Fourth VoicingsFourth voicings, also known as quartal voicings, are more of a "modern" sound in jazz and were really explored thoroughly by McCoy Tyner as well as Chick Corea in the 60's. They sound great and can be played in a number of ways They really are just a pentatonic scale played every other note. Here are the 5 inversions of the C pentatonic scale in fourth voicings: 
ou can use C pentatonic fourth voicings over Cmaj7, C7, D-7, Fmaj7, F#7alt, Gsus7, A-7, Bbmaj7#11, or even maybe B-7b5. So there are many possibilities. You can also make fourth voicings with notes that aren't in a strict major pentatonic scale. Here is every melody note in the key of C with fourths underneath: 
You can also take a fourth voicing and move it around in parallel motion. I like to play this type of movement over a D-7 modal song:
These are all examples of two-handed fourth voicings. You can also just play 3-note fourth voicings in your left hand while you play a melody in your right hand. Going in and out of the key will sound very modern and cool if you do it right, listen to McCoy to get a real lesson on how to do this. Go back to Jazz Piano Chords or return to The Jazz Resource Homepage |