Jazz minor voicings minor 3rd with major 7th

Jazz Theory Discussion
1

i have been working thru all the materials on voicings , both here, and in the Dan Hearle voicings book), stinging things together for 12 key practice workouts…

while I see lots on major, minor, dominant, and extended voicings, there is no place ( no need for? ) any structures like m3, maj7, 9 in any of the practice plans or shell voicings
e.g. if I am working on 3 7 9 shells, rather than 3 to practice: in Key C - E, B, D ( major), E Bb D ( dominant), Eb, Bb. D (minor,) why not also Eb B D ( minor with maj 7 )

is there a good reason for not including this in any 12 key workout ?

2

Good question here @davidandbirds

I like to see the minor-major7 chord as a different ‘colour’ of the minor7 chord. The same with the minor6 chord. I see these as 3 variations of the same thing, rather than 3 separate entities. In that light, perhaps you could tweak your exercises on minor shell voicings in the following way:

If we have a 251 progression in C Minor, we can resolve into C-9, C-69 or C-maj9 and they all have a different character. We can also play D-7b5 to G7 and then land on the C-maj9, drop 7 to the b7, and then to the 6. This outlines all 3 chords mentioned and it’s a nice way to familiarise ourselves with these 3 colours over minor chords.

This is a great idea for a drill which I can add to our course on Whole Step 251 Drills:

I will start planning that out and post an update here.

I hope the above helps and I that I understood your question correctly.

3

so you are suggesting to use the min Maj7 chord as an alternative I chord ( destination chord) of a 2-5-1 progression ?

I’d not considered using it like that, but I get how it could work

the m3M7 chord is more often used in in tunes, within what you call a " minor line cliche" e.g. the bridge of Lover Man in some Real Books has that embedded , thus the whole “cliche” is like an extended 2 of a 2 5 1 .

so I wonder if there’s a way to take some of those A & B voicing whole step drills, and sub in a 4 chord min cliche for the 2 chord?, then maybe a double move on the V chord, for balance

I can play that basic cliche at speed around all keys, but I’ve not studied all the voicing possibilities

4

Yes that’s exactly right.

It can be a nice exercise to use the following 3 minor chords as the ‘destination chord’ in minor 251s:

  • The regular minor7 chord
  • The minor-major7 chord
  • The minor6 chord, and the minor69 chord are both very nice and are used extensively in Samba and Bossa Nova music. (See our Brazilian piano lessons)

These 3 chords each offer a ‘different flavour’ for resolving minor 251 progressions.

Yes I would recommend practicing the minor line cliche in context of jazz standards. The following 2 tunes contain that progression:

There are many other tunes too, and those are 2 of my favourites.

Again practicing this in context of jazz standards always works well. Any time we have a minor chord we can experiment with this moving voice.

The descending minor line cliche works nicely with 251 progressions where the descending voice leads down to the 3rd of the V7 chord. I think this would be the best way to structure the whole step exercise:

  • ii-7 with descending minor line cliche
  • to a rootless V7 chord, perhaps playing the root afterwards
  • Finally resolving to the Imaj7 chord perhaps with a passing chord on route

Leave that with me and I will devise a drill for this :sunglasses: