Quartal Voicings · Jazz Wiki

Quartal voicings are what happens when you throw out thirds and build a chord by stacking fourths instead. Under the hands they feel open and unresolved — no clear major or minor face staring back — which is why they became the default sound of modal comping. This note covers the hands-on craft of building and placing these shapes; for the underlying system, see Quartal Harmony.

Building the basic stack

The core move: pick a note, stack a perfect fourth on top, then another fourth on top of that. A three-note stack like D–G–C, or a four-note stack like D–G–C–F, is the raw material for most of this style. Because these shapes are built on a fixed interval rather than specific chord tones, the same shape under the hand can serve several different chords, depending on what the bassist plays underneath.

Not every stack of fourths is equally clean. Diatonic to D dorian (D–E–F–G–A–B–C), most three-note stacks are pure perfect fourths:

D–G–C
E–A–D
G–C–F
A–D–G
B–E–A

But F–B–E is different — F to B is an augmented fourth, the tritone. That stack is dissonant, functioning more like an avoid-note combination than a workhorse voicing, so players use it sparingly, as a deliberate color. Knowing which stack hides the tritone is the single most practical fact in this whole technique.

Voicing a tertian chord with fourths

Quartal voicings aren’t only for exotic modal tunes — they’re a practical way to voice an ordinary chord like Dm7. Building the stack from different chord tones gives different flavors:

D–G–C — rooted on D, reads as a grounded Dm11-type color
F–B–E — built from the 3rd; note F–B is the tritone, so this one is spicier
E–A–D–G–B — the full five-note “So What” shape, voiced a step above the root

Because these voicings usually omit the 3rd — the note that tells your ear “major” or “minor” — the same C–F–B♭ stack can pass for a sus chord, an m11, a dominant 7sus, or a 6/9, depending on the bass. What’s left is mostly roots, 4ths, 7ths, and upper extensions (9th, 11th, 13th) — color, not identity. That’s what makes quartal shapes reusable across comping situations: the voicing has no fixed identity of its own, so the bass note decides its meaning.

The So What voicing as the model

The So What Voicing is the shape every quartal player learns first, and for good reason — it’s the cleanest possible demonstration of the technique.

E–A–D–G–B (bottom to top)
Three stacked perfect fourths, topped with a major 3rd
Played over a D bass note, it spells out the 9th, 5th, root, 11th, and 13th of Dm

That final major-third interval on top (G to B) keeps the voicing from sounding faceless — Bill Evans’s choice to cap the stack with a third rather than another fourth has a big effect on how it sits in the ear. It’s the shape modal jazz comping is built on, and it works because it sidesteps the tertian 3rd/7th pair entirely.

Moving the shapes: planing and sus contexts

Once you have a stack under your hand, the natural move is planing it — sliding the identical shape diatonically through the mode rather than reharmonizing note by note, a different logic from the careful stepwise voice leading tertian chords demand. Through D dorian that’s D–G–C to E–A–D to G–C–F, skipping the tritone-containing F–B–E stack or using it briefly as a passing color, much like a deliberate outside move in side-slipping. This gives quartal comping its floating, non-functional motion under a static modal vamp.

Here are those three stacks planing through D dorian, skipping straight over the tritone-bearing F stack:

Quartal stacks also sit naturally on top of dominant sus chords, since both textures are built around avoiding a defining 3rd:

Over G7sus: D–G–C–F — the 5th, root, suspended 4th, and ♭7, stacked entirely in perfect fourths

McCoy Tyner’s left-hand-anchor approach — a low root or open fifth/fourth in the left hand, quartal or pentatonic shapes in the right — turns these voicings into a full comping vocabulary, distinct from the guide-tone logic of rootless voicings, the skeletal shell voicings, or third-based tertian chord voicings. All dress the same modal harmony differently.

At the piano this splits across the two hands — an open fifth anchoring low, the quartal stack floating on top:

The McCoy Tyner anchor: a bare open fifth low in the left hand, and a stack of pure perfect fourths (D–G–C–F) in the right — no thirds anywhere, so the chord stays open and uncommitted

♫ Listen

Miles Davis — “So What” (Kind of Blue, 1959): Bill Evans’s five-note E–A–D–G–B shape lands on the horns’ “amen” answer in the head — hear how noncommittal and modal it sounds compared to a tertian Dm chord.
McCoy Tyner — “Passion Dance” (The Real McCoy, 1967): Tyner’s blocky, stacked-fourth comping over the F minor vamp shows the left-hand-anchor, right-hand-stack approach in full force — grounded but harmonically open.
Herbie Hancock — “Maiden Voyage” (Maiden Voyage, 1965): the opening Am7/D voicing is a quartal reading of a suspended sound — listen for how that floating quality carries through the whole tune.