Don't think ALL The Chords! – Jazz Progression Secrets

Jazz Chord Stress Syndrome

When you are getting started learning to play Jazz, and especially the first time you try to play a jazz standard, one of the biggest stress factors is how fast the chords change and how difficult it is to keep track and at the same time play something that sounds like music.

To reduce Jazz Chord Stress Syndrome, you need to be able to simplify the chord progression.

In the beginning, this can help you play much better solos. You don’t want to play solos where nothing makes any sense, and you are only busy trying to hit every chord change on the page. There are two main strategies for this: One is harmonic, and the other is, in a way, more guitaristic. Often, you are told to choose one or the other, but that is not the way to go. You want to combine both into a larger, more powerful concept, but I’ll get to that later in the video.

Barry Throws Away The II Chord

I am sure you have heard of Barry Harris; otherwise, look him up on YouTube, and you won’t regret it! I was lucky enough to study with him for a short period when he taught masterclasses at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where I was studying.

One of the most common chord progressions in Jazz is the II V I. Since you run into that everywhere, it is very practical to have a way to simplify that progression, and as you will see, there are other bonuses as well.

For this video I am going to use Afternoon in Paris as ans example, and If you look at the chord progression of the A part. It’s in C major, then you have a II V I in Bb followed by a II V I in Ab before it returns to Cmaj7.

Barry’s take on the II V is that the V is the most important chord, and you can ignore the II.

And if you look at Afternoon In Paris, then that makes a lot of sense:

Notice that, like this, it just moves in 4ths, which also connects in a very clear way:

Cmaj7 F7 Bbmaj7 Eb7 Abmaj7

So, logic is built into it, making it easier to play beyond having fewer chords. That logic is not always there, but it does happen quite often. In terms of harmony, then Joe Pass and Barry Harris really do have a point, and often, this way of reducing the amount of chords makes a lot of sense for the song.

And don’t forget that your solo also makes more sense because you are not busy with as many chords.

Here I am first playing all the changes and making an effort to spell them out:

And while this example is constructed to be clear, then it is different if you compare it to playing only the V chord of all the II Vs, which does add a bit of rest to the melodies.

This works really well, but there are a few places where it might look like a II V but the important chord is really the m7 chord. One example that I will return to later is a III VI II V: Em7 A7 Dm7 G7, but you also see it with IVm chords like Fmaj7 Fm7 Bb7 Cmaj7. But It is still a good place to start, making it a bit easier to think about what melody you are playing instead of thinking about a lot of chords.

This next approach is both guitar-friendly, and for the song I am using as an example, Afternoon in Paris, it is also very useful for connecting melodies.

Everything Is A Minor Chord

Pat Martino’s take on a II V I kinda flips the whole thing around. He doesn’t think about the V chord and focuses on the II chord.

You can let me know in the comments, but I think there is something very comfortable about thinking of everything as a minor 7 chord, it is a bit like reducing things to minor pentatonic with some added notes. One thing that can be very useful for this approach is that you often can create connections in the chords that help you connect phrases in your solo, and, of course, you are adding more rest to your solo because there are fewer chords. Afternoon In Paris would be this:

and here, you can play a solo where there is a clear connection between the phrases because you are using the shift from major to minor in the modulation:

Of course, with a song like Afternoon In Paris, this is extra clear, but that is a fairly common modulation, and this same type of melody can be applied to IVIm progressions, which is another very common building block in Jazz standards. In the end, the best reason for using Pat Martino’s strategy is that this way of thinking appeals to you makes it easier to play solos, and sits well with your ears.

Which One Is Better?

So what is better? In general, it never works to only look at the type of chord because a chord is always in a progression in a song and almost always in a key,

but you will find people who swear by one system and think anything else is pointless. But mostly, that is in the comment section of some internet place and should not be taken too seriously. What is much more common is that people are aware of both systems and use whatever works better at that moment or at that part of the song. That is probably the biggest advantage of both reduction techniques: They are about grouping together chords and thinking about them as one thing. That is a much more powerful tool and something that will do A LOT of things for your playing.

Reduction 2.0

This way of thinking is probably a clearer extension of the Barry Harris approach than Pat Martino’s, but I think it is useful to stay open-minded also because there are places where Martino’s reduction will make so much more sense.

There are two main advantages to looking at chord progressions like this:

You can reduce the amount of chords
You can understand how progressions are similar even if they have different chords.

And once you can do this, you have several tools that help you create chunks that are easy to remember when you are learning a song because you can reference similar progressions in other songs, something that gives you immediately an idea about how it sounds. Just think about how powerful that is.

The Turnaround Where Barry Didn’t Work

I mentioned that if you are just looking at the chord types then you are missing a part of the picture, let me show you where that falls apart and what works instead. Then I’ll show you why grouping in functions is a great way to understand harmony and Substitutions are not!

If you are in C major and have:

Em7 A7 Dm7 G7 Cmaj7

Then it is tempting to just say that is a II V in D major followed by a II V in C major, and you should then play A7 and G7.

But A7 sounds out of place there, and it is really resolving to Dm7 in the progression so it doesn’t sound like the V chord in D major.

A better way to look at it is to realize that it is a turnaround in C major.

Em7 A7 Dm7 G7 Cmaj7

is pretty much the same as

Cmaj7 A7 Dm7 G7 Cmaj7

This progression Barry would reduce differently: The last part is a II V, so the II chord is ignored, and therefore, the secondary dominant pointing towards it, A7, is also thrown away. Now you have this:

Cmaj7 G7

And that reduction also works a lot better with the III-VI II V. So you can’t just look at the chords; you need to take the key into account to realize that the Em7 is,, in fact,, a tonic chord and the A7 is not so important, but that will also give you some other advantages. Let me show you!

Maj7 Chords and Dominants Chords Are The Same?

The minor subdominants are a beautiful sound and very common in Jazz standards, and thinking of those chords as a group can make many progressions easier to understand.

The most common use of the minor subdominants is as way to get back to the tonic chord. The clearest example is the basic IV IVm I:

And a common variation of that is using the backdoor dominant, Bb7:

I am sure you can hear how these sound very similar. The IIø chord can work as well, and that is also really just a rootless Bb7:

The bVImaj is also a great option and in my opinion, the most beautiful chord in C major:

What you want to take away from this is that these very different chords sound similar in the key of C major and therefore can be used in the same way, it doesn’t mean that every time you come across a Bb7 in some other key then an Abmaj7 also works. In general, substitution is not a way to understand harmony, and Tritone substitution is not a function and only really applies to dominants.

Basic Theory Is A Super Power!

All o fthis is coming from knowing basic theory and checking out songs, and that is where theory can provide you with a massive boost because it helps you understand the music you know and use that to make it easy to learn more. But you do need the right foundation. Check out this video so you have an overview of what to learn and a practical way to learn it. It will make learning Jazz 100x easier and help remove some annoying things like memorizing chord progressions and figuring out what to play over songs.

Check it out!

Learn Jazz Make Music.

https://jenslarsen.nl/the-basic-music-theory-you-need-as-a-jazz-beginner/

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