Quartal Voicings Explained

Most chords you've learned are built by stacking 3rds — a major 3rd here, a minor 3rd there. Quartal voicings throw that out and stack perfect 4ths instead. The result is a sound that's open, ambiguous, and unmistakably modern.

Building a Quartal Voicing

Start on D and stack three perfect 4ths (5 semitones each): D, G, C, F. Play it:

What chord is this? That's the interesting part — it depends on context. If the bass plays D, it sounds like Dm11 (or Dm7sus). If the bass plays G, it sounds like G7sus4. If the bass plays C, it could function as Cmaj9 with no 3rd. This harmonic ambiguity is exactly what makes quartal voicings so useful in modal jazz.

The McCoy Tyner Sound

Quartal voicings became iconic through McCoy Tyner, the pianist in John Coltrane's classic quartet. Tyner would stack 4ths in his left hand and play powerful pentatonic lines in his right, creating a massive, open sound. Herbie Hancock also used quartal voicings extensively, particularly on the album Maiden Voyage.

The reason quartal voicings work so well in modal jazz is that modal tunes often sit on one chord for many bars. Traditional tertian (3rd-based) voicings clearly spell out a chord quality — major, minor, dominant. Quartal voicings are more ambiguous, which gives the soloist more freedom to imply different harmonies.

How to Practise Quartal Voicings

Start with the D quartal voicing above, then move it diatonically through the C major scale: E-A-D-G, then F-B-E-A (this one has a tritone instead of a perfect 4th — that's normal and expected), and so on. You'll hear how the sound shifts subtly as different intervals appear in the stack.

Once you're comfortable building quartal voicings from any starting note, try comping through a modal tune like "So What" or "Impressions" — both sit on Dm7 for 8 bars, which is perfect for quartal experimentation. The goal is to hear these voicings as colours rather than as specific chord symbols.

Quartal voicings are an intermediate-to-advanced concept. If you're still working on shells and rootless voicings, get those solid first — quartal harmony makes more sense once you understand traditional voicings well enough to know what you're departing from.