Kite's thoughts on hi-lo notation: Difference between revisions

For a triad in 3 voices, the basic, hiR and lo5 voicings (e.g. CEG, EGC and GCE) are all close voicings. The hi3, lo3 and hiRlo5 voicings (e.g. CGE, ECG and GEC) are all open voicings. These two categories of voicings, open and closed, are called '''generalized voicings'''. Thinking of the chord as notes in a tritonic (as opposed to pentatonic, heptatonic, etc.) scale, all the notes in the close voicings are 1 scale step above the note below it. And in the open voicing, all notes are 2 scale steps above. Thus the two generalized voicings can be named 1-1 and 2-2, pronounced ''one-one'' and ''two-two''. (Open and close are certainly preferable names, but this '''stepwise''' terminology is introduced here to pave the way for naming voicings of tetrads and pentads.)

The following table assumes that the interval between any pair of adjacent notes is less than an octave, a very reasonable assumption. Thus there are only 6 possible voicings of a triad, grouped into 2 generalized voicings (assuming only 3 voices). In any 1-1 voicing, the chord spans 2 steps of the tritonic scale. Likewise any 2-2 voicing spans 4 steps. Thus the '''stepspan''' of the voicing is simply the sum of the 2 numbers.

For a tetrad in 4 voices, there are 24 possible voicings grouped into 6 generalized voicings. The 2-1-2 voicings are known to guitarists as [[wikipedia:Voicing_(music)#Drop_voicings|drop-2 voicings]]. This drop-N terminology can be extended via "lift" to cover the other generalized voicings, but only if there are no octave doublings.