Diatonic Fourth Shapes – Peter Martin

Tired of using the same old chord voicings? Peter Martin shows you some new shapes to shake things up.

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What’s going on everybody? Peter Martin here for Two Minute Jazz. Hope you’re doing well. Got a quick tip to you today on diatonic fourth voicings. Just playing around a little on “If I Should Lose You” and I was just thinking about the uses for this on ballads.

But even if we take the tempo up. If we look at like a basic fourth voicing over G minor. Three notes in the right hand, two in the left hand. If you have the ability to move through this and really all the different scales with this shape diatonically, you’re gonna have some nice things that can happen. For your comping, for your soloing, for a lot of things.

So, these are all fourths on the Dorian, right? Starting on the root. So, you wanna have that in all the different keys. And kind of understand them, like that’s over F minor. But it works in fourths over E flat major.

So, if you’re on like a ballad. You’re moving in and out of them but that’s the foundation is that diatonic. If you combine that with an understanding of a chromatic, you’re really getting somewhere.

And you can think about these melodically as shapes too. But you gotta have a handle on all those, right? In all your different keys so that you can do that.

All right, have fun with that. Diatonic fourths. Peace. Happy practicing.

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