The Ultimate Guide to Block Chords
WHAT’S THAT SOUND!?
I have been fascinated for years with this sort of old-school “classic Hollywood” style of voicing and playing. You know that sound that you hear in the old movies, old arrangements… the classics. From the first moment I first heard them in a movie, my chest fluttered, my ears perked up and I immediately snapped “that’s the sound!”. Fast forward several years, I’m hearing George Shearing on the radio driving around Houston, TX and it hit me like a bolt of lighting… “that’s the sound!”. It was an epiphany that sent a shockwave down my spine; something I had been desperately searching for. The same thing, only this time played only on piano without the lush orchestration. In that moment right then and there, I knew if I could figure out what it was, it would become a part of my musical personality, my vocabulary, and part of my artistic voice. I desperately wanted to learn what “that sound” was and how to do it!
Fast forward several years…I’ll explain it here. In the simplest of terms so you can use it in your writing or playing.
Disclaimer: We live in the 21st century and this is a style a lot of people don’t really play or write with too much any more IMHO. Most modern movie scores and arrangements have become what seems to be an endless tidal wave of ostinatos, indie rock stuff, and/or glorified sound design. If this statement puts you off, you might want to skip this one. As I see it there is less and less of the “gorgeous stuff” out there, so my intent for this post is I wanna make it easy for anyone coming to it. Don'e right, this style melts my heart and I wanna hear more of it in the so if you’re into that read on!
Now, you’ll often hear people refer to block playing as “doubled lead” voicing in arranging, but in general I like to call this block chords. So I’m only gonna refer to it only as that from here on out.
Of course, there’s a lot of different sides and theories to this style, but I’m gonna talk about my version or what I like to call “strict” version of block-chord playing. There’s a lot of faux block playing out there where many piano players are just arpeggiating chords, but when I think of real block playing I tend to gravitate the greats like George Shearing, arrangements like Moonlight Serenade or even the impressionists like Maurice Ravel. And absolutely no doubt in my mind that you will get something out of learning the basics of block chords. This little post I hope can explain some of the missing pieces I have found to playing in a block chord style and how they can be applied to
“Play Some Block Chords Red...”
