Piano Chord Voicing: How To “Voice” a Chord On The Piano

Good morning. This is Duane and today I’d like to talk about the subject of chord voicing on the piano. Chord Voicing: How To “Voice” a Chord On The Piano. That simply means how a chord is positioned on the piano. We all know what chords are. They are 3 or more notes played together. That’s a chord. That’s a chord. That’s a chord and so on. Three or more notes played together. If you just 2 notes, you really don’t have a chord, you may have an implication of a chord, but that’s called an interval. The distance between 2 notes is an interval. If you have 3 notes, that’s a chord. So, we can voice the chords, in other words position them on different ways on the keyboard. For example, I can take that C chord and turn it upside down. That’s a different voicing because I simply turned it upside down. I put the C, which was on the bottom, on top.

Now I can turn it upside down again and make it sound a little different because the C’s in the middle, but it’s the same chord. Part of voicing is simply turning chords upside down and playing them higher or lower. In other words, this, that sounds higher, that sounds different than that doesn’t it? Even though it’s the very same chord. Now true voice though is more complex than that because here’s another way to voice the C chord. You see, I’m playing all three notes, but they’re separated. There’s gaps between the notes. I’m taking the E off of there and putting it on top. So I can position my 2 hands in various ways to play the chords.

For example, I could play a C chord like that couldn’t I? There I have 2 Cs and I only have 1 E and 1 G. But it sounds different than if you play it like that, doesn’t it? So every position of the chord sounds a little different. If I play the chord like that, that’s still different. If I play it like that, that’s still different. If I play it like that and roll the chord, I have small hands so I have to roll the chord to play it 10th like that, but that’s the C chord and it sounds a lot different than that, doesn’t it? I can voice the chord like that, turn the chord upside down. I can roll the chord over like that.

Now, I was just talking about 3-note chords, but if I put 4 note or more notes then I can get into more contemporary voicing. For example, often I use this chord for the C chord. I hit a low C and push my pedal down and then I come up and play E, A and D. I have the 6th and the 9th. Sounds kind of empty there, but if I put the right end with it, you see you get entirely different here. So, I can voice like that. It’s called voicing in force or opened voicing. That voicing is really useful if you’re playing contemporary kind of music such as fusion or jazz or certain kinds of ….

Or I can include the 5th too and it makes it even sound fuller. Notice what I’m doing with my right hand. I’m playing a C octave. That’s the melody of the song but I’m mostly playing the G and I’m sliding off G-flat. That gives a little [inaudible 0:03:57]. Sometimes I let my thumb hit 2 notes at the same time. You see that, so you can get a much fuller sound when you know voicing. So that’s all I have to say about voiding. You can just position your chords in various ways on the keyboard to get a variety of sounds and I encourage you to experiment. As you listen to various pianists play, you’ll hear different voicings and take a voicing that you like and search for it.

I discovered most of my voicing simply by listening to other pianist and then figuring out what they did and sometimes it took a long time but I eventually got it. That’s my little speech for today. Thanks for being with me. Come on over to play piano and sign up for our free newsletter on chords and chord progressions and lots of things related to music. I’ll see you there. Bye.

Here is the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6DuFQm7FRI
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