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Guitar Tutorial

Shell Voicings

Instructor: Tom Quayle
Topic: Chords
Styles: Any Style, Blues, Jazz
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    1
    Shell Voicings - Introduction Tom Quayle
    1:55
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    Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Beginner Topic: Chords Style: Blues

    Excerpt: Hi there everyone and welcome to this tutorial on Shell Voicings. Shell voicings are chords which contain the minimum number of voices or notes required to outline a particular harmonic sound. In other words, if I wanted to play a Cmaj7 chord for example, a shell voicing would contain the minimum number of notes required to get the sound of a Cmaj7. Today ...

    Media Length: 1:55

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    2
    Shell Voicings - Roots on the 6th String Tom Quayle
    4:30
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    Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Beginner Topic: Chords Style: Blues

    Excerpt: So let's map out these shell voicings on the guitar. The nice thing about these chords is that they only contain 3 notes so they are pretty easy to play. If you're a beginner trying to figure out blues and jazz chord progressions on the guitar then these are the voicings to start out with. They're easy to remember, and easy to play. Bear in mind though tha...

    Media Length: 4:30

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    3
    Shell Voicings - Roots on the 5th String Tom Quayle
    3:56
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    Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Beginner Topic: Chords Style: Blues

    Excerpt: Now let's do the same thing but for shell voicings rooted on the 5th string - A. Again, we'll do all these voicings from the note G which is located up at the 10th fret of the A string. Learn each voicing as listed below and in the video and then experiment with them up and down the fretboard. Note that the m7b5 shape is the same as the m7 shape since we a...

    Media Length: 3:56

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    4
    Shell Voicings - Applied to the Blues Tom Quayle
    2:42
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    Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Beginner Topic: Chords Style: Blues

    Excerpt: Now let's apply these shell voicings we've just learned to a chord progression and specifically a blues pattern. The blues is a great place to start for this as it usually only contains three chords and they're all dominant 7ths. For our example here we'll be in the key of G so our blues contains these chords: G7 (chord I) C7 (chord IV) D7 (chord V) No...

    Media Length: 2:42

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    5
    Shell Voicings - Enhancing our Blues Tom Quayle
    1:22
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    Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Intermediate Topic: Chords Style: Blues

    Excerpt: Our second chord progression is again based in the blues genre but now sounds a lot more like a jazz progression. As you can see from the TAB below we've added another chord type into the progression in the form of some minor 7th chords and added some new dominant 7th chords into the mix to add a 'jazzier' flavor. This is the kind of blues that players such...

    Media Length: 1:22

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    6
    Shell Voicings - Using all the Shapes Tom Quayle
    1:57
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    Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Intermediate Topic: Chords Style: Jazz

    Excerpt: Our last chord progression is going to live firmly in the jazz camp. It's still a blues, but it's mainly called a 'Parker Blues'. Named after the famous sax player Charlie Parker, it differs considerably from our standard blues in a few aspects. First of all we'll be using all of our shell voicings including the major 7th chord - an unusual addition to a bl...

    Media Length: 1:57

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    7
    Shell Voicings - Build Your Chord Vocabulary Tom Quayle
    5:20
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    Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Intermediate Topic: Chords Style: Any Style

    Excerpt: Now, here is the aspect of shell voicings that I think you'll find the most useful. They make a fantastic starting point for building our chord vocabulary. Due to the fact that they are constructed from the minimum number of notes needed to produce the basic sound of a chord, there's a lot of room to expand them by adding other voices into the basic shell. ...

    Media Length: 5:20