How to Incorporate “Shell Voicings” into Your Groovy Blues Guitar
You may be thinking, “Shell voicings?! What jazzy nonsense are you trying to sneak in, here? Ahm a BLUES player!”
Don’t blow a string, there, my bluesy-buddy, good ‘ol pentatonic-pal, my arpeggiating-amigo — you’re gonna love this.
Yes, “shell voicings” is a concept that’s very popular with … 🤢…jazz musicians. But we’re rock stars. And what do rock stars do best?
Party? Puke? Primp?
Rock stars steal!
That’s right. When we’re not out there blowing minds, melting faces and shredding axes, we like to amuse ourselves with nefarious acts of petty pilfering. Mostly from other rock stars…but maybe I’ve said too much.
So while the jazz crowd was off adjusting their berets or snapping their fingers to slam poets or playing every. single. note. at the same time, I’ve been quietly plundering their technical toolbox.
I was in a music group the other day, and good ‘ol David (y’all know David, right?), well David said the simplest thing ever:
“A shell voicing is just a regular chord with no 5th.”
Let’s see what the scientists have to say about it:
A “shell voicing” is a voicing of a chord which leaves out one or more notes, usually the fifth and/or the root. This is useful information for guitarists, as we’re often called upon to play chords which, in their full voicings, would have more tones than we have strings or left-hand fingers — or which would be difficult or impossible to reach. Leaving out the less “colorful” chord tones like the fifth and root frees up fingers for more interesting choices like extensions (9th, 11th, 13th) or alterations (b5, #5, b9, #9).
The same thing, only a bit more pretentious.
You’ll be happy to know, that when played in a blues context, shell voicings can provide a gritty rock sound, almost like the famous “double-stop,” but with the addition of the heavy blues quality of that flat-7th. Not to mention the devilishly creepy “tritone” that’s formed from the 3rd and flat 7th.
So I made you these little roadmaps to elaborate on the technique, and to maybe help open up more of the fretboard for you.
We’ll start with the most important map for our purposes, since we play A-major Blues very often:
For this next one, the D7 and E7 shell voicings have the exact same configurations and patterns — just move D7 down 2 frets and you’re playing in E7. So I’m only providing D7.
You may recognize that the chord shape with the root on the 5th string at the 5th fret is the same chord we use all the time already — along with its neighbor, the E7 shell voicing, made by sliding that shape a mere two frets to the right.
Which, those are great for rhythm guitar, but what if you want to play lead guitar?!
In that case, you would just arpeggiate those same chords, so you can shred up and down the fretboard like the big ‘ol rock star you know you can be!
Here’s the A7 roadmap for you:
And since you probably don’t want to play A7 shreds over the D7 and E7 chords, here is a pattern for D7. Which, again, can be moved to the right two frets to play over E7 chords:
And I don’t want to forget the best one!
This here is a superimposed diagram showing the proximity of each of the different chord shapes in our chord progression to one another:
Playing them in this configuration, in this position is not only very satisfying, it’s also very easy. There’s a similar situation just past the 12th fret, but this here is plenty to jam out to some good ‘ol Blues.
Pro-Tip: You can play any of these patterns and shapes, and then segue smoothly into the A-minor pentatonic scale that corresponds to that location for extra flavor.
MMM-mmm good!
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As you can see, I’m quite captivated with the concept, both for its utility and the delectable sound it produces. I remember covering it briefly years ago in relation to the piano, but thought it was stupid and boring at the time. But for the guitar it’s terrific and useful!
So I hope these materials are able to help you as much as making them helped me!
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As always, the tool used for creating these diagrams can be found at guitarscientist.com
And if you like this nifty tutorial…
