Using Two Hand Block Chord Voicing For Piano Songs

Good morning, this is Duane. Today I’d like to cover two hand block chord voicing for piano. Two hand block chord voicing. There’s different ways to play block chords. One way we’ve already covered is to play, if the melody goes like this, we put the chords under the melody in the right hand and play the melody with the left hand. See that. OK? That’s one kind of block chord, but today I want to talk about two-hand chord voicing. To get a big sound like that. I think I’ll use the tune of Foggy Day In London Town to illustrate, OK?

I’m going to come back and play each chord and show you what it is exactly. That would be the end of the block chord voicing until we did something else. Then we could take off improvising or whatever. OK. What we do is we establish the root by playing a low, we’re in the key of C and the first chord is a C 7th, so I’m going to play a low C but then I’m going to voice it like this. Here’s the melody, I’ll be playing the melody in octaves, and between the melody I’ll be playing a 5th. I slide off that black key to the white key. That 5th by the way, I mean the … [inaudible 00:01:51] 5th there, but it’s a 9th of a C 7th chord, OK? That’s what I’m doing in the right hand, playing the melody with one note filled in.

In my left hand, I’m voicing it like this. 3rd on the bottom, 6th, 7th, 9th. I get that little click to it by sliding off that note. OK now that’s an E flat chord, E flat 7th chord. If I had a bass player with me, he’d be playing an E flat down there, but I don’t have that luxury, so I just play that chord and here’s the voicing of it. Of course, in the right hand I have B flat and E flat, which are the root and the 5th of the E flat chord. In the left hand I have the 3rd, 6th, 7th and 9th again. Then I just slide down a half step from E flat 7th, I go down to D 7th, ’cause D obviously is a half step below E flat, so I go from there to there and that’s the 3rd, 6th, 7th and 9th of the D chord.

My right hand’s playing the melody. Then again, my right hand’s playing the melody with a 5th in between, sliding off the black key, and my left hand has a little different voicing here. It’s got the root, I mean the 7th, the root, the 3rd, and the 6th. Then I tighten that chord. Let’s see. I forgot where I was. I play that chord and then I move my little finger, my fourth finger up a half step to G flat to make it tight, OK? That type is a chord. Then next chord’s C 7th and I’m voicing 3rd, 6th, 7th, 9th, melody here. Now we’re on F major 7th so my left hand has F, G, A, C, E, which is the root 2nd, 3rd, 5th, major 7th. My right hand is playing the melody with a chord in between, chord note in between. Now just F minor. The melody’s a major 7th, OK? That’s all the block chord, ’cause then … it doesn’t work to play block chords there.

OK let’s take it slowly all the way through. Maybe I better play it down here, I’m afraid the camera’s not getting it. Then the improvisation would start, OK? Just a little idea of two-handed block chords and how it works. OK? Now of course that takes a lot of time to work out, but I thought you’d like to see the voicing of that on a familiar jazz tune. OK that’s it for today, and if you enjoy these piano tips, come on over to playpiano.com. We have tips at all levels, by the way. That was fairly pretty advanced, but we have basic, where I teach basic chords like major, minor, diminish 7th and so on, and lots of other stuff. Come on over and sign up, it’s free, and we hope to see you there. Bye bye for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfaV2LB461M&feature=youtu.be
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