Modern Harmony & Harmonic Concepts - Part II

Jay Umble continues his exploration of quartal harmony and modern chord voicings, expanding on the C Dorian harmonized scale introduced in Part I of this series. The focus is on breaking those fourth-stack voicings into practical, playable fragments and putting them to work on real tunes.

What's covered

• Reviewing the C Dorian harmonized scale in quartal ("chordal") harmony and how the stacks relate to familiar shapes like Cm7, Ebmaj7, Eb6/9, and F13
• Breaking the voicings into three-string groupings — top group (strings 4-3-2) and bottom group — and treating each as an independent vocabulary
• Staggering the groupings for new textures
• Adding chromatic passing harmony between on-target scale points, just as you would with single lines
• Transferring the form to the top four strings so you can splice the harmony together anywhere on the neck
• Applying the scale to C minor modal tunes such as Equinox, Softly As In A Morning Sunrise, and Stolen Moments, replacing plain seventh chords with quartal stacks

Jay works through accompanying PDF pages and encourages practicing every idea ascending and descending across the whole neck. A good fit for players who have the basics of quartal harmony under their fingers and want spacious, modern voicings they can use when comping on modal tunes.