Extended Chords & Voicings

Extended chords are one of the hallmarks of jazz piano and create the rich sounds and sororities played by the masters of jazz piano! The first area you need to understand the concept of extended chord voicings. This should then start to make sense why the scales are important!

When learning new chord voicings. It’s very important to memorise the scale degree at the top of voicing, for example… the top note of the So What Voicing is the 5th, and so on a jazz standard, whenever you come across a minor chord (in any key) with the 5th in the melody, the So What Voicing will sound great!

The Kenny Barron Voicing has the 11th on the top so this is a great minor voicing when the 11th is in the melody.

The Herbie Hancock Voicing has the 9th in the melody so this will be a good choice of voicing when you come across the 9th in the melody over a minor chord. Although to be honest it can be a little rich with the 11 in there all the time.

In all of these lessons I demonstrate identifying the scale degree of the melody note – always try to do this with any tune you are learning.

You should always practice in context of actual jazz standards . The jazz standards are the vehicle you use to apply the theory, and so when you see and apply chords and voicings in context of a jazz standard, they will make much more sense and you will retain the information much better than just from theory drills.

This course contains 4 jazz standard lessons on the tunes " Misty ", " Tenderly " and " My Foolish Heart ". In each of these lessons we apply the common extended chord voicings to get you comfortable playing 2-handed extended chord voicings over an actual jazz standard.