The voicing

What is a drop-2 voicing?

Take a four-note chord in close position and let the second voice from the top fall an octave. That single move — the drop — gave this app its name, and gave jazz guitar the voicings it comps with.

Start in close position

A Cmaj7 chord in close position stacks its four notes as tightly as they can go — C, E, G, B, each a third from the next. Under a pianist's hand that is one comfortable grip. On the fretboard it is a stretch at best: four notes packed inside one octave force thirds onto adjacent strings, and some close shapes cannot be fingered at all.

Drop the second voice

Count voices from the top: B is the first, G the second. Take that G down an octave and the chord becomes G–C–E–B — the same four notes, opened up. The crowding is gone, each note lands on its own string, and the grip settles under the hand. That is the drop-2 voicing of Cmaj7.

Four inversions, one family

Run the same move on each close-position inversion of Cmaj7 and you get four drop-2 shapes that ladder up the neck. On the top four strings:

The same logic repeats on the middle four strings (A–D–G–B) and the lower four (E–A–D–G). Three string sets, four inversions each: learn the twelve shapes for one chord quality and every root is a slide away.

Why it sounds like jazz

A drop-2 voicing leaves room. The top voice sits clear of the inner ones, so it can carry a melody. The spread leaves space for a bass player underneath. And neighbouring chords connect with small moves — an inner voice slides a half-step while the shape barely changes. It is the sound of Wes Montgomery's chord choruses, and of most jazz-guitar comping on record since: full, but never crowded.

Where Drop2 comes in

The Drop2 app is named after the voicing, and teaches it the way everything else in the app works — by listening. Browse every inversion of maj7, 7, m7, m7♭5, dim7, and mMaj7 across all three string sets and hear them played back (Learn), play the named voicing and have it checked by ear (Train), then comp the shapes in time over a walking-bass-and-drums band (Play-Along). Seventy-two shapes, one octave drop at a time.