14 | Open Voicings

We’ve been pretty formulaic so far. Our harmonisation has started from the melody and we’ve added voices underneath to support it. The sound of a soli with all the voices moving together (homophony) is a big part of big band writing. But melody with accompaniment (heterophony) is also a widely used texture. We’ve looked at how to score the melody - in unison or octaves or possibly two parts like 3rds or 6ths. But how do we score thick, lush background chords and textures for big band? We use spread, or open voicings.

BACKGROUND PADS

Under a melody, we might have a sustained pad or ‘bed’. It doesn’t have much rhythm but fills out the harmony and blends into the background. Unlike a soli, where we start with the melody, we build pads from the bottom note up. If you haven’t checked out my article on open voicings, you should probably do that now before continuing.

Let’s take this 12-bar ballad melody for solo flugelhorn:

We can add supporting background harmonies using the trombone. That gives us four parts to work with. We could use saxes to differentiate the timbre more, but we’ll stick with this smooth homogenous brass sound for now.

The lowest note, played by the bass trombone, will be the root note most of the time (although it doesn’t have to be). I could use the bari sax for five voices if necessary. Because I’m only using four voices, decisions will have to be made about which notes are omitted. We should keep the following in mind:

Make sure the voice leading is very smooth. It’s supposed to be a background texture and any crazy leaps will make the line stand out.
Make sure to fill in the guide tones (3rds and 7ths) as much as possible and ensure good voice leading between them. Other available tensions like 9ths, 11ths and 13ths can be added depending on the chord quality, but the basic structure of the chord should be in place first. Remember to check the list of available tensions for each chord type.
Avoid ambiguous voicings in pads. If I miss out an important 3rd or 7th, we could accidentally create an entirely different chord. The pads should support the harmony - not contradict it.
Don’t let the pad cover the melody. In this example, the saxes drop quite low so if the trombones go above them, they should still be in a register that they can control so they can play quieter than the saxes.

Here’s the melody harmonised with soft pads. Most are open spread voicings until the end where the melody is low and the bass trombone is high. I was just focused on making sure the harmony is supported while maintaining good voice leading:

Notice how the trombone writing supports the harmony and transitions smoothly from one chord to the next, sometimes at expense of guide tones - good voice leading rules all here.

However, it’s not very interesting for the players, or to listen to. It’s also deceptively hard to maintain that level of control and breath support at slow tempos.

It might be just what’s needed in a ballad, but usually we’ll want to add some rhythmic and or/melodic interest. This also allows the horn players to breathe and creates phrasing within the background too. Check out this revised version:

They have a melody of their own now that works with the simple sax line. Notice how these spread voicings support the melody both harmonically and rhythmically now. It’s a good idea to use spreads to support important melody notes and can even be used during a soli in place of close position voicings when there’s an important melody note.

Notice that the cups really get in the way of the flugel melody? When an instrument is featured it’s usually best to leave the rest of the section out, so this flugel solo is having to fight the rest of trumpet section. The sax and trombone options are better balanced.

ORCHESTRATING A SPREAD

Open voicings work great most of the time and they’re really easy to write. The trick is making sure there aren’t too many low intervals other than octaves and 5ths. I try to keep the trombones as high as possible without making their sound uncontrollable - close voicings on the stave will always thicken the sound,

Voicings aside, some instruments blend better than others in various parts of their ranges and thought should be given when orchestrating a spread. What instruments can we use to create a blended sound?

Trombones

All trombones are very blended up to about G above the stave. It should also be noted that Ab above the stave is a bit of a weaker note (and quite flat if played in 1st position) but shouldn’t be a problem for a pro. Also make sure the bass trombone isn’t playing below the stave in soft pads so each instrument has complete control over the entire dynamic range. Players should also be given enough time to breathe - they’ll snatch breaths otherwise but giving designated space will give them full control over their lines.

Saxes

All saxes are a very blended sound that are less ‘thick’ than trombones. In written pitch, avoid the low Bb-C# on all the saxes (and the low A for bari), and the C# in the middle of the stave (a difficult note to control because of the thinner colour and intonation). Staying within the stave is also a good call for intonation and blend when the saxes are playing background pads.

Sax & Trombone Blend

A blend of saxes and trombones works well when saxes are kept in warmer parts of their register. The first octave of each sax (avoiding the notes mentioned above) is a great range for blending with trombones. Here I’ve used the saxes and trombone audio from above playing together.

Sax, Trumpet & Trombone

This is a blended pad of muted trumpet, saxes and trombones. Open trumpets can work well too but muted trumpets, especially cup mutes, drastically reduce the volume and tuck the sound somewhere between the reeds and trombones. Having the full sections play here would be way too thick. For the example below, I use 2 tenors, 2 trumpets (cup muted) and 2 trombones.

THE DISSONANCE FACTOR

I’ve gone on and on about voice leading to create smooth, effective background spreads. One area that is often neglected is how dissonant a chord is - or rather how much tension a chord holds - and how that moves from one chord to another. You’ll notice in the trombone pad with the flugel solo above the last A7 and D7 chords are really darkly voiced so the sound opens up effectively at the final Ebmajor7 chord. In contrast, the Dbmaj7 and Gbmaj7 chords are very ‘open’ sounding to provide breadth and depth to the sudden change of harmony.

Regardless of the harmony, we can create dark or open voicings using the intervals within each chord. Usually we’ll want to support the harmony. For example, we want to build tension in our voicings with a lot of close intervals at climactic chords, and use more open intervals on resting or ‘home’ chords.

Let’s look at manipulating these voicings more. Take the following three chords as an example:

The first chord is a very open sounding quartal chord. There are widely-spaced intervals and very few dissonant intervals within the voicing itself:

The second chord is very dark. It isn’t a particularly dissonant chord - it’s a G13 - but the voicing has closely-spaced parts and the resultant inner intervals are very dissonant. Note the minor 2nd between the 13th and the 7th:

The final chord isn’t that dissonant, but it’s definitely tense. The #11 isn’t really supported with a consonant intveral underneath so could be made more stable:

Because of this fluctuating tension and random use of open and dark voicing, the progression doesn’t really work.. The harmony is fine - it’s a IV-V-I in C major so it has a strong forward momentum. In these voicings, there’s no melody in the top voice or in any of the inner parts.

Because of these poor voicing decisions, the tension of the progression looks something like this (darker indicating more tension):

This is pretty erratic for something trying to be a smooth pad and it’s also fighting against the harmony. The most tension is when the progression should be resolved! The harmony gets gradually more dissonant into the second chord, and then resolves at the end, but the spread voicings here don’t support this. True, a Cmaj7#11 isn’t a particularly consonant chord, but this is largely the fault of the voicings.

Voicing chords this badly looks extreme, but it happens. Especially when dealing with the full score rather than a reduction first and voices start crossing between sections. It also comes as a result of careless copy and pasting. I’d always recommend planning voicings in short-score format first so this kind of thing is avoided.

If we correct the voicings so the second chord is the most tense, the tension peaks in the middle of the progression and supports the harmony. To do this we need to voice-lead smoothly and remove as much tension as possible from the final chord.

By keeping the top 3 notes of the G13 chord a consonant triad it strengthens the middle chord. The Cmaj7#11 now has no G - this means there can’t be any minor 2nd or minor 9th intervals in the chord, making it more stable. Notice how the tension of the voicings now match the most tense point of the harmony too:

Managing this flow of tension is vital to background spreads. Too much tension in the wrong place will make the progression sound lop-sided; too little tension will give the harmony no drive. It’s a tough balance to strike with only four or five voices. When you throw voice-leading into the mix it’s even harder, but a progression that has a satisfying ‘tension-arc’ is the difference between amateur and pro sounding backings.

IMPACT SPREADS

Okay, I totally made that term up but only because it sounds really cool. More conventionally they’re called ‘upper extension voicings’, ‘upper structure triads’, or ‘polychord voicings’. They involve voicing chords like this:

These impact chords will usually be at the end of a phrase or soli, or to introduce new sections. They also work great to end charts on big, climatic endings.

To harmonise these, you can use spreads and/or treat it as you would any other orchestral voicing. You can use a combination of traditional superimposed, juxtaposed, interlocking or enclosed voicings:

It usually works best to keep the two chords in separate families, i.e the trumpets might take the top triad, and the saxes the lower.

Here are a couple of approaches to voicing a Bb/C7 polychord - the principal remains for any upper structure. Notice the subtle differences in darkness, brightness, thickness and thinness and the use of different types of voicing techniques (superimposed, enclosed etc.) like the ones shown above:

MIXING CLOSE AND SPREAD VOICINGS

Finally, the one last use for spreads comes when linking them to other voicings. Let’s take a melody that’s been harmonised using close and drop-2 voicings:

We can add the trombones to this using spreads, rather than linking them with close voicings. This is a very liberating way of writing as it gets you out of the formulaic approach when writing close voicings. It can have a clean, open sound that’s great for modern styles, or a dense, more traditional sound.

This method creates a lot of contrapuntal interest, especially in the bass voice. It’s almost like you’re writing two separate solis at the same time, one with close voicings and one however you like with spread voicings based on the melody and chords. The sections should work completely independently if they were played on their own and support each other too.

Note that this would have also worked either way around - with trombones in close voicings and saxes playing spreads instead.

The cool thing about harmonising this way is that you get the saxes sounding great on their own with close voicings (if the saxes work on their own - the brass will usually be fine whatever the voicing, as long as it’s not too high or too low) and you get to create interesting basslines with the Bass Trombone to support the harmony - I try and get as much contrary motion in as possible.

In the next article I’ll be looking at shout choruses: the full tutti of the big band and how to pull it off convincingly.