Left hand piano voicings enable you to play the basic progression of jazz harmony, II-V-I, with good voice leading while freeing your right hand for soloing. The most important notes in these chords are the third and seventh because they determine the chord quality. The root and fifth of the chord don’t require much attention because they are implied by the rest of the chord. Here are the basic left hand voicings in first position:
Here are the left hand voicings in second position:
Try substituting the tritone (augmented 4th/diminished 5th) for the V chord. This substitution is sometimes called a Valt (#5,#9) chord (depending on the root in the bass):
Try altering other scale degrees:
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Graham,
This is very cool. I’m passing this along to a friend (Steve Summers), who will certainly appreciate advice on guitar voicings for standards.
Paul
Awesome. I hope it’s useful for Steve. Here’s a cool and free guitar chord Mac widget. It’d be cool if they made one of these for the piano.