Jazz Piano Chords: The Voicing Exercise That Teaches Every 7th Chord and Its Tritone Sub

Shell voicings are the two notes that actually describe a chord — the 3rd and the 7th — and in this jazz piano tutorial we run them through one long 2-5-1 chord progression until every 7th chord type and its tritone substitute is under your hands. The right hand plays two notes and nothing else. The left hand takes the root and the fifth. That split is how most working pianists actually voice a 7th chord, and it leaves your right hand free to improvise. The progression is deliberately long: Am7, D7, Gmaj7, Cmaj7, F#m7b5, B7, Em7, E7 — a major 2-5-1 running straight into the relative minor's 2-5-1, then a secondary dominant to send you round again. Every chord falls a fifth, so one finger stays put and the other steps down a semitone or a tone. Play it twice and you will have played both arrangements of all eight chords — the complete shell vocabulary of the key — because the hand keeps descending into the other shape by itself. Then we add the things that make it music: singing the roots, the chord names and the shells; five rhythms including the Charleston and its displaced cousin; and tritone substitution, where the same right-hand shape serves two different dominants because the 7th of one is the 3rd of the other. 📘 STUDY GUIDE + PRACTICE APP The Companion has the whole exercise notated, the crown-note table, the five rhythm grids and a practice log for all twelve keys. The practice app plays it back at any tempo with a metronome, in every key, with the regular dominants or the tritone substitutions. 🎹 LEARN WITH US Live online lessons, Bangalore centres and the Everything For Life bundle: https://nathanielschool.com Piano, guitar or vocals, any level — message us on WhatsApp and our course advisor will get back to you: https://wa.me/917760456847 🛠 FREE PRACTICE TOOLS The Jazz Harmony Lab — major and minor ii–V–I, dominant cycles and altered voicings, free in the browser: https://jazz.nathanielschool.com Master Key — the diminished seventh laboratory, for dominant 7ths and tritone substitution: https://masterkey.nathanielschool.com Groove Metronome — for the Charleston and the five rhythms in this lesson: https://metronome.nathanielschool.com 25+ free browser tools for rhythm, chords, inversions, notation and ear training: https://apps.nathanielschool.com ⏱ CHAPTERS 00:00 Performance 00:10 The Eight-Chord Practice Progression 00:56 G Major and E Minor Key Signature 02:44 Right-Hand Shells and Left-Hand Support 04:17 Building an Am7 Open Voicing 04:38 Building a D7 Open Voicing 05:58 Connecting Am7 to D7 06:20 Circle-of-Fifths Voice Leading 06:50 Major ii–V–I: Am7–D7–Gmaj7 09:08 Minor ii–V–i in E Minor 09:34 Lap 2: Switching to 7–3 Shapes 10:10 E7 as a Secondary Dominant 11:02 Lap 1: Descending 3–7 Shapes 11:39 Singing Chord Names and Chord Tones 12:39 Singing the Right-Hand Shells 13:03 Singing the Chord Roots 🎧 13:42 Writing and Visualising Inversions 14:09 One-Finger Common-Tone Exercise 15:49 Rhythm 1: Blocks and Alternating Fifths 16:07 Rhythm 2: Cascading the Chord Tones 17:06 Rhythm 3: Salsa-Like Syncopation 18:46 Charleston Rhythm Pattern 19:03 Swinging the Shell Voicings 20:17 Broken-Chord Ensemble Rhythm 21:56 Tritone Substitution Explained 24:50 Final Practice Plan 💛 SUPPORT THESE FREE LESSONS PayPal: https://paypal.me/jasonzac?locale.x=en_GB&country.x=IN UPI: jasonzac-1@okhdfcbank (Jason Zac) 📩 TALK TO US WhatsApp: https://wa.me/917760456847 Instagram: https://instagram.com/jasonzac · https://instagram.com/nathanielschool #ShellVoicings #TritoneSubstitution #JazzPiano