Tag Archives: jazz theory

The 5 Types of Dominant Chord You Want To Know

There is ONE mistake that you don’t want to make when it comes to improvising over chords because that will hold you back when it comes to understanding and hearing chord progressions that you want to play. And this is especially true for dominant chords.

It sort of goes back to the Joke or anecdote about Mozart driving his father crazy by playing something like

When I play this then you can hear probably hear what the root is, because the last chord wants to resolve to the root. You can also hear that the last chord wants to resolve, and I did not resolve it. That is also the joke, Mozart would play this and not resolve it to infuriate his father.

Music Is More Than A Row Of Letters

But, what this tells you is that in a lot of music, chords are not isolated things. A piece of music rarely sounds like unrelated harmony next to each other, you immediately start to connect the chords and hear some chords as tension and others as a resolution.

I am going to make a statement that sounds sort of ridiculous in a bit!

If you want to solo over a chord progression then you want to understand not only what chord is there, but also how it relates to the song and the surrounding chords because that will make it a lot easier to improvise over it and it will help you hear the harmony that you are soloing over.

If you just zoom in on each chord then that is like reading a sentence but only spelling each word. If you spell this sentence you may miss an important part of what is being said:

Your Lunch Will Kill You

Another thing that is true both for music and for language is that you can say the same thing with other words:

That Sandwich Is Poison

Hearing Chord Progressions

With experience, you start to hear the progression, similar to how you can probably imagine how a 12-bar blues sounds and play that in your head like an audio track.

So what you REALLY want to avoid is that you just look at the chord symbol and ignore everything else. To compare this to language. If you are reading the words of a sentence but only focus on how each word is spelled then you ignore what is actually being said in the sentence, and if you think about it, then the important thing about the sentence is probably the meaning and it could be said using other words as well. This is also true for, at least, most music: A Chord is a part of a context and you want to understand what that context is.

And here is where I get to make this crazy statement:

“Not all dominant chords are dominant”

But throughout this video, you will see how this is maybe not that crazy.

#1 Most of the time Dominant chords are Dominants

The strongest connection or resolution in harmony is a dominant resolving to a tonic, so V – I. By resolving then I mean that the chord on the 5th note of the scale resolves to the root chord.

This is also what I used in the intro, but there I didn’t let it resolve.

You have two main variations, the V chord is either in a major or in a minor key, where a major dominant will have a 13th, and a 9th and resolves to a maj7

The minor version is usually the dominant coming from the harmonic minor scale with a b9 and b13 (PLAY). But there are a lot of other options as well.

Let’s go over another very common dominant before getting to the dominant chord that is actually subdominant.

#2 And These are Dominants As Well

The next type of dominant chords are the ones that you come across that resolve but just not to the tonic chord, the secondary dominants and if you analyze harmony then you write a V in brackets.

I [V] II V

Cmaj7 A7 Dm7 G7

Some of the common ones would be the ones that take us to II, like this A7: Cmaj7 A7 Dm7 G7

The V of V: D7 Dm7 G7

Or if you have a song that moves to the IV: Cmaj7 C7 Fmaj7.

These follow the same guidelines as the regular dominants so the extensions depend on whether the target chord is major or minor, so a if the target chord is major it will have a 9th and a 13th and if it is resolving to a minor chord then it will have a b9 and a b13.

Let’s have a look at some less obvious options.

#3 This Dominant is Subdominant

In this example, you hear a C7 resolving to Fmaj7 which is just a secondary dominant, but the Bb7 resolving to Cmaj7 is not like that. But it does sound like it resolves.

In this case, the Bb7 is a subdominant chord. In fact, it is just an Fm6 with another bass note.

You can hear how this progression moves in the same way:

So the Bb7, which is often referred to as the backdoor dominant resolves like an Fm6 to Cmaj7 so it is a subdominant chord.

In terms of improvising then mostly you would play it as a Lydian dominant, which here means using F melodic minor, again a connection with IVm in the key.

#4 The Disguised Dominant

When you have a dominant chord that resolves by moving down a half step then this is referred to as a tritone substitution. In fact, this is the dominant of the key in disguise, I’ll show you that in a bit.

When you analyze this dominant you write add sub in front of the dominant

II subV I which means that it is the tritone substitute of the dominant.

In the progression above you would expect a G7: Dm7 G7 Cmaj7, and the reason why a tritone substitute works is that if you look at G7 next to a Db7 then you can see that they share the core part of the chord: 3rd and 7th. And a Db7 can be seen as a G7 with a lot of alterations with a Db in the bass.

You can come across tritone substitutions for secondary dominants as well. Below is an example of how is a substitute for the A7 in a C major turnaround.

#5 You Never See This But Is Good To Know

The last dominant chord is also in fact subdominant since it is derived from a subdominant diminished chord.

The most famous example of this chord is probably in Out Of Nowhere, where you have this progression:

You also find this in the original Star Trek Theme.

In this case, the Eb7 is in fact an inversion of another chord, namely a #IV double diminished.

Constructing the Double Diminished Chord

In the key of G major, the #IV is C#

The #IV diminished would be C# E G Bb

So the #IV double diminished is C# Eb G Bb which is then played with the Eb in the bass.

The Other Name

There is another way of describing it where you focus on it being minor subdominant and then end up calling it a German augmented 6th chord.

I call it #IV because I think that describes the sound better and links it to other chords in the key in a useful way.

Besides Out Of Nowhere you see this chord in Angel Eyes and My Foolish Heart, but it is not terribly common.

Soloing over the chord

In Jazz, you mostly play it as a Lydian dominant chord, but often it is also turned into a II V which is also very common in Out Of Nowhere giving you Gmaj7 Gmaj7 Bbm7 Eb7.

How Well Do You Know Your Diminished Chords

It may be useful for you to dive into the different types of diminished chords if you want to understand Jazz harmony better. Often people try to reduce diminished chords to dominants, but often that doesn’t really work that well and help you describe how it sounds. This video will show you how to understand them.

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The Most Important Music Theory And How It Helps You Play Better

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If you know some Simple and Basic Music Theory but you know it well, then you can use that to understand most harmony and find a lot of great sounds for your solos. I think you will be surprised just how far you can go and how much you can do with a few really basic things, but you do need to work on the right things.

What is Music Theory

First I want to look at what Music Theory is and how you can use it, because I think, that is often misunderstood, which makes it more difficult than it has to be, and you might not realize that you already know a lot. Music theory is just like playing music: If you really know the fundamental things, the rest becomes a lot easier.

Remember that you can use the chapters in the video to go back to something or skip ahead if you already know it.

One of the most important things to realize is that you use Music Theory to describe and understand music. It really is about putting describing what you hear. Sometimes people want to make it a set of rules that tell you what you are allowed to play, but that is not really how it works.

Rules might seem useful as a way of learning, but as you will see, being able to describe and understand what is going on is a lot more useful, and in the end, there are no rules anyway.

Let me quickly show you how describing music is incredibly useful an example from a Blues classic.

How Music Theory Is Useful

let’s take this example of an Eric Clapton phrase from the song Hideaway.

Example First Phrase

Level 1 – Clueless

If you don’t know anything about music theory, then he is playing magic notes that sound amazing.

Level 2 – Scale and Chord Progression

If you know a little bit more then you know that the song is a Blues in E, and he is playing the E major pentatonic scale.

Level 3 – Understanding the phrase

if you want to learn to play it then it is useful to realize that he is starting on the 5th and then the next part is him running up the scale ending with bending the 2nd up to the 3rd.

Conclusion

So level by level you go from “Magic notes that sound amazing” to “a scale run with a bend in the pentatonic scale”, and it is obviously easier to learn how to play it if you know that it is this scale with a bend on this note instead of memorizing a lot of magic notes.

And all you do is recognizing and describing what is going on. That is how Music Theory is useful.

#1 The Major Scale and The Notes In It

The first and most basic thing you want to know is something that most of you probably already know. The major scale, how it is constructed, and the notes in it. Really knowing this means that it is a lot easier to figure out most other things you’ll come across so this is incredibly important.

If you construct a major scale then you start with a root note and move up in intervals of whole and half-steps.

The formula is 1 1 1/2 1 1 1 1/2

For a C major scale:

C D E F G A B C

You want to know the notes in there, if you have to use a formula to figure out the notes then you don’t really know this. That is too slow for you to use it when you are playing.

You also want to know this in all keys, especially the ones you play in., in fact, those are the ones you want to start with.

Besides knowing the note names then it is very important that you know the degrees of the scale, you will see why in the next section of the video.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

How Well Do You Need To Know Scales?

Having a solid overview of the scale notes will make it a lot easier to analyze chords or solo phrases which also helps you figure out what is happening in a solo you transcribed and how you can start using the same things in your playing. If you have to calculate what notes are in the scale that quickly becomes almost impossible. If you know them really well then it is like a language you speak. Something you can use and get from information from.

In the long run, you want to know all the scales by heart so that you don’t have to think about what notes are in there, simply because this can be the foundation that you build everything else on, as you will see in the rest of this video.

#2 How To Construct Chords

When you improvise in Jazz then usually you are using chord symbols as a guideline to shape the improvisation. So you need to be able to translate the chord progression to something you can use in a solo, and knowing what notes are in the chords is a really good place to start.

There are two ways you can approach this, you can take a root and then construct the chord from that, just using intervals, but often I find it is better to start immediately by learning the chords you find in a scale since those are the chords you will also come across in chord progressions, and they are connected in a lot of useful ways that you can also use in solos.

From Scale To Harmony

Constructing chords in a scale is pretty simple. A chord is a stack of 3rds and you have two main types of 3rds: major which is 4 half steps (Play) or minor which is 3 half steps(play)

If you construct a triad from C in the C major scale then you start with the scale

the scale: C D E F G A B C

and from C you move up a 3rd to E, and from E up a 3rd to G. – C to E is a major 3rd so it is a major chord. E to G is a minor 3rd. C E G is a C major triad where C is the root, E is the major 3rd and G is the 5th.

If you create a triad from the next note in the scale D then you get D F A which is a minor 3rd followed by a major 3rd from F to A. This is a Dm triad with D F A is root, minor 3rd and 5th.

All the triads are major or minor except the one on the 7th note in the scale, in this case that is B D F, here you have a minor 3rd from B to D and another minor 3rd form D to F. The interval from B to F is called a diminsihed 5th and different from the one from C to G which is called a perfect 5th, and this type of triad is called a diminished triad: Bdim

In this way you can construct the diatonic triads of a major scale:

C Dm Em F G Am Bdim

Remember that this order of Major, minor, minor, major, major, minor dim, is the same in all major keys,

so if you have Eb major:

Scale: Eb F G Ab Bb C D Eb

then the triads will be

Eb Fm Gm Ab Bb Cm Ddim Eb

This is something you want to automatically know that for the keys you play in, if not just all keys, but keep in mind that this is really just a different way of seeing something that you already know because you know the scale.

Triads are a great resource for solos or for comping, so this is more than just theory, a line using Em and G major triads over a Cmaj7 sounds like this:

and later I will show you how to find those triads for a chord, but first, you need some 7th chords which is, sort of, the basic chord type in Jazz.

Diatonic 7th Chords

You already know the triads and all you need to do to get the 7th chords is to add a 7th.

For the major scale you only have two types: maj7 and b7: For C major: C E G, if you add the 7th: C D E F G A B , you get C E G B. The interval from C to B is a maj7th, written as Cmaj7.

Notice that the 7th is just one step down in the scale, a maj7th is a half-step down, and a b7 is a whole step down.

An example of the b7 is found on the next chord, Dm: here you get D F A and add the C to get a Dm7 chord.

The 7th chords in C major will give you:

C Dm Em F G Am Bdim

Cmaj7 Dm7 Em7 Fmaj7 G7 Am7 Bø

So you get a maj7 on C, a b7 on D, and also on E giving us Em7, on F the 7th is E giving us Fmaj7. The 7th on G7 is an F giving us a major chord with a b7 called a dominant chord. A to G is a b7 giving us an Am7. The B dim also has a b7 from B to A so that is a Bm7(b5) also sometimes referred to as B half-diminished.

Now you have the chords in a scale and you can find them in any key, but again this is stuff you really just want to know. Try practicing the diatonic chords in all keys and also move simple progressions around like a II V I or a I VI II V

When you improvise in Jazz then you usually take the chord and find material that fits on that chord. Let’s look at a great way to find a lot of material in the form of triads and 7th chords for any chord.

#3 Finding More Arpeggios (Crazy simple)

This concept is really simple and is something you can mess around with by just writing out a scale in a different way!

The basic idea is that if you are improvising over a chord then you can use the scale and the arpeggio of the chord, but you need to have more options than just the scale and the arpeggio, and if you check out solos from great Jazz players then you notice them using a lot of other things as well.

These arpeggios and triads they use are not coming out of thin air, it isn’t magic (It is NEVER magic when it comes to note choice), and you can easily use the music theory I covered in this video to find a lot of options.

Let’s first look at the scale in a different way:

Usually, you write the scale out in steps, so C major is C D E F G A B C but now you want to find triads and arpeggios, and they are built in 3rds so it is practical to write the scale as stacked 3rds like this:

C E G B D F A C E G B D

I wrote out a few octaves because that is easier.

Let’s say you have to improvise over a G7. You just need to find triads and chords that have a lot of common notes with G7. Because G7 is what the rest of the band is playing, and if you play those notes that sound good.

So now, instead of G7 and the scale you have

G7,Bø and Em7 + Em, G, Bdim and Dm triads

Each of these arpeggios are triads are really just a very flexible melody that you can work with and you can combine them as well to get an incredible amount of possibilities in your solo.

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Jazz Reharmonization – How To Make Great Variations of a II V I

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There are some really beautiful variations and reharmonizations of a basic II V I progression that you can check out and start adding to your own repertoire. You don’t always want to play the chords exactly as written, especially if you are trying to make a chord melody arrangement or an intro sound better.

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Content:

00:00 Intro

00:33 The Basic II V I

00:45 #1 Walking up

01:46 #2 Walking down

02:13 #3 Wandering to minor

02:58 #4 Strolling back from minor

03:46 #5 Coltrane’s Detour

04:27 #6 The Walk Down to Another Key

05:11 #7 The “Wrong Chromatic” approach II V

05:59 Make your chord progressions more interesting

06:13 Like the video? Check out my Patreon page!

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Two Intervals For Every Note – Why You Need To Know This

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This is a video that discusses how to think about the notes that we play. Why I think in note names as well as intervals and why you need different things to play jazz solos.

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Content:

00:00 Intro

00:23 Not All Notes Are Created Equal

01:30 The Important Details – Visual & Practical

02:32 Losing The Bigger Picture

04:44 It’s About Two Things

05:07 No Real-time Calculations

05:47 Not Only The Scale

06:57 Communicating With The Rest Of The Band

07:48 Fretboard Knowledge That Makes Sense For The Music

08:05 Like the video? Check out my Patreon page!

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Secondary Dominants – What You Want To Know

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Understanding what a secondary dominant is and being able to recognize or find them for chords is a powerful tool you can use in your playing and compositions. This video will show you how to use them, understand them and improvise over them

And actually, it is pretty simple if you know your basic scales.

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Content:

00:00 Intro

00:22 What is a Secondary Dominant

01:52 Not Just Theory

03:25 Finding Them In A Song

05:39 Scale Choices and Extensions- The Two main types

06:36 Examples in the song

07:15 The V of V in major – A special rule

08:05 Secondary Dominants in Comping – Moving Progressions

09:30 Secondary Dominants in Comping – Static Chords

10:22 Adding Them To Solo As Embellishments

11:23 Why You Want To Think in Functional Harmony

11:34 Like the video? Check out my Patreon page!

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Autumn Leaves Reharmonization – How To Make It Sound Fresh

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One of the most fun parts of playing a Jazz Standard is that you can make your own reharmonization and give it a personal fresh sound. And it is also great to not always sound the same as everybody else who has been playing the song for the last 60 years.

In this video, I am going to go over 5 examples of reharmonizations with a lot of different sounds and level by level becoming more and more exotic.

You can check these out and have a lot of ideas for your own arrangements and never sound predictable again.

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Content:

00:00 Intro

00:44 Level 1 – The Basic Changes

01:50 Level 2 – A few Tritones Subs and a Surprise

03:22 Level 3 – Attack of the Chromatic II Vs

04:27 Level 4 – Dysfunctional Harmony

06:08 Level 5 – The Aliens Stole My Lunch Money and gave them to John Coltrane

07:44 Searching for Beautiful Chord Progressions

07:53 Like the video? Check out my Patreon page.

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How To Practice And Use Music Theory in Jazz

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Music theory can help you learn faster and have more options. Here’s how you work on making that a part of your practice and playing!

I think Jazz is almost considered music theory turned into music by a lot of people, and mostly by people who don’t actually play Jazz. That’s, of course, not really true but at the same time it is really useful to learn some Music theory if you want to learn Jazz and it can really help you learn a lot faster and get much more out of the things that you practice and transcribe. But it is also important that you go about it in the right way so that it does not become a weird set of rules that stops you from using your ears.

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Content:

00:00 Intro

00:38 Exercises for time on the bus or on the train or maybe an App?

01:23 Useless Music Theory and Double Diminished #IV chords

02:32 Scales and Diatonic Chords

02:55 Easy in Major?

03:26 Tricky in Harmonic Minor?

04:51 The Other way around: Scales with a D7

06:08 Secondary II V’s for Diatonic Chords

06:32 Basic overview of Major

08:01 Finding them in a Song – “I Should Care”

08:54 Making it Easier to Analyze and hear Progressions

09:32 Transposing Songs

11:30 Connecting Theory to Your Ear

11:53 Transposing The Melody

14:12 Reharmonizing All The Things You Are

15:16 Analyzing solo phrases

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Beautiful Chromatic Sounds And how to add them to Jazz Chords

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When you solo in Jazz you use chromatic passing notes and enclosures all the time, it is really a part of the sound, and actually this is true for Jazz chords as well. There are many ways to use chromaticism in your comping or chord melody and it is a great way to add more movement and color to what you play.

In this video, I am first going to show you one way of adding chromatic passing chords that is pretty visual and easy to use and then later I am going to start creating chromatic melodies in the chords and this is a great way to get to know your chords a lot better and also gives you a lot of great-sounding options to add to your playing.

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Content:

00:00 Intro

00:47 Chromatic Passing Chords – Look where you are going

01:36 You can also move down a half-step

01:46 G7= G7(13) and Cmaj7 = C6?

03:02 Chromatic Chords in Context

03:43 Beyond Shifting Chord Shapes

05:14 Analyzing the voice-leading example

05:48 The Bebop Trick

06:58 Two Types of contrary motion

08:27 Suspending notes in the chord

09:40 Passing Chords And How To Sound Amazing With Them

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How To Create Beautiful Chord Progressions

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Functional Harmony is almost a secret weapon when it comes to reharmonizing or creating great sounding chord progressions. In Jazz, we sometimes forget that just understanding basic harmony is a very strong tool for creating new sounds, and in this video, I will show you how you can mess around with a simple II V I and get some fantastic results.

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Content:

00:00 Intro

01:07 Diatonic Chords in major

02:14 Progression #1 – bVImaj7

02:49 Minor diatonic chords and Modal Interchange

05:00 Progression #2 – Tritone substitution

06:12 Don’t limit yourself to substitutions

07:03 Progression #3 – Ending in the Wrong Key

09:00 Understanding Modulation a Pivot Chords

09:34 Progression #4 – Another Dominant Alternative

11:20 Reharmonization with only Maj7 chords

11:34 Like the video? Check out my Patreon page.

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How To Analyze Songs – Music Theory and Functional Harmony

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Music Theory and Harmonic Analysis can be great tools when you want to learn jazz and figure out how to improvise over a chord progression. These videos help you get started understanding how to do that, understanding functional harmony, tonal centers, and the rich harmonic language found in Jazz standards.

The videos will give you examples of how to analyze songs and also how to choose scales from that analysis. You will learn a lot from analyzing the songs that you play.

Remember that it is more important to hear the changes and recognize the sound of the theory as it is to know the name, so working on the songs you already know well will really help you. A fancy name probably won’t.

Analyzing Jazz Standards – Understand what you play!

How To Analyze Chords and Progressions – This video uses the song There Will Never Be Another You as an example and discusses the progressions found in there.

All The Things You Are – Harmonic Analysis – All The Things You Are is a great Jazz standard that we all need to have in our repertoire. In this video I am going to go over a thorough All The Things You Are Harmonic Analysis.

Analyzing a Standard: All Of Me – This song is a great example of IV minor chords and secondary dominants

Analyzing a Standard – Stella By Starlight – Functional Harmony in Jazz – I guess Stella by Starlight is in many ways one of the most mysterious chord progressions among the jazz standards. At the same time, it is so beautiful that everybody just keeps at it until they can play it

General videos on Music Theory and Analysis

Secondary Dominants – What You Want To Know Understanding what a secondary dominant is and being able to recognize or find them for chords is a powerful tool you can use in your playing and compositions. This video will show you how to use them, understand them and improvise over them

And actually, it is pretty simple if you know your basic scales.

Jazz Scales! The 3 You Need to practice and How You apply them to Jazz Chords – Jazz Scales can seem like a million options that you all need to learn in all positions and all chords, but there is a way to approach this that is a little easier than trying to learn all jazz scales in all modes. After all the Dorian mode is not as important as the Major or Minor key.

This video has a PDF download of the overview of the analysis – Click Here

5 Types of Chord Progressions You Need To Recognize and Be Able To Play – Harmonic Analysis – In this video, I will go over 5 types of progressions that if you can use to better understand the functional harmony that you find in a jazz standard.

Music Theory Is The Effective Way For You To Learn Faster – If you know you basic Music Theory well then you can easily start to add another level to how you analyze melodies and chord progressions which will help you work more focused and learn faster when you practice.

You can also go through the playlistson YouTube:

Analyzing a Jazz Standard – Harmonic analysis of Jazz Pieces

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