Tag Archives: reharmonizing

Modern Approaches to a Jazz Blues – Rethinking the Chord Progression

Reharmonizing and interpreting chord progressions like a 12 bar jazz blues is a very important part of improvising in jazz. In this video I will take a Bb Jazz Blues and go over a few fairly simple ways to get other sounds on the first 4 bars. It should open some new ideas and widen your knowledge of jazz harmony and jazz theory.

I discuss how I come up with the ideas and how I both improvise and comp with the “new” sound. Often making the chord progression more modal gives you a lot of interesting choices in terms of reharmonization and scale choices.

List of contents

0:32 Overview of what is covered in the video
0:44 Comping and Soloing with alternative changes and sounds

1:10 Standard Blues Changes solo for Reference
1:48 Making the Blues modal

2:12 Lydian b7 as a “different sound”
2:45 Lydian b7 Guitar Solo example
3:36 Structures used for Lydian b7
3:50 Triad Pairs: Bb + C
4:03 Ab Augmented and Bb
5:02 Gm and Ab Augmented
5:08 Bb7(b5) Arpeggio
5:21 FmMaj7 Arpeggio

5:41 Bb Phrygian Guitar Solo
6:32 Bb Phrygian as a Sound on a Bb Blues
6:43 Bmaj7(b5) chord as a Bb7sus4(b9) chord
7:09 Fm7b5 voicing
7:14 Db7 voicings
7:49 Coloring Blues Phrases with Phrygian chords
8:28 Using the Bmaj7(b5) arpeggio

8:43 Whole step dom7th Guitar Solo
9:31 The thinking behind the reharmonization
9:58 Playing Coltrane Changes on a Bb Blues
10:15 Explaining how the chords work
11:05 Comping Description
11:46 Soloing Description, target notes
12:20 Reharmonization in solos and interaction

12:54 Modal Altered Scale Guitar Solo
13:43 The Altered dom7th and extending it to 4 bars
14:26 Voicings (E7/Bb7alt)
14:53 Soloing: Important clear target notes
15:28 The Mysterious Triad
15:56 Dmaj7(#5) arpeggio

16:47 Taking these examples further.
17:12 Using the chord voicings to learn to solo
17:30 Thoughts on soloing with superimposed changes
17:48 Other Reharmonizations and modal sounds
18:10 How to come up with reharmonizations

19:04 Outro

25 Reharmonizations of a Turnaround – Discover New Modern Jazz Chord Progressions

A great way to write better chord progressions is to check out reharmonization techniques and chord substitution. You can build your jazz theory or jazz harmony vocabulary like your solo vocabulary.

In this video I am going to take a I VI II V and go over 30 different ways of playing this progression. Some of the very common ones and also a lot that are more advanced or modern. Hopefully you can use the chord progressions to get some new ideas and techniques for reharmonization or for your own compositions!

0:00 Writing better chord progressions
1:24 The basic turnaround and some variations
4:22 The I I7 IV V
5:34 The Radiohead turnaround
6:09 #IVdim in the standard turnaround
7:12 The Ladybird Turnaround
8:43 Getting less functional and more substitutions
9:55 Reinterpreting other chords in the progression
11:04 The “Inner Urge” idea
11:49 Major 3rd tonalities
12:23 #IV instead of the V
14:42 Same interval in the root movement
16:31 More Poppy sound without dom7th chords
16:45 Same melody note
17:42 IVm type chords instead of V
19:09 Upper-structure resolving passing chords
19:54 How to use the vamps and the exercises

Reharmonization – Making Songs Fresh & Personal by Reharmonizing

Reharmonization is a great tool to add some interesting sounds or surprises to you Jazz Standards or Covers. This video will take the jazz standard Body and Soul, analyze the harmony of the A part and go over some of the more subtle but effective things you can do with reharmonizing the chords.

The video covers different reharmonization techniques and offers some options for an arrangement of this jazz ballad.

 

 

How many ways can you Reharmonize a II-V-I in C major?

The II-V-I is at the center of almost all jazz harmony. In this lesson, I set out to try and see a big set of the possibilities you have in reharmonizing a II V I and make a long list of possible chord substitutions. The Jazz Theory that I mostly apply to the II V I chord progression in this reharm lesson is classical or functional harmony. The approach I mostly use. In the later options, I also rely on some modal interchange and more freely associated jazz chord substitutions.

List of contents:

0:59 Different sounds on G7
6:09 Tritone substitution
7:59 IV minor chords
15:45 V minor chords
16:28 Diatonic substitution from the Altered Scale
17:45 Diatonic substitution with Tri-tone subs
18:59 Other Dominants from the Diminished scale
19:14 Dominant derived from the diminished scale
19:58 Combining substitutions and getting far out
22:30 Did I miss a good substitution?

Reharmonizing II V I – breaking all the rules!

Reharmonizing is a great way to get some fresh sounds into your song writing or arranging. Often we find ourselves looking for a new sound that we can throw in there to spice things up and surprise the listener!

In this lesson I am going to show you a way to make substitutions without really thinking about music theory and still come up with some great refreshing chord progressions.

The II V I progression

In this lesson I am going to take this II V I in G major (shown below). I am going to show you how playing the D7 in different ways can be a means of completely rethinking the chord and come up with some other sounds that will work well in it’s place.

The reasons for using a II V I in this lesson is that it is a progression that you are probably familiar with, and if we reharmonize the D7 we have a very logical movement: Am7(home) Chord X (away) Gmaj7 (home)

D7 into F#maj7 

If we take a look at the D7alt voicing below you can probably see that it is in fact a Gbmaj7(b5) with a D in the bass.

If we take the GbMaj7 (b5) and use that instead of the D7 we get this progression:

D7 -> Fm7

Below I have written out a D7alt voicing that is used is a D7(#9b5) chord. The top part of this voicing is an Fm triad. Let’s try to substitute the D7 with an Fm7.

That givs us this progression:

D7 -> Bb7 -> Bbm7

If we look at the D7 in the example below you can see that the top part of it is a 2nd inversion Bb major triad. We could try to substitute the D7 with a Bb7 chord, but since that is a bit close to Fm7, let’s make it into a Bbm7 instead!

Then we have this progression:

Use your imagination and mess around!

This way of thinking and experimenting with harmony is a great way to explore progressions and come up with things you can use in your own arrangements and songs. Figuring out how to solo over it can be a bit of a challenge though 🙂

If you want to check out the example lines for each ot the reharmonizations that I didn’t include in the video you can do so here below.

I also have a short video of me playing them.

If you want to download the examples I went over here as a pdf you can do so here:

Reharmonizing II V I – breaking all the rules!

If you want to download a Free E-book of 15 II Valt I licks then subscribe to my newsletter: 

Download a free E-book with 15 II Valt I licks!

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics or how I can make the lessons better then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or  send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

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