Jazz Drop 2 Voicings Application

Learn jazz drop 2 voicings technique from solo piano video of jazz standard “The Nearness of You” with some theory

A jazz ballad is always good for demontsrating the beauty of jazz voicings.
Here’s my solo piano video of popular jazz standard “The Nearness of You”

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKiVK2e6Ui8]

DROP 2 VOICINGS

A word by the great Marc Sabatella on drop 2 voicings,

“Drop voicings are formed by taking a close position voicing and dropping one of the notes down an octave. A drop 2 voicing is formed by dropping the second to the top note. Thus, for instance, a C7 chord in root position may be turned into a drop 2 voicing by dropping the G an octave”

Drop 2 voicing technique is applied at 2m22s of the video.

Original chord for these two bars were simply Dm7 to G7

To create some movement between these two chords, these chords were added.

jazz-drop-voicings-before

The notes in red are the second note from the top of each chord.

With drop 2 voicings applied, this was what I got

jazz-drop-voicings-after

Like always, have fun and enjoy…. 😀

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2 Comments

  • montes707

    Reply Reply November 28, 2008

    Something I just observed…for all minor, major, and dominant chords (“shell voicings”) all you have to do to make it Drop 2 is add the note that is a perfect fourth down from the root. It’s a lot easier to visualize it that way, at least for me.

  • ttj

    Reply Reply August 22, 2009

    Helpful observation…

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