Hello,
I'm going to be a freshman in high school next year, and have been playing guitar for 3.5 years. I'm looking into going to coolege for music, and I've heard that Berklee's guitar department uses drop 2 and 3 voicings. I can't find a whole lot of info on it, so if someone could direct me to a book, video, article etc., that would be awesome.

Thank you!

Yeah, like Pebber said, Drop 2 has the 5th in the bass and Drop 3 has the 3rd in the bass, but the notes in a Drop 2 chord aren't exactly voiced like a 2nd inversion chord.

Here's how I learned Drop 2 chords.

A drop 2 chord is built by dropping the second highest note of a chord to the bass...

Here's an example:

The chord is the root position for Cmaj7: C E G B

To make a drop 2 chord out of this root position, all we need to do is drop the second highest note (the G) to the bass: G C E B

The Cmaj7 contains 4 notes, therefore there are 4 possible inversions:

Root: C-E-G-B
1st: E-G-B-C
2nd: G-B-C-E
3rd: B-C-E-G

Any of those 4 inversions can be altered to create Drop 2 voicings...
Root position becomes G-C-E-B
1st inversion becomes B-E-G-C
2nd Inversion becomes C-G-B-E
3rd Inverson becomes E-B-C-G

For guitarists, close voicings can mean impossible or at least very difficult stretches. Drop 2 voicings are a different story.....You'll find these lay nicely on the guitar neck. I'll be back witha pdf of some fingerings for a each of the Cmaj7 Drop 2 voicings.

Ah, sorry Pebber, I forgot to say that I copied that from another website, so it's not my typing.

I like learning better! :)

in the "Stealth Guitar" thread I referenced some chord / melody applications, I think the drop voicings help when constructing a walking bass line or passing chords within a song when the progression is heading somewhere and you need a specific note in the bass. For any chord that you already know you can easily find an inversion. Rather than memorizing all of the voicings try and pick your favorite song and do a chord / melody arrangement with walking bass lines.

Yeah this is where i use them as well. For a lot of chord melody work, or variations when playing rhythm(accenting
vocals and things of that nature). Although i get a load of road miles out of the min7/maj6 substitution, using various
inversion to pull this off really helps me have some really nice chords in my rhythm playing.

Thanks for the info. I've been trying to get into more complex harmony (more than major/minor scales and Dominant 7th chords), and this is a nice addition to my bag of tricks. I'm interested to see how this sounds when you do it with extended/altered chords.

Thanks again!