Presented by Dr. Bob Lawrence: 🎶 Unlock Pro-Sounding Minor Chord Voicings in Minutes!

Tired of basic minor chords that sound flat and lifeless? In this video, I’ll show you a four sets of minor chord voicings that instantly elevate your playing. These voicings are rich, emotional, and used by top-tier musicians across genres like jazz, neo-soul, R&B, and cinematic scoring.

✅ Perfect for beginners AND seasoned players
✅ Great for improvisation, songwriting, or solo performance
✅ Works on multiple instruments with real-world examples

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Keywords
jazz piano, minor voicings, block voicings, shell voicings, quartal voicings, two-handed structures, improvisation, music education, piano techniques, jazz skills

Summary
In this conversation, Dr. Bob Lawrence introduces the concept of minor voicings for jazz piano, emphasizing their complexity and importance for beginners. He outlines four main types of minor voicings: block voicings, traditional shell voicings, contemporary quartal voicings, and two-handed structures. Each type is demonstrated with practical examples, highlighting their application in improvisation and musical context. Dr. Lawrence encourages students to practice these voicings and invites them to join the Jazz Piano Skills community for further learning and support.

Takeaways
Minor voicings are crucial for jazz pianists.
Four types of minor voicings are essential to learn.
Block voicings provide a strong harmonic foundation.
Traditional shell voicings are often rootless and beautiful.
Contemporary quartal voicings offer a modern sound.
Two-handed structures enhance the richness of voicings.
Practicing inversions is key to mastering voicings.
These voicings should be part of every pianist's arsenal.
Joining a community can enhance learning and support.
Continuous practice and exploration are vital for growth.

Transcript
Alright, quick video on minor voicings. know, voicings, I believe for beginning jazz pianists, it very well may be the most complicated skill to get their mind wrapped around and to get their hands wrapped around. So, how I teach the students here at the Dallas School of Music, I teach them four types of minor voicings. I want to walk you through those voicings today, okay?

So let me go to the piano. The very first type of voicing are our block voicing. So C minor seven as a pure block, root third, five and seven. Of course we want to play the shape in both hands. Right? And the reason for this is that these shapes in your right hand

These are the harmonic shapes that you will lean on, that you will depend upon when improvising. So you want to get used to playing these shapes in your right hand as well. So we have our C minor in what we call root position, because the C is on the bottom. If we take the C and we place it on top, we have what we call C minor block in first inversion. If we take the E flat and put it on top, C minor seven second inversion. And if we now take the G and put it on top, C minor, seven, third inversion. Okay, so there's four block shapes to get familiar with. Root position, first inversion, second inversion, third inversion. Okay, now the next type of voicings, minor voicings that I teach are the traditional left hand shell voicings or oftentimes referred to as rootless voicings.

The first option is what we call a three, seven, nine voicing. I have a third in my little finger. I have the seventh here in my index, and I have the nine in my thumb. So I like to go down, hit the root, let's see, come up and hit that voicing. Very pretty, right? And the other option is to start with the seventh on the bottom. So we have our seven, three, and five. Right, seven, three, and five. Again, I'll play the root down here in the bass. Come up here, that voicing. These are both beautiful, traditional, rootless voicings that you want to have in your arsenal. 379, 735. The third type of minor voicings are what I call the contemporary shells that are built on the interval of a fourth. Quartal voicings or fourth E voicings, as they're often referred to. So the first option would be C minor voiced as a C, the root, the fourth, and the seventh. Okay? The second option would be voiced with the fifth, the root, and the fourth. So option A, option B. Great contemporary sound. You definitely want these in your arsenal as well. Then the fourth type of voicings are what I call my two-handed structures. I always play five note shapes, two in the left, in the right, so I have in my left hand my root and my fourth, and in my right hand I have the seventh, the third, and then the fifth up on top. Nice sound. The other option, starting with the fifth in my left hand, I have my fifth and my root, and then my fourth, seventh, third, fourths all the way up. Option A, Option B.

So we have our blocks. We have our traditional shells, three, seven, nine, seven, three, five. We have our ...