Gilberto Gil has an amazing resume. In addition to his career as a musician, he also served as Minister of Culture in his home country of Brazil in the early 2000s. One of his most famous songs is “A Paz”, here it is in an intimate “Home-Video” setting:
Gilberto Gil mainly uses so-called “shell voicings” in his guitar accompaniment . These shortened seventh chords (the fifth is missing) are very useful and easily expandable chord fingerings. They are also often used to accompany jazz standards.
In his song “A Paz” Gil extends these vocings to include the high open strings. Combining fretted chords in the higher register with open strings is a simple “trick” to produce unusual sounds:
In the following sequence, the plucking pattern is continued. The modulation to C major towards the end of the first part is interesting . Here Gilberto Gil uses the common tones B and E to the original key A major in order to carry out the key change organically.
In the shop you will find the jazz harmony document, an overview of the most important jazz chords in a PDF (5 pages). In addition to a detailed page with exercises on the shell vocings, the following content is discussed:
Basic voicings in the II-VI cadence
The II-VI cadence is the most important chord progression in jazz and the Drop2 voicings shown in the document are an important foundation.
Investments
Learn to play the Drop2 Inversions in several positions and expand your chord repertoire!
Extensions
With these simple rules, you can add option tones 9, 11 & 13 to basic four-note chords!
On Soundslice you can practice “A Paz” with the interactive sheet music: