The voicing family

What is a drop-3 voicing?

Take a four-note chord in close position and let the third voice from the top fall an octave. The chord splits into a bass note with a chord floating above it — the wider sibling of drop 2, and the backbone of solo jazz guitar.

One voice deeper

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. Let the second voice from the top fall an octave and you get the drop-2 voicing this site is named for. Drop 3 reaches one voice deeper. Count down from the top — B first, G second, E third — and let the E fall.

The same four notes, differently spaced — and the spacing is the point. In a drop-2 voicing the dropped voice lands a fourth or a fifth below its nearest neighbour, and the chord still reads as one even spread. In drop 3 it lands a sixth or a seventh below. The chord stops being one spread and becomes two layers: a bass voice, and a close chord above it.

Built around a skipped string

On the fretboard, that gap has a physical form: a skipped string. Put the bass note on the sixth string, leave the fifth string silent, and the three upper voices land on the D, G, and B strings — four notes, five strings, one deliberate hole. The silent string isn't a compromise; it is where the extra space lives.

The grip is friendlier than it looks. One finger takes the bass note, the other three sit in a compact block, and because the low note rings against a genuinely separate register, a single guitar starts to sound like two hands at a piano — bass below, harmony above.

Four inversions, one family

Run the same move on each close-position inversion of Cmaj7 and you get four drop-3 shapes that ladder up the neck. Here they are with the bass on the sixth string — the × marks the silent A string, and the speaker on each card strums the shape with the app's own sampled guitar:

The voicings you hear are the app’s own sampled guitar — from the MuseScore General sound library, used under the MIT license.

The same logic repeats one set higher: bass on the fifth string, the D string silent, and the upper voices on G, B, and the top E. Two string sets, four inversions each — eight shapes cover a chord quality, and every root is a slide away. What the inversions are for is voice leading — reaching the next chord by the smallest possible moves.

Drop 2 or drop 3?

The two families divide the fretboard between them. Drop 2 lives on four adjacent strings — its favourite homes are the middle and top sets, above the register a bass player owns. Drop 3 hangs from the sixth or fifth string, so every shape brings a real low end with it.

That difference decides the situation. In a rhythm section, drop-2 voicings comp out of the bassist's way and blend into the band. Playing alone — chord melody, a duo with a singer, an unaccompanied chorus — drop 3 covers bass and harmony in one grip, which is why it is the workhorse of solo jazz guitar.

It also decides what happens under the melody. Both voicings put the strongest voice on top; drop 2 wraps the other three closely beneath it, while drop 3 leaves the melody floating clear above the gap, answered by the bass below. A line that sits high and needs weight under it wants drop 3; a line that weaves through the middle of the neck wants the tighter company of drop 2. A useful rule of thumb: comping in a band, start from drop 2; playing alone, start from drop 3 — and mix them the moment the music asks.

Where Drop2 comes in

The Drop2 app is named for the other half of this comparison, and it teaches that half by listening. Browse every drop-2 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). The move is the same one you just read — one voice, one octave, down.