The Most Amazing Bill Evans Chords 

Bill Evans came to my college, North Texas, shortly before he died. He played and talked to us. We asked questions. It was a real treat. One of my all time favorite piano players.

Bill evens is possibly the most sensitive musician I have ever listened to. There is so much beauty in his playing and its all seriously understated.

These chords were all taken from my transcription of “How Deep Is The Ocean.” It was recorded live on May 26, 1967. You find it on disc 4 of "Bill Evans: the Secret Sessions, recorded at the Village Vanguard 1966-1975". This compilation was released in 1996.

It's people like you that inspire others. Your passion and talent is flat out astonishing, not to mention your ability to teach. You are persistent with putting out quality videos ALL THE TIME. Your personality also seems very bright and full of positivity. It takes a certain person with incredible patience and drive to play jazz and understand it well, and that is no doubt what you are!

My favourite Bill Evans chords are all of his chords

This is one of the most interesting music lessons I´ve watched.

This was absolutely frikking delightful. I Love how you took the genius of Bill Evans and presented it in such an accessible way to learn, listen to and explore the beauty of those chords. Inspiring!!!

I'm a self-taught guitarist (retired from another profession) interested in the world of beautiful voicings. Boggled by Ted Greene's "Chord Chemistry", his playing, the playing of Ed Bickert. So much to learn. Thanks for walking me/us through these glorious Bill Evans chords. The more you look, the more there is. All the best, and thanks

Amazing video. Bill Evans was such an artistic genius. Very few jazz pianists have as much personality as him, with as much as listening to one of Bill Evans' chords you can already easily tell who's playing them, which says a lot about him as an artist. The way you analyze these chords is so clear and on point, for which I thank you. I'm definetly going to follow your channel from now on.

I'm a guitarist and had been meaning to study Bill Evans' chord voicings in detail for a while now. Thanks for the brilliant video!

IMHO the key to understanding Bill Evans' chords is looking at them HORIZONTALLY and not vertically. Then you'll quickly realize that his harmonic technique wasn't so much sophisticated block chords as much as it was sophisticated 4/5-part counterpoint that would create interesting chords by the action of tension-resolve.

The comments from subscribers below are absolutely terrific. They are an education in themselves and brilliantly complement your tutorials.

This was like a short master class on the great Bill: Glad I found you, Aimee

Thanks for this video! Love it! Almost 40 years have past and we are all still learning from Bill...... remarkable.....

Lotta comments! Harmony/ blues/ gospel R&B; more my thing than bebop; Bill certainly a master & joy to hear..kudos to you and anyone who studies him and captures some of th lightening.for us

Where were you 30 years ago when I was struggling to learn Jazz piano. You'd definitely made my life easier. You are a great teacher. Thanks.

Great artist and wonderful pedagogue , thank you so much , dear Aimée Nolte

Working these out on guitar is some of the most fun I've had in a while. Thank you, Aimee!

Super Aimee. Thanks for sharing the genius of Bill Evans with us. You're a sweetheart!

Ben Sidran is the best interviewer of jazz musicians. He's a musician, he knows his stuff, he knows the music of the people he's interviewing, he asks good questions, and listens carefully to the answers.

I love this kind of stuff, and with Bill Evans, you can always hear something new.

What’s the roots of this chord? Yes

If you want to get really deep into this the thing about Bill Evans is his absolute mastery of voice leading. I think Keith Jarrett somewhere said that Evans had the best voice leading. Hal Galper said that Evans inspired Galper to think more horizontally and about inner voices more and this was many years late into Galper's career after he had mastered so much so much already about the music - with Phil Woods no less. Evans thought like a composer. There was an orchestral dimension to his playing that isn't discussed that much since he is known for modern types of voicing and doesn't appear to play in an older fuller bodied Teddy Wilson/ Tatum style. Yet Evans retained from that earlier Swing era an emphasis on being aware of every part, one reason he was such a great piano solo artist. (Intros to MY Romance Paris Concerts at the end of his life!) That's why I love Aimee that you mentioned that he worked out all arrangements for the legendary Tony Bennett albums ahead of time. Aimee if you keep going at the rate you're going, what is it a video a day? that's crazy ! the IAJE is going to give you some kind of special medal or award or something.

Three videos in and im in love with this channel I have never seen anyone break down music the way you do....Im going back to the beginning of your channel and watching all of them from there

You are amazing, Aimee!

EXCELLENT Aimee! Many thanks for sharing!

Love your explorations and delights at discovery! Bob Ross vibes here... Thanks for spreading the joy. Truly, everybody digs Bill Evans!

wow great ! Thanks a lot Aimee

Thank you for this. This is how I torture my less chord passionate friends! By the way, on guitar the 7#9 is really common, rock players call it the "Jimmy" chord. For blues it's like a major chord with a b3 up top. I like it as a tritone sub...

His most amazing chords are the ones you don't know are there... the ones that make the piano melt as medium and is just a portal to the universe. Like the good explosives experts. =P

This is so good. Much more interesting than trying to learn from text. You have a way of explaining things to hold the listener's interest. Love your singing examples. What a great teacher you are!

Most amazing video up until now. Thank you so much!

Thank you this is wonderful and helpful.

EXCELENTE. My favorite jazz piano player is Bill Evans, and it's great to know some of his voicings to improve my skills. Thank you.

I really enjoyed this. Bill Evans is such an inspiration to me. Thanks for breaking down his chords. Great info.

This is my idea of fun. Keep up the great work Aimee Nolte!

Thank you .. Wonderful work !!

I love this and i actually got some things out of this. Mostly it got me to realize I must view many of your other posts first. And you have many ! Thank you !

Aimee, beautiful work and voice and free flow and simplifying JazzEvans :) Happy Cluster! Merci Beaucoup

I hope you come out with more voicings in the future. This great.

Above all else, Bill was the king of harmony. If Debussy had played jazz, he would have been Bill.

Another fabulous tutorial.

Hi Aimee, I'm learning Bill Evans' "Here's that Rainy Day" and "My Foolish Heart" and so this tutorial is really useful in explaining his voicings. I have to say that identifying chords by reference to their extended sharpened 11ths or 13ths etc make me go swivel eyed and this old memory bank of mine between the ears often goes AWOL when I read the notes on the page. But slowly, slowly, things are improving and this is largely down to your wonderful tutorials. I'm sending you a small donation on PayPal as a small token of my thanks.

Such a lovley voice.. Would love to hear more ❤️

as a non keyboard player i found your harmonic offering wonderful. thank you very much.

I like you and your instructions! Thanks.

Bill Evans = GENIUS

A wonderfull exercise to me was putting this chords on the guitar. Some really nice ideas came. The most difficult part is that the closer the notes are (b9 #9 for example) more stretchy the hand need to be. Thanks Aimee!

Great video, thank you!

Thank you for posting!

8:43 you could also write this as GminMaj13 (or G-Δ13). All of the notes in the chord come from G melodic minor. There is no other scale choice since G harmonic minor doesn't have the right 13th for a minor-major chord, so I think that contains all of the information needed. Thanks for the video!

Thanks for showing this, one of my favorite songs of his is A Time For Love, the first time i heard this tune was actually in a Yamaha Clavinova Demo Cassette but at that time didnt know what the tune was actually called.

Thank you, Aimee Nolte for this great lesson on the voicings of one of my favorite musicians!

Spell binding your an amazing teacher these are great thanks for doing these ..neat

Thanks so much, great video

this is wonderful...

wonderful

Thanks for teaching, beautiful chords with beautiful humans instrument

Evans used rootless chords; he would take any tritone and play the unaltered triad a wholestep above the unplayed root to make the 13th, #11 chord.

Bill Evans is so much Impressionism for me... Debussy would LOVE him and be jealous... Thanx for charing Aimee! XXX

What a great video, thanks!

great tutorial, thanks and blessings.

Ha! Nice reference at 15:03. Love the information on this channel. Appreciate you.

Bill could pull off the apparent dissonance because he did it so tastefully. THAT was his genius.

First chord C13#11 in first inversion Like your Lesson !

Awesome. Would love to see more videos on Bill Evans.

On the first chord you covered a Dmaj arpeggio sounds nice too. i love these textures .

Thank You!

great video, thanks!

Aimee this is such a great video. Would you be able to do a video on voice leading? That way we can start to transcribe some of this stuff ourselves

THANK YOU!!!!

Interesting and informative. Greetings from Picayune Ms. Saw Bill play a few times with Eddie Gomez. He and his brother Harry went to school in Southeastern, La. There are some very captivating videos when Harry is discussing Bill and their relationship, musical and personal.

I would write that first chord Gm13(maj7) out of habit, although that wouldn’t clue in the voicing as well. Such a rad construction!

I enjoyed this. Thank you. I am a drummer however. We are easily pleased. I got the first chord as a Gmin and thought of it as maybe sixth degree of g melodic. The second chord I realised could have G harmonic minor played over it. Did not get the Eb7.

Thanks!!! Thank you. I'm from Brazil and I'm enjoying your videos. Strong hug. Mauro Araújo.

Yes! We want more lessons analyzing Bill 😊

Jazz educator Bill Dobbins in his very excellent "Jazz Harmony" book does a very thorough analysis of this with reference to the top four notes in a voicing which can be a number of 7th chords(i.e., maj 7th, minor 7th, dominant 7ths, half diminished 7th and regular diminished chords. Then altered chords have as the top four notes like major 7th #5, major 7th b5, dominant 7th #5 or b5, suspended dominant 7ths and diminished 7ths. And then you can progress from closed voicings to drop 2's.

great video lots of info, going to spend abit of time to learn them in all keys and try them in some bill tunes! and you have a lovely voice!

The first minutes caught me. I'm watching this tonight under my blanket with a warm cup of tea. This is how you should appreciate all of Aimee's videos. Jokes aside, thank you again Aimee for putting such solid content for FREE on RU-vid. Is there any way we can support you ? Maybe donations ?

Amy thank you for a very interesting lesson. You reminded me of an unfinished part of my life (music major) in college that I left with a broken heart, would like to return to. Where do you teach?

The feel of any note or combination of notes is a function of the notes that precede and follow .

Hello , Fantastic , superb expositions , also your singing is lovely for real !

Thank you so much!

thank you!!!

Thanks !!!

Very nice

Thanks, Amy - Love Bill a masters MASTER and I was listening 40 years ago or so and saw him in Toronto at Georges Spaghetti house ( Queen and Simcoe )- a small club where you could actually dine at little tables or stand at the bar for a $1.50 beer ....for Bill Evans WOW ...:) nice work.

Wow wow and wow!!

Huge fan of your channel. Thanks for all the posts! RE G-maj7 9 11 Parent scale is Bb Lydian Augmented Bb, C, D, E, F#, G, A

thank you for this very inspiring video.

Brava. Intetesting video. 🎉

How cool👍🎸😉 little Skriabin sound!)

that was fun!!

That was VERY entertaining. Bill was THE MAN. I'm a guitarist looking for more pianistic voicings... even if I can't transfer the voicings directly, knowing WHAT colour tones he was using means that I can figure out some work-arounds. Reading his tragic biography was hugely influential on me. I now use heroin regularly.* But even more profound than THAT was him saying, "when I get stuck, I go back to the basics". I'm pretty sure my basics are a lot more basic than HIS basics, but it has really worked well for me. I played along and thanks, it filled in some gaps, gave me a brilliant "Duh!"[slaps forehead] moment, and now I have a bunch of stuff to muck about with, including some things that came up because I MISREAD at one point. You literally CANNOT GO WRONG with this exercise. *FOR THE HARD OF THINKING: that was a JOKE. I only use it occasionally, at the sexy parties Hef keeps inviting me to. Once a month, tops. And I always balance it out with lots of cocaine, which really puts me in mind of the old "speedballs" Bill used to take, as I slide cherubically to the floor.

LOVE this analysis - great video! I might call the first one a Gmin(Maj13)? That sticks with the naming convention of chords w/fewer extensions, like a min(Maj7).

The chord designations are applicable to only a certain bass note as the character of each chord can be changed when applied over a different bass note. The tritone chords with 3 or 7 in bass show that 6 becomes #9 and 9 becomes b13 The 5 transforms to b9 The same exact chord is either tension or release. Walk these chords down in 1/2 steps and it is a wonderful sounding tension release endless V of V of V....etc

Hi Aimee, thanks again for giving us all something 'new' to work with. I love all the voicings here but I'm concentrating on the Gmi6Ma9,11 chord.. which is found in at least 2 scales: G Mel Min and G whole/half symmetrical Dim..(double diminished etc).. Via the G1/2/whole scale. I'm concentrating on the top 4 notes of this first voicing you visit us with: (from the bottom: Bb F# A C..) and looking for places in this Dim scale where equal interval shapes exist. By putting (everybody does this) one of the available roots as in C, Gb, Eb, A.. Dominant 7th chords can be either be duplicated in a minor 3rd root sequence the C root produces notes applicable to a C13(#11) (and transposed at a min 3rd correspondingly: Eb13(#11), Gb13(#11) and A13(#11)..or if the original (4 note) shape is played with those Dominant roots, That chord voicing, with that same mysterious sound (but possible with that 9th stretch over the hand), will produce (or allow) apart from C13(#11):.. Eb13#9#11, Gb(7)#9#11, and A13(b9#9)... In a sense this voicing has a universality to it. Producing tonic min Gmi6Ma9(11), and dominant C13(#11) and associated min 3rd roots, and as a tonic chord per say, as a BbMa9+ (needs a one 1/2 step resolution) and as an interesting sounding Emin7b5 = Emi11(b5)(+5 [b13])...So it is capable of creating a texture in soloing also..I think.. Keep up the good work !! I enjoyed your 'Have You Met Miss Jones'.. awesome !!

The first chord can also be understood as a C13th#11th - (minus the foundational root and 5th in the bass, as is common in post-bop voicings).

A Nolte a day keeps the doctor away!

Aimee, when I play a half diminished chord, I normally play it the root position, but I typically substitute the fourth for the third which seems to achieve the same effect as what you described.