Triad Drop-2 Voicings

2 minute read

Recently I’ve been trying to transcribe more pop songs as well as incorporate triads into my jazz playing. I’ve been struggling to find spread voicings that I like for triads, until I happened upon this system. Since then, I have been using this system as a basis for spread voicings for triads. I really enjoy the sound that I get from these voicings, and they are also quite easy to find.

• The System
• Raise-2
• Adding More Body
• Final Note

The System

You might have already heard of drop-2 voicings before. It is a way of constructing spread voicings for block seventh chords. See here.

This system is just adopting the same concept, but with triads. Here is an example of all the inversions for the C major triad along with its respective drop-2 voicing.

Raise-2

I call this system drop-2 because it’s a familiar term/concept, but in reality when I use this, I go the other way. This is because I like to keep track of the root when constructing triad voicings. It’s much easier to keep track of the root if I go the other way, essentially “raise-2” instead of “drop-2.”

Adding More Body

If you think these voicings sound too light and airy, you can easily add more notes to them to make them sound fuller. You can add the root or the fifth near the top note to create a fuller sounding spread voicing. I wouldn’t recommend adding a root or fifth between the bottom two notes; I believe, in this case, maintaining the separation of a fifth or more between the bottom two notes makes for a better sounding voicing. Also, I’m still trying to decide if repeating the third in triad voicings sounds good, so you can be judge of that when deciding which note to add to the triad drop-2 voicing.

Here are some examples of fuller voicings, walking through each step from the beginning.

Final Note

This is a great way of easily finding spread out voicings of triads, which is a nice, consonant flavor to add to your repertoire.

Written on February 8th, 2021 by Chris Cheung