Side-Slipping Lesson for Jazz Piano
Side-slipping is a sophisticated sounding technique used often by jazz pianists.
Here’s how it works:
Take any chord voicing - like this C minor 7 voicing for example: C / Bb D Eb G. Now transpose this chord voicing up or down by a step, like this:
IMAGE - side slipping on C minor 7 rootless voicing
Side-slipping usually sounds best when you move by a half-step or a whole-step (rather than bigger interval leaps), and you can move in either direction - upwards or downwards.
You can even side-slip multiple times in a row - either moving further and further away from your starting chord. Or you can move away once, and then returning to the original chord:
IMAGE - side slipping - Cm7 - Bm7 - Bbm7. Cm7 - Dm7 - Cm7
Examples of Side-Slipping
Side-slipping can be heard famously in the song ‘So What’ - where the pianist Bill Evans plays E min 7 going to D min 7:
IMAGE - side slipping - in ‘So What’ by Miles Davis
Bill Evans uses the same chord voicing to play both chords - Em7 and Dm7 - which creates the sophisticated sound of side-slipping.
When to use Side-Slipping
When playing jazz songs from a real book, look out for a melody that moves up or down in step, and then returns to the original note, e.g. C - D - C, or C - B - C.
When this happens, you can transpose the chord and bring it with the melody note - e.g. C min 7 - D min 7 - C min 7, or C min 7 - B min 7 - C min 7.
Let’s take the song ‘Cry Me A River’ for example, by Arthur Hamilton. There’s a section of the melody that plays G - F# - G, played over an Eb major 7 chord.
In this case, we could take our chord voicing for Eb major 7, and transpose it down a half-step with the melody (to D maj 7) and then back (to Eb maj 7):
IMAGE - Cry me a river, side-slipping
Or let’s take ‘The Taxi Driver’ theme by Bernard Herrmann - there’s a section in the melody that plays G - A - G, played over a D minor 11 chord.
In this case, we could take our chord voicing for D minor 11 (D F A C E G), and transpose it up a whole-step with the melody (to E min 11) and then back (to D min 11):
IMAGE - Cry me a river, side-slipping
In both cases, it creates a beautifully sophisticated sound.
Make sure you count the intervals of each chord accurately - side-slipping is only effective when you move every single note precisely in parallel.
Chord Voicings for Side-Slipping
Side-slipping is most effective when applied to complex chord voicings with lots of notes (rather than simple 3 or 4 note chord voicings).
To get a complete list of some of my favorite chord voicings, you can download my free jazz piano chord voicing ebook.
Click here to download The Jazz Piano Chord Voicing guide (free).
Practice Tip
Play through the songs in your real book and look for sections in their melodies that match this pattern: starting note - step away - step back. When you find this shape, try using side-slipping to move the chord in parallel with the melody.
Free Jazz Piano Resources
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The Jazz Piano Chord Voicing Guide (ebook)
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About the Author
Julian Bradley is a jazz pianist and music educator from the U.K. He has a masters degree in music from Bristol University, and has played with and composed for a variety of big bands.
Julian runs the popular Jazz Tutorial YouTube channel and writes educational jazz lessons at JazzTutorial.com
