Open Voicings

A triad in close position has its three notes as close together as they can be — inside one octave, thirds stacked. Move the middle note up an octave and the same chord spans a tenth: an open voicing, or a spread triad. Same three notes, same chord, but the sound is wider, the voices are separable, and it rings where a close triad sounds crowded. Above is C major open on the guitar; the capsule switches to minor, the root chip changes the key, the picker the instrument, ‹ › walks the voicings. The figure follows the text from here.

One voice moved an octave

C E G, however far apart

Close position C major is C E G within an octave. Take the E and put it an octave higher and the chord reads C G E, bottom to top — the same wedges on the wheel, because a chord is a set of pitch classes and the wheel doesn't know about octaves. The instrument does: the open voicing is a different shape entirely, wider, with a gap in the middle where the moved note used to be. Every close triad has three open voicings, one for each note you could move.

Why spread

Three notes a third apart in the low register sound muddy; spread them and each voice is heard on its own. An open voicing also gives a chord a top note you can choose — the melody note — and a bass note far enough from it that the two read as two parts. On a guitar the open triads on non-adjacent strings are how a triad rings like a chord and not a cluster; on a piano the same chord is split between the hands.

Close and open, side by side

C major close and C major open: the same three degrees, 1 3 5 in the same colors, in two shapes. Change the root and both slide; change to minor and the third drops a semitone in both. The inversions are the close voicings in their three orders; this page is the wide ones.

In a progression

Open voicings are the arranger's triads. A I–vi–IV–V with the top voice held or moving by step is the sound of most ballads' pianos and most rhythm guitarists' upper-register parts, and the explorer's nearest-shape rule finds the next chord's open voicing closest to the last. Chords in a key with the useful family on draws the row.

On the guitar

C major open on the guitar: the triads on strings 1, 3 and 4, or 2, 4 and 5 — a string skipped in the middle — with the middle voice up an octave. These are the shapes behind the "spread triads" every jazz and country player learns after the close ones.

On the piano

C major open on the piano: root in the left hand, the fifth and third above it in the right, a tenth wide — or root and fifth in the left, the third alone on top. The open triad on the piano is the most basic accompaniment there is.

On the ukulele

C major open on the ukulele: with four strings inside an octave and a half, an open voicing is what the high G string gives you for free — the reentrant tuning puts one voice above where a guitar would have it.

On the bass

C major open on the bass: a triad on a bass is nearly always open — root, fifth, then the third an octave and a bit up — because close triads in that register turn to mud. So much so that the bass has no separate open voicings: ask the generator for its spread triads on four strings and it hands back the same shapes as the plain ones, every root, major and minor. The page's other instruments keep the two apart; the bass draws one list, and this is it.

On the mandolin

C major open on the mandolin: the fifths tuning makes an open voicing the natural one — root and fifth on adjacent courses, the third across a gap.

Hearing them

An open voicing is its chord with air in it. The app's Build Shapes game with the useful family on deals a triad and asks for the spread shape; the browser version here does the same without a microphone.