In this Tuesday livestream we focus on comping — building shell voicings and using voice leading to move smoothly through a tune built almost entirely on dominant seventh chords. You’ll learn how a handful of essential chord tones can guide your ear through the changes and free up your comping and single-line playing alike.
About This Livestream
We start with shell voicings — just the root, third, and seventh of each chord — and look at how voice leading lets those essential tones move by the smallest possible distance from chord to chord. From there we cover practical comping technique, including muting the bass line and a hybrid/thumb approach in the style of Joe Pass, then walk the dominant chords of the tune and explore a higher set of voicings. We dig into the second half of the form with its diminished and tritone-substitution sounds, summarize the tritone-sub concept, and pull up a circle-of-fifths visualizer to map each chord against its parent key. The session closes by extending the shell voicings with color tones like the sharp nine and sharp five to start building a more expressive, bluesy vocabulary.
How to Get the Most Out of This Session
Use the chapter markers in the video player to jump to the topics most relevant to your practice. Keep your instrument nearby and pause often to try the ideas in context — start with the bare root–third–seventh shells and add color tones only once they feel solid, watch how the third and seventh move between chords, and practice the comping technique slowly so the voice leading stays smooth.
Chapters
- 00:00 Welcome & Today’s Topic: Comping
- 02:33 Shell Voicings Explained (Root, 3rd, 7th)
- 04:42 Voice Leading Through the Changes
- 07:12 Muting, Hybrid Picking & Joe Pass Comping
- 08:07 Walking the Dominant Chords
- 10:51 A Different Voicing Approach (Higher Inversions)
- 13:57 The Second Half & Diminished Chords
- 18:03 Summary: Tritone Substitution
- 21:25 The Circle of Fifths Visualizer
- 24:11 Mapping the Changes on the Circle
- 26:52 Extending Shell Voicings (Sharp 9, Sharp 5)
- 30:14 Wrap-Up & Sign-Off
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