3-note iim7-V7 and iim7b5-V7b9 E9 chord voicings

[Jonathan Neher]

I know people have covered this kind of stuff before but I haven't seen what I'm looking for.

I want to play some jazz and, among other things, want the sound of just one note moving down a 1/2 step (the b7 of the ii moves down a 1/2 step to become the 3 of the V chord) It's the same deal for the iim7b5-V7b9 change.

This allows major or minor two five changes to be moved around easily, same fingering, same pedal change by only moving the bar where you want to go.

No roots needed.

For example:

am7 - C E G (3 5 7) to D7 - C E F# (7 9 3)

or

am7b5 - C Eb G (3 b5 7) to D7b9 - C Eb F# (7 b9 3)

Now that I've written it out, it doesn't look as hard as I thought but i'll try and report back (in case anybody is interested). It might take putting some different changes on my #4 pedal.

I'd love any advice if anybody can give me.

[Andrew Frost]

In the zero position, you can think of a 2-5 in E maj as being F#m7 to B9.

F#m7 = F#, A, C#, E ( AB down )
B9 = F#, A, C#, D# ( AB w/ Es lowered, no root )

There's your b7 of ii lowering to the maj3 of V.

With the min 2-5-1s, there are some handy tricks too.
For m7b5 ( half dim ) I like to think of "1 fret up from root position, w/ AB and Es lowered". The root is on string 4/8.
So for example, Bm7b5 will be fret 8, w/ AB down and Es lowered. ( notes B D F A ).
From here you can go to the V7 ( E7 ) most anywhere, but I like to think of that V7 chord as either down 3 or up 3 from the half dim voicing I described. Down 3, is a simple E7 at fret 5 w/ Es lowered and B pedal. Up 3 is an altered E7 at fret 11 w/ AB down and Es lowered. ( moving a pure min7b5 voicing up 3 frets will always give you an altered V7 chord - in this case E7b9,#5).
(If you have a Bb vertical lever I suppose you could bump that while staying in 8 pos and split your A note down to G# to achieve the movement you describe. I don't have that change so its not an option.)

[Tom Gorr]

Cool question.

I usually play that stuff on C6 so its a good exercise for me for E9

F is fret. + is raise, - is lower

I6: (F1) grip 10, 8-, 7, 6, 5 = C E G A C

ii7: (F3) grip 10, 9, 7, 6+, 5 = D F A C D

V7: (F3) grip 9, 8, 6, 5, (5++) 4 = F G B D (E) G

On the ii7 release the B pedal for the b7 lower..

On my Uni I had a knee lever raise 6 a full tone to cause the I6 to IM7 and always found this more useful than half step lower on s5. Every day when I play E9 I miss it. Probably will change it.

[Fred Treece]

+1 on Andrew’s response. There are some implications in his post that are worth expanding.

Any rootless 9th chord voicing can also function as a m7b5 or altered dominant (7b9#5) voicing. Take the E9 voicing, G#-B-D-F# (3-5-b7-9)

E9 = G#m7b5 (1-b3-b5-b7)
E9 = Bb7b9#5 (b7-b9-3-#5)

Obviously, any of those chord voicings can be rearranged and reduced to 3 notes in whatever way sounds good to you.

The rootless E9 is also a Bm6. But in jazz, for some reason we like to think in terms of 2-5-1 and not 4-5-1.
This:
G#m7b5 | C#7 | F#m.
Not:
Bm6 | C#7 | F#m
I’m sure there are good reasons for that, but I don’t know what they are. Probably the descending circle of 5ths thing.

What’s cool about E9 copedents is that those 2-5-1’s (major and minor) can be found in very small fret pockets, sometimes even at one fret. And, there is no shortage of 9th chord voicings, which is great for the half-diminished and altered dominant crowd. Plenty of m7/M6 too. I wanted more 4-note M7, so I now play S12. E9 extended, of course...

[J D Sauser]

... moving down THAT note (Eg. pedal 5 on the "2-below position"... yes, leads from a iim to a V on the same fret. It does something even more simple... it converts your iim7th into a iim6th (Django Reinhardt and his disciples used that chord abundantly instead of the m7th).
Bebop educators like Barry Harris, whom we sadly lost by the end of last year at over 90 years, would often urge his students to already think V7th over the iim chord... WHY?
Well, simplification in the heat of the battle and because he thus emphasized explicitly on V7th's and would root them back to their b9th diminished (of which you lower the b9th and get the root to THAT ensuing V7th chord.
So, then it goes to understand that every Diminished chord has the M3rd, 5th and b7th degree FOUR different Dominant chord of which the b9th only needs to be dropped to become the root.


Am I goin to far? Ha!


"b9th Diminished", JD? duh REALLY?

No, not really, but let me clarify:
If you root a Diminished starting on "One"... your next degrees then are:
m3, then b5. 6th, One. It's NOT really useful and it hides the evident.

Now raise it ALL half (like move it ALL up a fret)... but keep the old ONE in mind and number thru from that:
The old first degree becomes b9 (#1), then m3 become M3, b5 becomes V and that 6th becomes b7th.
So, your diminished chord really is a Dom7th with a b9th (#1) in the bass.
Lower the 9th's ONLY and you have a legit regular Dom7th.

On C6th Diminished chords go across the neck every 3 frets over one fret to the next's distance in single notes... so, imagine that centered one fret below or 2 frets above you move in fourth's (which is what music tends to move in mostly). Once you get a good handle on how to modify your Diminisheds, your Fretboard literally EXPLODES.

FOUR Dominants in 4-note Diminished!:
But that back up half and lower the next degree half and THAT becomes the root to a Dom7th a m3rd higher... but that back up, and go on two more times and you had 4 different Dom7th over the same fret center, moving your bar only over a total of 4 frets.

Do that moving your center down UP 2 Frets and you are generating a succession of Dominants a fourth apart ("moving up in Fourths").

Do the same thing but every other root, moving your center DOWN 2 Frets and you also generating a succession of Dominants a fourth apart.

Once you know your degrees of all 4 Diminished inversions, it become "easy" for you to create 4 M7th, M6th, m7ths etc. All still over one fret center (moving no more than over over 2 or 3 frets.

... J-D.

[Fred Treece]

I was hoping somebody would riff on the “dim7 = dom7b9” concept. So there it is, 4 different fret locations in any key for your 7b9 chord, courtesy of the E-raise lever. Thanks, JD.

[Jonathan Neher]

Thanks so much you guys (and Sam Conomo who sent me a PM about this). My steel (E9, usual ABC pedals, 4 knees, one vertical, plus a number 4 pedal) is on the bench and I'm removing the "Franklin" setup from my 4th pedal as there are plenty of lush sounds there already and it bugs me having to F#'s right next to each other.

I was trying envisioning the actual implementations of what I was asking about but you guys just saved me a lot of time searching.

Fred, that's so cool thinking about the m7b5 as a V7 altered dominant. I'm assuming your example grip for the rootless E9 is strings 6 5 2 1 flatting string 2? These examples where chords change function without any movement or change of pitches might give all the fun of "making changes" to the bass player or someone else moving stuff around on their guitar neck or keyboard while you're sitting there sounding the same 4 notes as the changes go by

The only part that is hurting my head but really peaking my interest is that stuff JD is talking about. I'm following the ideas (mostly) but am pretty literal and want to see how they can/might be implemented on my E9 neck (it sounds like implementation-wise you're talking about a C6 neck JD?).

I'm new enough to this kind of playing on the E9 and finding the kinds of pedal and string positions needed to try this stuff out. Any chance of you guys could share some hints about finding E9 pedal positions and grips to get nice movements and voicings for diminished chords which are sounding more and more like they underlay everything that our universe is made of?

The other thing is what changes I might set up on my #4 pedal to be helpful in implementing this stuff we're talking about. Maybe that I6 to IMaj7 change that Tom used to have although I'm confused about how raising the 3rd of the I6 chord a whole step to get a IMaj7? Any other ideas for my pedal 4 would be appreciated as well.

Thanks again for everything. This is all great information.

(not at all bowing out of this thread, just going to sit back and learn as long as it keeps going (:

[J D Sauser]

Thanks so much you guys (and Sam Conomo who sent me a PM about this). My steel (E9, usual ABC pedals, 4 knees, one vertical, plus a number 4 pedal) is on the bench and I'm removing the "Franklin" setup from my 4th pedal as there are plenty of lush sounds there already and it bugs me having to F#'s right next to each other.

I was trying envisioning the actual implementations of what I was asking about but you guys just saved me a lot of time searching.

Fred, that's so cool thinking about the m7b5 as a V7 altered dominant. I'm assuming your example grip for the rootless E9 is strings 6 5 2 1 flatting string 2? These examples where chords change function without any movement or change of pitches might give all the fun of "making changes" to the bass player or someone else moving stuff around on their guitar neck or keyboard while you're sitting there sounding the same 4 notes as the changes go by

The only part that is hurting my head but really peaking my interest is that stuff JD is talking about. I'm following the ideas (mostly) but am pretty literal and want to see how they can/might be implemented on my E9 neck (it sounds like implementation-wise you're talking about a C6 neck JD?).

I'm new enough to this kind of playing on the E9 and finding the kinds of pedal and string positions needed to try this stuff out. Any chance of you guys could share some hints about finding E9 pedal positions and grips to get nice movements and voicings for diminished chords which are sounding more and more like they underlay everything that our universe is made of?

The other thing is what changes I might set up on my #4 pedal to be helpful in implementing this stuff we're talking about. Maybe that I6 to IMaj7 change that Tom used to have although I'm confused about how raising the 3rd of the I6 chord a whole step to get a IMaj7? Any other ideas for my pedal 4 would be appreciated as well.

Thanks again for everything. This is all great information.

(not at all bowing out of this thread, just going to sit back and learn as long as it keeps going (:

I had a feeling I was overshooting, and I am sorry, but I am so immersed in C6th that somethings it doesn't occur to me anymore that somebody would even only remotely refer to E9th

Fred Treece (Thanks for the nice words), has your answer just above yours:

I was hoping somebody would riff on the “dim7 = dom7b9” concept. So there it is, 4 different fret locations in any key for your 7b9 chord, courtesy of the E-raise lever. Thanks, JD.

Yes, the E-to-Eb-lever (B6th) is probably your best entry to 6th, with a close second the A&B down (A6th).

Try to find your string pairs separated by minor 3rd intervals and lin'em up in single notes... you should be able to play b9th and M3rd on one fret and then jump over to the next set of m3rds (one fret below) and again to the next set back to the original fret. THAT is your 6th-tuning "one-fret-move"-diminished center, and it repeats every 3 frets.
From there you experiment.

IF Jazz and Bebop triggers your interest, youtube for "Barry Harris". There are a lot of videos from some of this pupils which explain a little slower what they felt he meant to say.

Thanks!... J-D.

[Tom Gorr]

You may have misunderstood my chord grip charts.
The grip chart tells you what strings to grab and their associated scale tones on the right. Self-select the 3 note voicing that works in your context.

String 5, which is A at fret 1 (g# at fret zero) gets raised a full step to go from I6 to IM7

But to answer your original question the ii7 chord using a grip including raised s5 (B pedal) lowers that tone as you wish by releasing the B pedal for the transition to the V7/9

[Jonathan Neher]

Thanks JD,

I've got it now. I'll have to do a little guitar backing track to see how that method sounds against it.

Yeah, my Bebop chops are on saxophone but they are mostly a bag of tricks/licks and a little blues thrown in. Jerry Gleason (who you might know from this forum) is an incredible Bebop guitar player (as well as a fantastic steel guitarist and bass player) and he can't tell you what he's doing on guitar because he's pretty much learned by ear and so is really creative and has incredible technique. We've been in a few groups together over the years and used to do some cool double pedal-steel stuff and Speedy West/Jimmy Bryant stuff in some of them.

Thanks Tom, I'm reading it correctly now. Yes, it would be nice to have another Maj7 chord grip/voicing. Maybe I'll put that change on my 4th pedal and try it and see what else I can do with it.

Got the steel up and running and messing around with the major and minor ii V's. Maybe I'll try playing that altered dominant scale against the altered dominant V7b9 chord. It's shortcut is the ascending melodic minor starting on the b9.

[Fred Treece]

I'm assuming your example grip for the rootless E9 is strings 6 5 2 1 flatting string 2?

Jonathon, look at your E9 open tuning (low to high).
B-D-E-F#-G#-B-E-G#-D#-F#

All the notes in bold are card carrying members of the rootless E9 family. Now to answer your question directly, yes, by all means lower string 2 a half step, leaving you with only two strings that aren’t part of a rootless E9 chord formula —-the roots!

[John McClung]

following...

[Andrew Frost]

Of note, regarding the dim7 as 7b9 substitution, there's the whole 'half-pedaled' diminished voicing option.
Particularly useful in the min2-5-1 context.

For example, Bm7b5 to Bdim7 can all be done at fret 8.

Bm7b5 ( AB w/ Es lowered )
Bdim7 ( half A w/ B, and Es still lowered )

so you get notes B D F A, going to B D F G#

And of course that voicing of a dim7 can be moved around every 3 frets like the rootless 7b9 that JD and Fred are talking about.

The cool thing is that it runs across several adjacent strings, so with practice you can drop it in as a passing chord, as in the Barry Harris approach between Ma6 and min7 voicings.
The draw back is that the half pedaled dim7 is pretty tricky to just land on if you don't already have AB down...I by no means have worked this in to my practical playing vocabulary. So this falls into the 'for what its worth' suggestion department

dim 7 w/ Es lowered, B and half A )

String 1-8
1 F#
2 D#
3 A
4 D#
5 C
6 A
7 F#
8 D#

I suppose its things like this that really illuminate the different ways that E9 'moves' compared to C6th, or any 6th tuning with diminished pedals.

[Steve Mueller]

Andrew,
That's a great voicing which I have been fond of but stacking those minor thirds right next to each other can be problematic unless you tune close to ET.

[Andrew Frost]

Yes indeed Steve, absolutely. The stacked minor 3rds really work best in an equal tempered context. The 'pure' beatless 6:5 min3rd is way too wide to make even 3 string diminished voicings sound in tune. Personally, I tune a little closer to straight up, so that sort of thing is slightly more manageable.

[John Sluszny]

JD, thanks for the Barry Harris suggestion. The block chords videos are amazing !

[Glenn Taylor]

or, here are some diagrams. Of course there are more inversions besides these. Obviously these are not going to work with every copedant.