these traditional advanced jazz harmonies, looking at my "right hand" from the piano perspective... and THAT is the 1st triad.

Once we go through the method follow the general principles of harmonic importance, we eventually end up with three important tension notes. We can use them to improvise if we want. We can also lump them together and... poof... not only do they give us a triad... but that secondary triad is created from our three, melodic tension notes...

So it, by default will BOTH create tension... allowing for horizontal harmonic motion (think Barry Harris with the 6 chord and the diminished chord... but using triads)
AND it will help reinforce the initial triad that might be missing some important harmonic notes and make it feel like it's not really expressing the intended harmony.

So for example...

The very first harmony in the OP graphic. E7alt.

IF you have access to a piano and play an E7 shell (R-3-b7) in your left hand and some nearby inversion of a C major triad in your right hand... you'll probably immediately recognize that sound. If you don't have a piano, try this guitar voicing...

(0.11.12)(12.13.12)

Notice that I put the bottom three pitches in parenthesis (E-G#-D, an E7 shell voicing) and the top three pitches in parenthesis (G-C-E, a C major triad). Most of us will probably recognize that sound. Very classic.

The issue when we put it on guitar is that we don't have a "left hand" and so we often struggle to get that C major triad to FUNCTION or FEEL like an E7 harmony. It gives us the root, the #5/b13, and the #9... a bunch of sweet spot notes for an E7alt. But it doesn't feel quite right.

There are A BUNCH of ways around this issue that I've been exploring since meeting Stefon and started translating all of these pianistic construction ideas onto the fretboard.

This triad pair is the latest.

Why do I use C major as the in and "stable" triad? Because THAT is what a great post-bop or modern piano player would likely be putting in their right hand to accentuate an E7#9#5 harmony.

Why did I add the D diminished triad to function as the tension and "unstable" triad? Because it puts an important E7 chord tone in between every set of C major triad notes.

C - (D) - E - (F) - G - (G#) - C

It's almost like a mini, 6 note "bebop scale" in the sense that it puts all of the important "right hand" triad notes on the down beats and all of the passing tones on the &'s.

If you haven't yet played this harmony on the piano and tinkered with HEARING and FEELING the C major triad as the melodic stable points, this will make no intellectual sense to you... as I'm literally saying that the 3rd, 7th, and b9 of the E7 are functioning as melodic tension notes. Once you try it and let your ears experience this phenomenon... the gravitational force become undeniable.

Back to your question...

What this means for the triad pair selection is that I "chose" the C major triad because I know from my work with Stefon that it's gives a perfectly executed, pianistic E7#9#5. I "chose" the D diminished because I wanted the most harmonically respectful notes (for E7) as possible to rub up against the C major triad to create drama, tension, and horizontal motion.

If you simply take this much and move up and down through inversions of C major and D diminished over an open E string, you'll hear the implied E7alt.

But to my ear, it comes across as a touch too vanilla. The movements are great! But each individual voicing is a little to "plain" for my personal preferences at this point. THIS is where the idea of moving one of the triad notes up or down came to me. I get all the benefits of Stefon's "pianistic chord construction" and tension and resolution, I get the fretboard simplicity of not needing to overthink anything and just look at the shapes of my triads... PLUS I can now hide the basic triads and make them appear to be a little more complex to the ear... and with this... NONE of the voicings sound perfectly stable OR perfectly unstable. Each one has notes that feel solid and notes that (to my ear) want to move... and this just plays into that idea of not getting stuck inside of individual chord voicings... but using voicings functionally to move horizontally through progressions.


AS FOR ASKING WHAT TWO TRIADS I'M USING?
I notated those underneath each chord chart... where I show which triad the black dots (the "right hand," stable, "melodic triad") come from vs the black/white dots (the unstable triad derived from the "tension notes")


I know that was a lot. Hope it makes sense.

[jordanklemons]

Is this the method Jordan is using for triad pairs (serious question)?

It's not. LOTS of overlap... but also LOTS of differences.
I just wrote a PhD thesis above explaining where I was coming from haha

After losing the ability to play and needing to relearn, I went all in on the Bill Evans advice of not getting caught up in intellectual theorem or attempting to "approximate" the final product... and instead coming back to the most elementary things, mastering them, learning to be playful with them... and then growing from there.

Sort of like the Bruce Lee quote about how he's not afraid of the man who practices 10,000 kicks once... he's afraid of the man who practice one kick 10,000 times.

For those who don't need to relearn and are cool with putting decades of frustration in to learn the 10,000 things... it's awesome. There are TONS of ways that the 12 notes COULD be organized and worked on.

I prefer to keep things as simple as humanly possible, as minimal as humanly possible... and go all in on creative application.

I found that for me, relearning was so much easier and more efficient that way. It let me get to a much more personal and genuine place much more quickly than I ever realized was possible prior to starting over. And when I'm working with students, I often find that they progress way faster when I take away 9,999 of the things they think they want to be working on and ask them to spend a few weeks on one, humbling little thing. A lot of people don't have "the patience" for it because it all seems too simple. But usually within like two weeks they notice a MASSIVE shift in their musicianship... and oftentimes they report back that they've grown more as a musician in the first few months than they did the previous x number of years. It seems slower because we're not intellectually stimulating our ego and "learning" fancy new ideas. But the application seems to be, for me, where the magic happens. Keeping those ideas simpler, fewer, and (as Bill Evans suggest) more elementary seems to speed that process up and get us to a really cool, authentic place.

YMMV

[Mick Wright]

Thanks Jordan,

Your explanation really helped clarify your diagram in post #1 – this is going to be fun – it's a very practical and efficient way to generate and organise harmonies.

All the best,
Mick W

[pamosmusic]

Sure. I just didn't want to inundate anyone with the background/theory side of things if they just wanted to try out the voicings or tinker with the concept from their own imagination.

This is just another gem I've discovered in the 8 year journey of exploring Stefon Harris' method... combined with a few other brilliant piano players/educators.

It stems from the way piano players will oftentimes put a SIMPLE shell voicing in their left hand and a SIMPLE triad in their right hand... and create the illusion of complexity. Mark Levine talks about this in his industry standard "Jazz Piano Book."

Stefon had a whole way of organizing triad options for different chord families that I'll skip over here to avoid getting TOO academic and boring. But it's f'n brilliant.

Once he showed me how to play these voicings on the piano, he also showed me how to identify them by the emotion and personality each created... so no need to sing intervals or try and hear specific upper extensions. This was great because it helped me realize that these weren't JUST academic and theoretical ideas. You could not only hear them ALL when listening to Bill Evans and all the other hip post-bop piano players... but you could also start to realize that two different dominant harmonies that BOTH exist in the same "chord scale" relationship (like all of the different diminished dominant options) actually sounds wildly unique. And so you can start to use them as colors and sonic flavors... putting in the harmonic herbs and spices you want to "cook" with.

THEN he showed me how, simply by adding a "tension note" to the triad my right hand was playing... we can melt down those harmonies into ridiculously precise melodic phrases. I'm a terribly piano player. I can't play any scales or arpeggios in any sort of tempo on the keyboard... let alone through changes... but because I could see the triad in my right hand, I was able to improvise some really wonderful lines through complex tunes by this point in his method.

I know he takes it beyond JUST one tension note. But even once he moves beyond it... he still treats the 2nd tension note as its own, standalone sound to explore... and this grows into a a triad with two tension notes he can control... which creates a "pentatonic scale," but not really... because it's just the stable triad and then two different drama/emotion/tension notes that allow for more phrasing freedom. Of course... chromaticism is always allowed to connect all of these notes, so we're using all 12 notes by now. But we're starting with the sweet spot money notes and growing outward.

He and I never made it to working on the double tension note pentatonics... he had me working on the 4 note structures (plus the chromatic passing notes giving function and access to all 12 notes to improvise with). We spent the entire year there. BUT he DID mention that he eventually adds in more tension notes. They're just not really that necessary.


SO ANYWAYS...

After my year with him ended, I continued exploring his concepts but applied directly to the guitar and taking them farther and farther... not only continuing on with the additional tension notes... but also dreaming up new ideas. Like THIS one in this thread.

The starting point of how I pick my triad pairs begins with the basic shell/triad piano harmonies he was showing me. Most of these aren't brand new inventions. They're all over every great record. Guitar players just don't tend to study piano harmony, so they seem intimidating and complicated.

But the initial starting point is just taking these traditional advanced jazz harmonies, looking at my "right hand" from the piano perspective... and THAT is the 1st triad.

Once we go through the method follow the general principles of harmonic importance, we eventually end up with three important tension notes. We can use them to improvise if we want. We can also lump them together and... poof... not only do they give us a triad... but that secondary triad is created from our three, melodic tension notes...

So it, by default will BOTH create tension... allowing for horizontal harmonic motion (think Barry Harris with the 6 chord and the diminished chord... but using triads)
AND it will help reinforce the initial triad that might be missing some important harmonic notes and make it feel like it's not really expressing the intended harmony.

So for example...

The very first harmony in the OP graphic. E7alt.

IF you have access to a piano and play an E7 shell (R-3-b7) in your left hand and some nearby inversion of a C major triad in your right hand... you'll probably immediately recognize that sound. If you don't have a piano, try this guitar voicing...

(0.11.12)(12.13.12)

Notice that I put the bottom three pitches in parenthesis (E-G#-D, an E7 shell voicing) and the top three pitches in parenthesis (G-C-E, a C major triad). Most of us will probably recognize that sound. Very classic.

The issue when we put it on guitar is that we don't have a "left hand" and so we often struggle to get that C major triad to FUNCTION or FEEL like an E7 harmony. It gives us the root, the #5/b13, and the #9... a bunch of sweet spot notes for an E7alt. But it doesn't feel quite right.

There are A BUNCH of ways around this issue that I've been exploring since meeting Stefon and started translating all of these pianistic construction ideas onto the fretboard.

This triad pair is the latest.

Why do I use C major as the in and "stable" triad? Because THAT is what a great post-bop or modern piano player would likely be putting in their right hand to accentuate an E7#9#5 harmony.

Why did I add the D diminished triad to function as the tension and "unstable" triad? Because it puts an important E7 chord tone in between every set of C major triad notes.

C - (D) - E - (F) - G - (G#) - C

It's almost like a mini, 6 note "bebop scale" in the sense that it puts all of the important "right hand" triad notes on the down beats and all of the passing tones on the &'s.

If you haven't yet played this harmony on the piano and tinkered with HEARING and FEELING the C major triad as the melodic stable points, this will make no intellectual sense to you... as I'm literally saying that the 3rd, 7th, and b9 of the E7 are functioning as melodic tension notes. Once you try it and let your ears experience this phenomenon... the gravitational force become undeniable.

Back to your question...

What this means for the triad pair selection is that I "chose" the C major triad because I know from my work with Stefon that it's gives a perfectly executed, pianistic E7#9#5. I "chose" the D diminished because I wanted the most harmonically respectful notes (for E7) as possible to rub up against the C major triad to create drama, tension, and horizontal motion.

If you simply take this much and move up and down through inversions of C major and D diminished over an open E string, you'll hear the implied E7alt.

But to my ear, it comes across as a touch too vanilla. The movements are great! But each individual voicing is a little to "plain" for my personal preferences at this point. THIS is where the idea of moving one of the triad notes up or down came to me. I get all the benefits of Stefon's "pianistic chord construction" and tension and resolution, I get the fretboard simplicity of not needing to overthink anything and just look at the shapes of my triads... PLUS I can now hide the basic triads and make them appear to be a little more complex to the ear... and with this... NONE of the voicings sound perfectly stable OR perfectly unstable. Each one has notes that feel solid and notes that (to my ear) want to move... and this just plays into that idea of not getting stuck inside of individual chord voicings... but using voicings functionally to move horizontally through progressions.


AS FOR ASKING WHAT TWO TRIADS I'M USING?
I notated those underneath each chord chart... where I show which triad the black dots (the "right hand," stable, "melodic triad") come from vs the black/white dots (the unstable triad derived from the "tension notes")


I know that was a lot. Hope it makes sense.

J-Klem, back with a vengeance.

[jordanklemons]

Thanks Jordan,

Your explanation really helped clarify your diagram in post #1 – this is going to be fun – it's a very practical and efficient way to generate and organise harmonies.

All the best,
Mick W

Cheers! And happy that helped clear it up.

Yeah I intended to just share some cool voicings vs give a big theory dissertation. Though I'm always happy to.

Just sometimes hard because my entire musical perspective at this point basically comes from three pivotal experiences I had

(1) MOST of my mentors, at least the ones I revered and admired the most, were oftentimes trying to talk me away from getting too lost in theory and instead encouraged me to get ridiculous personal with basic fundamentals and putting them into use

(2) Stefon Harris got me obsessed with piano player thinking... and now I view the fretboard as a broken keyboard and am always thinking like a piano player... but translating it onto the guitar

(3) I had to start over. And during my first year of playing, I was only able to practice five minutes a day. It forced me to really think about priorities and where my time was best spent. Should I bake the cake today? Worry about the icing? Or get together the sprinkles and decorations?
Well if I don't have a cake yet, then the icing has nowhere to go. If I can't put the icing down, the sprinkles won't stick.

Then the question started to become (for me)... do I even need icing and sprinkles? I mean... they can be fun. But do I actually have a KICKASS cake yet? If not... am I just using the sprinkles to try and hide the fact that my cake sucks? Is it worth me focusing on perfecting a cake that's so off the charts delicious that icing becomes unnecessary? AND THEN, to sit down and map out how to make an icing that is EQUALLY that incredible?

That's just where I come from at this point. Sort of the middle of the triangle of the three pillars/experience I laid out above.

Those types of subtleties sometimes get lost in the mix when we talk theory.

Anyways... once I get my cake perfected... I should definitely jump back into GMC and see what the cake/icing/sprinkles/whipped cream cream/ice cream/espresso master, Mr Good Chord is up to! ha

[jordanklemons]

J-Klem, back with a vengeance.

Can we get some gif action in the forum?
I need some batman action.

[rpjazzguitar]

One post convinced me that I should study piano. Apparently, pianists are naturals at playing two simple things, one in each hand, and then putting them together to reach something that sounds astounding to a guitarist. A guitarist can learn a lot from that.

At the risk of oversimplification, it's a pretty standard move to weave some G7 into you Cmaj lines to add some tension and resolution even while playing over a static major chord. C and Ddim are close to that. D F Ab is part of a G7b9. You can go back and forth. In fact, isn't this similar to the maj6dim scale? C E G A and then D F Ab B?.

[Christian Miller]

One post convinced me that I should study piano. Apparently, pianists are naturals at playing two simple things, one in each hand, and then putting them together to reach something that sounds astounding to a guitarist. A guitarist can learn a lot from that.

At the risk of oversimplification, it's a pretty standard move to weave some G7 into you Cmaj lines to add some tension and resolution even while playing over a static major chord. C and Ddim are close to that. D F Ab is part of a G7b9. You can go back and forth. In fact, isn't this similar to the maj6dim scale? C E G A and then D F Ab B?.

As much as I like to moan about the guitar being stoopid, consider the fate of the pianist reading slash chords.

For example, E/G7. The right hand plays the left hand side of the slash, and the left hand plays the right hand side of the slash…

ARRRRGHHHHHH Music, why must you be like this?

Re the weaving back and forth thing, yes, very much.

[Christian Miller]

Cheers! And happy that helped clear it up.

Yeah I intended to just share some cool voicings vs give a big theory dissertation. Though I'm always happy to.

Just sometimes hard because my entire musical perspective at this point basically comes from three pivotal experiences I had

(1) MOST of my mentors, at least the ones I revered and admired the most, were oftentimes trying to talk me away from getting too lost in theory and instead encouraged me to get ridiculous personal with basic fundamentals and putting them into use

(2) Stefon Harris got me obsessed with piano player thinking... and now I view the fretboard as a broken keyboard and am always thinking like a piano player... but translating it onto the guitar

(3) I had to start over. And during my first year of playing, I was only able to practice five minutes a day. It forced me to really think about priorities and where my time was best spent. Should I bake the cake today? Worry about the icing? Or get together the sprinkles and decorations?
Well if I don't have a cake yet, then the icing has nowhere to go. If I can't put the icing down, the sprinkles won't stick.

Then the question started to become (for me)... do I even need icing and sprinkles? I mean... they can be fun. But do I actually have a KICKASS cake yet? If not... am I just using the sprinkles to try and hide the fact that my cake sucks? Is it worth me focusing on perfecting a cake that's so off the charts delicious that icing becomes unnecessary? AND THEN, to sit down and map out how to make an icing that is EQUALLY that incredible?

That's just where I come from at this point. Sort of the middle of the triangle of the three pillars/experience I laid out above.

Those types of subtleties sometimes get lost in the mix when we talk theory.

Anyways... once I get my cake perfected... I should definitely jump back into GMC and see what the cake/icing/sprinkles/whipped cream cream/ice cream/espresso master, Mr Good Chord is up to! ha

While I’m happy cooking most things and have a good intuition for it (I think), baking is a science. I steer well clear.

isn’t there that thing in France where you have to be specifically qualified to be allowed to bake baguettes?

It shows, baguettes elsewhere are simply not the same thing. Simple stuff is hardest but most sublime when it’s right.

[pamosmusic]

Can we get some gif action in the forum?
I need some batman action.

**actual footage of Jordan when I told him his triad sh** was too much work and I just wanna play licks.

https://giphy.com/gifs/christian-bal...-jKQMcjZ76Njgs

Yeah I don’t think this creaky old forum can support a moving gif. Alas.

[Christian Miller]

It’s a valiant attempt, but the tech is stuck in 2003

[jordanklemons]

One post convinced me that I should study piano. Apparently, pianists are naturals at playing two simple things, one in each hand, and then putting them together to reach something that sounds astounding to a guitarist. A guitarist can learn a lot from that.

Exactly. Though I'm not sure they're "naturals" at this. We don't tend to hear young or non-jazz piano players doing this. I think it's just "more natural" for them to get this type of thing happening once it's shown to them. Because they have two hands. So once the idea is presented, it's not really that complicated.

I remember "learning" about polytonal things from books and guitar players for YEARS, thinking it was this wildly advanced idea. And then I sat down at the piano with my teacher and within like two minutesI was like, "Oh... okay yeah, this makes sense."

And now when I explain what I work on to my (good) piano player friends... they're like, "Yeah, that's obvious. I don't get what the big deal is."
Whereas guitar... we don't have two hands... we have four fingers and graph paper... and so these ideas aren't really brought into the pedagogy in any kind of systematic or digestible way beyond "just arpeggiate this triad over this chord." Which often times sounds pretty dumpy if that's all we do with it. It's flashy... but it usually doesn't feel like it's integrally connected into the harmony we're playing over.

For me that's where the understanding of THE FUNCTION of the piano player's left hand vs right hand comes in... and then the fun of learning to see how simple each hand can be used, and finding fun ways of getting those simple functions onto the fretboard. Standalone... the simplicity of each "hand's" function can be learned relatively quickly-ish and will clean up a lot of loose ends. And then because we've left our egos at the door and focused down on relying on simple shapes and functions and ideas... we can then begin finding strategies for getting those "two hands" to work together on the fretboard.

At least... that's what I enjoy doing. Seems to clean up the foundation quite quickly and then leave lifetimes worth of advanced applications and explorations abundantly evident.

At the risk of oversimplification, it's a pretty standard move to weave some G7 into you Cmaj lines to add some tension and resolution even while playing over a static major chord. C and Ddim are close to that. D F Ab is part of a G7b9. You can go back and forth. In fact, isn't this similar to the maj6dim scale? C E G A and then D F Ab B?.

Yes, what you're talking about is very similar to Barry's thing... just with triads vs four note chords.

For me, I'm a bit less interested in that FOR NOW, as I'm not looking to lump together a tonic and a dominant/diminished into one triad pair. I'm more focused on using a triad pair to create an individual harmony... within which I can create tension and resolution and advanced voicings... but not actually leaving it for a full blown new functional harmony. I'd personally, at this point, prefer to just have a tonic sound (with all the fun of motion inside of it) vs a dominant sound (with all the fun of motion inside of it)... and then just voice lead between the two.

I'm not sure you can create quite the level of complexity and richness within a single chord using only three stable notes vs the six notes within the triad pair.

A good example of this is the McCoy Tyner's piano solo on My Favorite Things. It's happening over EMaj7... and he's vamping back and forth between G# minor and A major triads. The A triad creates that tension and that propulsion so keep things moving... but it's not a full blown dominant or diminished sound.

But for sure... If someone were to want to try and shift this idea I'm talking about into more of a full-blown BH approach... C major and Ddim would create something similar. Though... you'd be missing out on the A note in the C6 sound and the B note in the D diminished... which would leave a bit to be desired, I think.

I'd be more like to use C and D minor to imply the C major functionality WITH tension (that F note is going to want to move!!!)...
And then maybe E major and Bb major to imply the G7b9

That's the way I've been practicing and employing it so far.

[jordanklemons]

As much as I like to moan about the guitar being stoopid, consider the fate of the pianist reading slash chords.

For example, E/G7. The right hand plays the left hand side of the slash, and the left hand plays the right hand side of the slash…

ARRRRGHHHHHH Music, why must you be like this?

Re the weaving back and forth thing, yes, very much.

Hahaha that's crazy, I never thought about that. I once had a (really good) piano player ask me to not use slash chord notation anymore hahaha
It was right around the time I was meeting Stefon and getting used to his concept and notation... so I took it as an opportunity to find ways to notate the harmonies without the slash.

Gotta start working on our baguette baking at some point, right?

[jordanklemons]

**actual footage of Jordan when I told him his triad sh** was too much work and I just wanna play licks.

https://giphy.com/gifs/christian-bal...-jKQMcjZ76Njgs

Yeah I don’t think this creaky old forum can support a moving gif. Alas.

Amazing

[jordanklemons]

This morning, some students were asking me to go more in-depth with them about this topic...
Specifically WHICH triad pairs I recommended to use that I felt would give the most bang for the buck (most musically useful compared to the least amount of time, effort, and frustration in the shed to learn). They also wanted tips for HOW to practice them to get them happening... especially the contrary motion piece to the puzzle.

It was such a wildly fun hour that I was buzzing with ideas when we all logged off and immediately started messing around applying the ideas to There Will NEver Be Another You.

Wrote this little example piece for them and thought I'd share it with you guys here for anyone who's interested what these ideas might sound like in a musical situation.



Notice the cluster voicings as well as the voicings with larger intervals (sometimes quartal, not always). Notice the contrary motion every few measures where the top voice is moving in one direction while the bottom voice is moving in the opposing direction.
This seems to be part of the aesthetic that this technique brings out.

I also threw in a little "left hand" stuff because from my perspective of trying to translate piano ideas onto the fretboard...
These triad pair voicings would be classified as "right hand" voicings in my mind. And while they don't NEED and "left hand" information... we can always throw that stuff in. I usually focus on shell voicings... but the cluster and quartal voicings these triad pair movements came up with seemed to be begging me to go a more "McCoy Tyner" style "left hand".

I'm really digging this technique so much. It seems to yield such killin INDIVIDUAL voicings... but more importantly... it seems to lend itself to just constantly horizontal flowing movement WITHIN each individual chord and then voice leading into other harmonies... AND allows for somewhat accessible on oblique and contrary motion between our voicings. It's definitely one of the more advanced melodic triad techniques I've stumbled onto it and not where I recommend my students begin their triad journey. But it's definitely becoming addictive.

[rpjazzguitar]

So, you think of a triad, but raise the top voice. Is that correct?

So, for Fm you play an Ab and C and then, above that, instead of an F (which would complete the Fm triad) you raise the note to G? Then, for the next chord, you play Bb and G, but raise the Eb to F?

Is that the procedure?

My perspective, for this sort of thing, is that I incorporate new sounds into my playing at a glacial pace, if that. So, I don't often work on ways to find new sounds. Not that it isn't a great thing to do for people who can benefit from it. There are just so many things to work on to get better with the sounds I can already hear. But, it is interesting.