Jonah Dempcy

You've most likely heard block chords used by masters such as George Shearing and Bill Evans, as a method for playing a chord melody or possibly even chordal improvisation (such as in Evans' famous all-block-chord-solo on Green Dolphin Street). If, like me, you heard these voicings and thought "It will take years to learn how to do that" then you'll be pleasantly surprised!

While technically in the intermediate-to-advanced category, and requiring quite a bit of theoretical knowledge, block chords in themselves are not so difficult to play. As long as you have enough theoretical knowledge to play normal "vanilla" voicings you should be able to start playing block chords immediately, adding lush harmony to melodies and improvisation alike.

The basic theory behind chordal accompaniment to a melody is that the notes thatstand out melodically are generally the highest and lowest notes of the chord. Of course there are inner movements that do not involve the highest and lowest note of the voiced chord, but for the sake of this lesson, we will be looking at how these two notes interact with the melody.

With conventional voicings, the highest note is considered the melody note, and the lowest is usually the root. So, if you wanted to add chordal accompaniment to a melody, you would always play the melody note as the highest note in the voicing, and play the root of the chord as the lowest note. Often it would look like this:

Left hand: 1 7
Right hand: 3 and melody note

That's a very simple way to use conventional voicings to accompany a chord. Note that these are "root" voicings, rather than the rootless voicings which we often find with block chords. (Block chords can be either root or rootless voicings but statistically most of them end up being rootless.)

Conventional voicings are useful and definitely worth learning, but they usually span 2+ octaves and the root in the left hand often makes for clunky voice leading. On the other hand, block chords always have smooth voice leading. Read on to find out why.

Block chords are built by placing the melody note on the top of the chord and doubling it an octave lower, with all other notes voiced in between. So, a block-chord C6 with C as the melody note is voiced as follows:


Note that I didn't say which hand to use for what notes; You can play the top note in the right hand with the rest of the notes in the left, or vice versa, or any combination thereof. It's entirely up to you.

Here's another example, a C6 chord voiced with D as the melody note (technically C6/9):


Notice that I didn't voice the C, making this a rootless voicing. The reason is because the C would add too many close intervals. The G-A already makes a major 2nd interval, and the C-D would make another, giving it a muddy sound.

Let's apply block chords to an actual melody. Block chords don't sound especially good when taken seperate from a melody, but when played as chordal accompaniment (or a chordal improvisation), their construction makes for inherently good voice leading.

Here's the first 2 bars of the melody to Stardust played with only the most basic chordal accompaniment. (root position 1-3-5-7 voicings)



Now, listen to the same melody, this time voiced with block chords:



To hear the full richness of the block chord sound, it should be played on a real piano, not a synthesizer (as in the above examples).

I hope this brief lesson on block chords will be an adequate starting point for exploring the possibilities of this style of chord voicing on your own. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments and I will try to address them in upcoming posts.

Now, pour a cocktail, dim the lights and try some of these voicings out!