Most likely you already know what drop voicings are, but just in case, “…it simply consists of dropping one or two of the notes in a closed 7th chord, down an octave.” For us guitarists this allows us to spread the notes in a way that we can assign them to different sets of strings so they will be be within our physical reach. That said, originally drop voicings were NOT created with guitar in mind. Did you know every keyboard player uses them, as well as every big band arranger? And that’s because the main purpose of drop voicings is to expand the register of any 7th chord inversion, as well as derive a variety of new textures & sonorities from them. As a result, a working knowledge of drop voicings is a must not only for comping but even more so for playing chord melody!

In this lesson I show you how to derive the 4 types of drop voicings from any 7th chord in root position and its 3 inversions. As I demonstrate this procedure, I also show you over what string sets you can play each of the 4 drop voicing types. Did you know we use them on a total of nine string sets? I also talk about how to group them into II-V-I cadences and last but not least, how to incorporate upper extensions in any drop voicing! And this applies to every type of minor 7th, dominant 7th and major 7th chord inversion!

Now, if the procedure described sounds like a tedious amount of work, worry not! After you watch the video, there is a mega study package available for download so you can devote your time to studying and playing. And that’s because I have already done most of the hard work for you! I’ve organized all the drop voicings from every chord inversion into major and minor II-V-Is in 5 string sets. And there is no music notation reading required! The study consists of 20 PDFs with fretboard diagrams of each chord voicing, including the fingering to use.  Check it out!

PDF & AUDIO DOWNLOAD:

The Drop Voicings Complete lesson files, can be downloaded for $12.50. The download includes: A total of 20 PDFs featuring: -Diagrams of every Major and Minor II-V-I in drop 2 and drop 3 voicings grouped into string groups: 1234, 2345, 3456, 123/5 and 234/6 with and without Upper Extensions. Included is also 2 additional PDFs with all the diagrams summarizing the theory included in this lesson and finally, a -Bonus 4 PDFs demonstrating how to comping variations over a jazz blues using the drop 2 voicings. A -Band in a Box and Midi file of each variation is also included… If you don’t own Band in a Box, a Midi file is also included which can be opened and used to practice using the free downloadable notation app: “Muse Score” .

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