Sunday, July 10, 2011

Etude #1: G7 Comping Etude

Welcome to a special edition of A Chord A Day!

Today, I'd like to look at all the voicings we've learned in My Top Ten Favorite G7 voicings and use all of them in context. Firstly, let's review the ten voicings I've covered. Here they are:

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Now, let's look at the Comping Etude I've composed to bring together all that we've learned so far. This etude uses a lot of textures and rhythms that I play when I comp but in a super-condensed way! Since I'm attempting to squeeze a lot of information in a short piece of music, the example is very busy. My suggestion is to learn it as written first and then play fragments of it in between some single-line melodic ideas. Let's have a look at it!

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The form of this etude is ABBA. The first four measures acts as bookends to the main section. The rhythmic feel is predominantly in triplets, including some polyrhythmic ideas and syncopation. I played the entire etude fingerstyle but you could play it using hybrid picking or even with a pick (some great string skipping moments in the piece!)

Listen to the audio example of me playing it and then learn it slowly first before playing it up to performance tempo. If you've been practicing the voicings, this should be pretty manageable. The challenge for this piece is to connect the voicings smoothly.

After learning this, try playing the etude with your own rhythms and phrasing! For more fun, write your own short etude using the same voicings to further embed the chordal vocabulary in your playing.

Enjoy!


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