Harmonic Movement within a Chord

[alexander]

To generate movement within one chord, you have a couple of options. You can use
secondary dominants (i.e. for Dm7 you go Dm7-A7(b9)-Dm7 for some
harmonic movement); you can use the idea of constant structure which is
really easy for us guitar players, just move a voicing up and down the
fretboard, never mind following the scale, just use your ear (McCoy
Tyner does this quite a lot in the 60s recordings); or you can use the
idea of scalewise movement. Incidentally, all of these are also
techniques that can be used when writing for a horn section.

Here's the drill: take any voicing you use in a given situation and
decide on a scale sound for that chord. Then move the voicing up and
down the scale. This will increase your knowledge of the fretboard
immensely, not to mention voicing vocabulary.

Let's take an example. You could have this maj13 voicing for a Bbmaj7
chord: xx5535 (that's frets on strings, bottom to top). On the Ionian
scale, you would have these voicings surrounding your "home base"
voicing: xx3313, xx7746, xx8868 etc. A Lydian sound, on the other hand,
would yield this going up: xx5535 to xx7756 to xx8968. In the duration
of the chord, instead of just playing the original voicing, you could
move up a step and come down again before moving to the next chord.

Let's say the next chord is Eb7. You might have this as a Eb13#11: xx5525. If you move that
up the Lydian Dominant sound, you get xx7646 and xx8868. Below it, you
have xx3313.

So, after Eb7 you go to Ab7. Let's play this 9 voicing: xx4314. Moving
it up the Lyd.Dom. sound, you get xx6536 and xx8748 (bit of a strech
there, did I mention the left-hand-improving effect this has?).

As the last chord of this example, you have G7 altered. You can play
this usual voicing: xx3444. Or if you want movement, you go xx3444 to
xx5666 to xx6887.

Here's one way to move through those changes (Bbmaj7-Eb7-Ab7-G7alt)
using these voicings. This is two voicings for each chord.

xx5535
xx7746
xx5525
xx3313
xx4314
xx6536
xx3444 (just one voicing for the G7)

Notice how I made sure the voice leading is smooth when moving to a
different voicing; I tried to incorporate a little contrary movement
there. This kind of workout will definitely get you thinking in more
melodic terms when it comes to comping. I picked a lot of this up from
Bill Frisell and Ben Monder. There are really so many things to do and
places to go with this; instead of moving all the voices up or down the
scale you could move some up, some down, like xx5535 to xx3346, or
xx5535 to xx3743