Functional Harmony is a great tool if you want to understand how chord progressions flow and use that information to help you improvise better solos and spell out the harmony.
To me, Music theory is something that I can use to tell me how chords sound and how they move in the jazz standards and tonal songs that I play.
This video discusses why this approach to understanding music is very useful for playing Jazz.
If you have seen any of my videos or maybe also some my Instagram posts were on analyzing chord progressions and small melodic fragments then you’ve seen me reduce the progression for the melodies down to Simple functions so a row with several chords I will often reduce to one or two maybe three functions. It is a way to understand how the progression works.
Content:
0:00 Intro – How I use Music Theory
0:38 Music Theory describes how music sounds and works
0:54 #1 Chords Grouped By Sound
1:15 Diatonic Major Chords and Their Function
2:04 Chords with the same function – Tonic and Subdominant
2:41 Minor Subdominant Chords – A shortlist
3:34 Exchanging Subdominant Chords
4:11 12tone and a good breakdown of Tonal Harmony
4:30 #2 It Helps You Think Ahead and Play More Logical Melodies
5:21 #3 Which Chords Are Important and Which To Ignore
5:54 Reducing a Turnaround
6:34 The II V trap (watch out 😉 )
7:35 #4 Easier To Solo
8:28 IV IVm I examples
9:40 Same Lick – Different IV IVm Chord Progressions
10:13 #5 More Options over each Chord
10:50 Embellishing and interchanging progressions
11:44 Line using embellished progression
11:57 #6 Hearing Functions instead of Chords
12:35 How Do You Think About Chords and Harmony?
12:54 Like the video? Check out my Patreon Page
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