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Major Minor Upper Structures

Back to Unusual Chords & Voicings course
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Upper Structures for Major & Minor Chords

In the past lessons on upper structures, we have explored them over dominant chords. In this lesson we apply the upper structure triad concept to major and minor chords.

Print Out The Upper Structure Cheat Sheet

You can find a link below to the Upper Structure Cheat Sheets which detail the type of chord, the scale degree to build the triad off, and finally the extensions and alterations included.

Upper Structures Over Dominant Chords

In the past lessons on upper structures, we just looked at dominant upper structures. For example, over C7 we can play a major triad built from the #5 to get an altered #5-#9 sound. Or we can play a major triad off the #11 to get a #11 – b9 sound. We also looked at adding these upper structures to a 251 progression.

Previous Lessons On USTs

If you don’t understand this theory, I would recommend watching the introduction to upper structures lesson. Applying upper structures to dominant chords is the most important and useful application so I would advise that you learn dominant upper structures first.

Lesson Downloads

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    Major and Minor Upper Structures Cheat Sheet File Type: pdf
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Related Lessons

Advanced Upper Structures

In this lesson we explore some advanced applications of upper structure triads in context of jazz standards we have covered.

Intermediate07:58

Practicing Upper Structures

Learning and memorising all of the upper structure triads is a daunting task! This lesson introduces the upper structure cheat sheet.

Intermediate22:07

Upper Structure Triads Intro

Upper structure triads are complex sounding altered dominant chords. They will add texture and sophistication to your playing.

Intermediate12:21

Practice Tips

  • Print off the major/minor upper structure cheat sheet.

  • By visualising the chord in two separate parts, it gives us access to a winder variety of voicings for the same chord.

  • We can manipulate a simple voicing by inverting and doubling notes of the upper structure.

  • Try harmonising a melody line of a jazz standard using major and minor upper structures. First analyse the notes in the meldoy, and then try and match them to the chord tones in the upper structure of the chord.

  • We can invert a single upper structure and also mix multiple upper structures to get the correct tone at the top of the voicings.

Comments

4 Comments
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  1. James Lambie says

    February 13, 2018 at 10:01 pm

    Wow – Even though I knew and had used a few shortcuts for extended chords I had never thought of actually treating them as separate triads with the ability to achieve such big sounds by inverting the upper triads. Really enjoying trying this out, thanks Hayden!

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    • Hayden Hill PianoGroove says

      February 14, 2018 at 9:33 pm

      Glad you enjoyed in James!

      Yes you can get some really big sounds, and also more flexibility with voicings by looking at the chord as 2 separate structures… some of the formulas are the same too, for example, major triad off the 9th will give you 13#11 sound over both major and dominant chords… so there is some overlap with dominant uppers structure theory.

      Cheers,
      Hayden

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  2. Jimmy Skotte Rasmussen says

    January 17, 2020 at 8:56 am

    Hi Hayden. Can you send me the lead sheed for this lesson. The chead sheet I have. It would be cool if you had the lead sheed for this.

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    • Hayden Hill says

      January 26, 2020 at 5:14 am

      HI Jimmy,

      Apologies for the late reply, this comment slipped past me.

      Yes we actually have a tutorial on that tune where you can access all of the notation from the lesson.

      Here’s a link: pianogroove.com/jazz-piano-lessons/time-remembered-tutorial/

      Cheers!
      Hayden

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