Voicings II Jazz Chords and Slash Chords
Jazz Chords
When a bass player covers the bass notes, the following voicings are well-suited for rhythmic accents or chord‑melody playing, and to create smooth voice‑leading between chords.
Voicing 5 1 3 7
Voicing 3 7 1 5
Voicing 7 3 5 1
Slash Chords ???
These voicings force you to skip (mute) one string above the lowest note of the chord shape. That makes the lowest tone stand out a bit more than in other voicings.
If there's no bass player or you want the bass player to play/emphasize the lowest note of the voicing instead of the root, you should use slash chord notation for the following chords* by adding a slash and the bass note to the chord symbol, e.g., Cmaj7/E, C7/E, Cmaj7/G, etc.
If you want a bass player to play/emphasize the root instead of the voicing’s lowest note, use these voicings with caution; depending on the interval between that lowest note and the root, clashes can occur (e.g., a maj7 in lower positions).
*) except dim7 chords. Since they are completely symmetrical (built from stacks of minor thirds), you can always consider the lowest note as root: e.g. Cdim7/Eb = Ebdim7, Cdim7/Gb = Gbdim7, Cdim7/Bbb = Cdim7/A = Adim7.