Jazz Advice

Recently we received a question about non-standard progressions, specifically the type of progressions you see in Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson tunes:

When we’re learning, we go through a lot of bebop progressions and ii-Vs. But when it comes to playing more modern tunes (such as some Joe Henderson and Wayne Shorter tunes), I feel like a good amount of my bop language starts to break down. By this I mean how do you connect distantly (if at all) related chords while still being melodic?

Dealing with these seemingly different chord progressions presents a challenge to those who have not encountered things of this sort before. Thankfully, upon further investigation you’ll understand how to use what you already know to effortlessly glide through these changes.

The chords make sense at close examination

In general, chord progressions have to have some sort of logic behind them to make them sound the particular way that they do. Upon first hearing, it may be difficult to understand how these less familiar progressions are constructed, however, work to simplify them and they’ll become clear.

Listen to Wayne Shorter’s Nefertiti:

Here’s the first eight measure of Nefertiti:

Confusing? Let’s take a closer look. The first two chords are simply progressing in cycle movement. The qualities of the chords, major 7b5 and sus, and Herbie’s unique voicings are what give them their unique sound, but other than that, nothing out of the ordinary.

Measures 3 and 4 consist of a minor ii V progression … Read More

A reader recently sent in this question:

I was wondering if you could explain to me how to interpret slash chords for soloing. It seems like different sources have conflicting information. Also, what would I do if I encountered a chord like C/Db, in which the top and bottom are not related diatonically?

Slash chord notation

One of the trickiest parts of dealing with slash chords is deciphering the notation. When you’re used to reading standard chord changes and you come across a slash chord, it can be confusing as to what is going on. If you’re like me, the first time you saw a slash chord you were probably asking yourself “Which chord is on top? Are both of the notes chords? How do you play over these sounds?

It’s a lot simpler than you think. Here’s the deal:

When you see a slash chord, the bottom note indicates a bass note and the top note indicates a triad in some inversion. For example, the chord symbol D/C implies a D triad over a C bass note:

Unless marked otherwise, the D is just a triad (with chord tones doubled or in inversion) and the C is just a bass note. It’s as straight forward as that.…Read More

Everybody wants to play “outside” the chord changes. They think there is something mysterious about getting outside the changes. In my experience, the phenomenal players that I’ve studied with along with the legendary players I’ve learned from on recordings, approach playing outside the harmony much in the same way they approach playing inside the harmony: they play over specific chords.

Playing other chords instead of the original chords is often called superimposition. Superimposing these substitutions on-top of the original set of chord changes allows you to keep a logical structure to your lines, while escaping the typical path.

An easy entry point to utilizing these substitutions is over ii Vs. It’s quite simple. Instead of playing the ii V in the original changes, you’ll instead play a ii V from a different key. The important thing to remember is: you still have to resolve the ii V to the original key and you have to engage your ear to make it sound right. Theoretical concepts can give you ideas of what to play, but then you must use your ear to tailor the concept for that particular situation.

Where these substitutions come from

The 3 substitutions presented in this article occur time and time again in the standard jazz repertoire; they are devices that composers have used for centuries to add tension directly before a resolution point (V7 to I).

The first substitution is simply what jazz educators call the “backdoor ii V” (iv-  bVII7  I ). And you can … Read More

The ii V progression makes up the vast majority of chord changes within the jazz standard repertoire. Much of our success or failure as improvisors comes from being able to navigate this deceptively simple progression.

Learning how to play over ii Vs is actually much easier than you think. The mistake most people make is they try to play over them using theoretical knowledge instead of utilizing language and their ear. You’ll notice that in this article I won’t be talking about 7 to 3 resolutions, dorian & mixolydian scales, or anything in that vein.

These types of things are excellent points of theory to know, but in reality provide little help compared to the knowledge you’ll gleam from transcribing. Use theory to supplement what you learn from studying how the music sounds.

Get ii V language

Everything starts with a model. Observing a definitive way of how to do something.

Listen to one of your heroes on a tune you know the chord changes to. Take note of where all the ii Vs occur in the tune. Focus in on those areas and listen for a line that grabs your fancy. If you have a program like Transcribe, loop the line and listen to it carefully to make sure it’s something you genuinely like. Do not neglect how important this is.

Many people have been writing in lately about who they should transcribe, asking specifically for us to tell them what solos and what musicians they should … Read More

In the recent article Hearing in Color, Forrest discussed the technique of how to develop hearing individual chord tones in the context of triads and 7th chords. Just as the individual chord tones in a chord have identifiable colors, the chords themselves have distinct sonorities that set them apart from one another.

The key to mastering these chords is to build upon information that we already have or pieces that are manageable. Instead of trying to tackle complex chords right off the bat in your ear training practice, it’s much more efficient and beneficial to start with the building blocks of any chord – the triad.

As jazz harmony has progressed, simple harmonies have evolved into some pretty complex sounds. This was accomplished by adding 7ths, b9ths, #9ths, 11ths, etc. to basic triads. At the heart of any chord lies a triad. Chords like V7#5, minor-Major 7, and Major 7#5 sound complex and look hard to figure out, but when you take away the upper chord tones, you’re left with just a triad. The trick to hearing and improvising over these chords lies in developing the ability to aurally identify the four basic triads.

The four basic triads

There’s only four triads: Major, Minor, Augmented, and Diminished. These four triad types are the basis for nearly every chord you’ll encounter. If you can immediately identify these four triads, once you add 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths to the triad, it will be significantly easier to navigate these sounds. … Read More

If you took a quick survey and asked a few people to describe the components of bebop, you might come up with some answers like: “fast tempos, lots of notes, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, b9′s, b5′s, altered dominants, diminished scales,” etc. While all of these are true of the music, one of the most overlooked, but surprisingly simple devices of bebop is that of super-imposing chords over existing changes.

Aside from the essential rhythmic and melodic characteristics of the music, the practice of reharmonizing common chord changes, whether implied melodically by the soloist or explicitly stated harmonically by the rhythm section, was crucial to the innovations of bebop.

Dizzy Gillespie talks about this concept in his book with Al Fraser, To Be, or Not…To Bop:

We found out what the composers were doing by analyzing these tunes, and then added substitute chords to songs like “Night and Day,” “How High the Moon,” “Lover,” “What is this Thing Called Love,” and “Whispering.” When we borrowed from a standard, we added and substituted so many chords that most people didn’t know what song we really were playing. “How High the Moon” became “Ornithology” and “What is this Thing Called Love” became “Hot House.” … That was our thing in bebop, putting in substitutions. (p.207)

Many of the reharmonization techniques of the musicians of the 1940′s centered around super-imposing or substituting progressions, most commonly through the use of ii-V7′s, over the existing progressions of traditional standards. These traditional pop-tunes were predominantly composed … Read More

In our first article of Fundamental Ear Training Exercises, we covered how to choose an ear training partner, the correct mindset to approach ear training with, and  exercises about singing & hearing intervals, harmonic intervals, and triads.

After you feel you’ve got a pretty good handle on everything presented in that previous article, it’s time to explore seventh chords. The easiest way to approach this group of chords is by focusing on just root position chords that contain a root, a third, a fifth, and a seventh.

No ninths, elevenths, or thirteenths to worry about just yet. Look for that in the next part of this series. However, we will be making alterations to the 5th, which in a sense is making alterations to the 11th and 13th (b5 is equal to #11 and #5 is equal to b13. See my notes for major 7b5 chords about why the b5 can be different that the #11).

Since we’re only concerned with seventh chords in root position containing chord tones 1357, there are 12 seventh chords that we’re going to hone in on:

Major seventh, Major seventh b5, Major seventh +5, Sus major seventh

Minor seventh, Minor major seventh, Half diminished seventh (aka minor seven flat five), Fully diminished seventh

Dominant seventh, Dominant seventh b5, Dominant seventh +5, and Sus dominant seventh

Notes on each seventh chord

Go to the piano and play these 12 chords. Work on hearing the intricacies of each chord.

There are some little tricks … Read More

A reader recently asked:

I was wondering about how to play over altered dominant chords. What are some strategies for playing over Dominant 7 #9 chords, specifically.

This question comes up frequently for many improvisers. It seems like everyone has a “fail safe” scale or lick that they use exclusively every time they see an altered dominant chord. With all this conflicting information flying around, trying to understand what actually works can be especially confusing.

Whether it is a V7#9, a V7#11, or a V7 Alt., you ultimately need to study the ins-and-outs of these chords in order to develop your own approach.

Traditionally, the V7#9 chord or altered dominant chord occurs in a minor ii-V progression. Instead of the ii-V7 of a major progression, a minor ii-V contains a half-diminished ii chord and an altered V7 chord (b9, #9, b13, or #11 depending on the voicing). For example, look at a minor ii-V in C minor:

Improvisers, however, have been altering V7 chords in all progressions, major and minor alike, for quite some time now. Therefore, any dominant chord that you come across, whether it is part of a ii-V or standing alone, is pretty much fair game for alteration. The first step to navigating this chord is to familiarize yourself with it’s unique character.

Be able to identify the sound

The V7#9 chord is a very versatile sound, meaning that you can take one of many harmonic approaches to play over it. In order to fully utilize the … Read More

A recent question from a reader inquired about the blues in all keys:

I’m a sax player and have been working through the blues in all keys for the past few months, and was wondering if you guys had any tips, tricks, or any advice?

We’ve all heard it time and time again: Learn the blues in all keys. It seems like a daunting task, but with these tips, you’ll be well on your way.

Understand and Visualize the components of a Blues

Before you even learn to play on a blues in one key, it helps immensely to understand all the components of a blues. What do I mean by components? By components, I’m pertaining to the harmonic building blocks of the progression. For a typical blues, they consist of:

• I dominant
• IV dominant
• ii V
• iii Vi
• iii Vi ii V (which is essentially covered by the previous 2 components, but lets be thorough)

The next step is to visualize each one of these components in relation to its tonic, in all keys. Here’s the process…Read More

Learning how to improvise can be overwhelming.

There is an enormous gap in knowledge that you must overcome as soon as you decide that you want to play jazz. Before you even improvise a single note, you have to contend with over 100 years of musical history, from Louis Armstrong all the way up to the innovators of today. Hundreds of tunes to learn, dozens of masters to study and transcribe, famous solos to memorize and internalize, etc., all just to get to a proficient level. Where does one even begin with what seems like endless information?

One amount of information that is finite, however, are the four basic types of chords that you’ll encounter most frequently: Major, Minor, Dominant, and Half-diminished. If you think about it, these four chords are the building blocks of the majority of standards that you’ll come across. Dominant 7th chords comprise the harmonic body of blues tunes and the bridge to rhythm changes, Major 7 chords begin and end the chord progressions of countless standards, while minor and half-diminished chords are the first piece to the ever present ii-V progression.

You can quickly see how beneficial it is to focus intently on these sounds. If you can develop language over these four basic chords in all 12 keys, you will have improvisatory material for all occasions. Of course, there are many other types of chords (Major7#11, V7#5, sus chords, minor-major 7, diminished, augmented, etc.), but these are all essentially variations … Read More