Some Major Changes
In this lesson, I'm going to attempt to pull together some of the concepts we've looked at so far to make something approaching actual Jazz music! But first we're going to look into the idea of Chord Equivalence which we alluded to in a previous chapter. All this really means is that two chords with different name can contain exactly the same note.1
The first example will involve two chords that we've already encountered. If we take a 6 chord but treat note ‘6’ as the root, we have a m7 chord; conversely, if we treat ‘♭3’ of a m7 chord as the root, we have a 6 chord.
N.B. In these diagrams, roots are shown as dotted squares. If they're black, they form part of the drop-2 shape; if they're grey, they're just shown for reference.
There is a couple of other chord types that are equivalent to the 6 / m7 chords but we'll leave these for now. The next equivalence we'll look at will introduce a new chord, the so-called ‘dominant ninth’ (or ‘9’ for short). The formula for this chord is 1, 3, 5, ♭7 9 but we'll be omitting the root so, effectively we've got 3, 5, ♭7, 9.
This chord is equivalent to a m6 chord but taking note ‘4’ as the root:2
So you're probably thinking, “this is mental, now I've got to deal with a chord with a reference note that isn't even in the notes I'm playing. How is this supposed to make things easier?” The truth is that you probably won't be thinking in these terms when you're actually playing but it's important to understand the mechanics that underpin what you're playing.
Usually the dominant 7th (7) chord is introduced before 9 but I'm gambling of the likelihood that most readers are already familiar with ‘7’ chords. Jazz players will tend to choose a more interesting chord that a straight 7 and a 9 is usually a good choice. Also, if we used a 7 chord, we'd need to learn a separate set of shapes etc. Converting a 9 chord to a 7 chord usually just involves moving note ‘9’ down by a tone.3
There are several other important chord types the are equivalent to these shapes. We'll deal with them in later chapters.
And now, what you've all been waiting for...
IIm7 V9 I6 Progressions
This is probably the most important chord progression in Jazz. In the examples shown below, the voicings all stay within a fairly narrow range. The ‘voice-leading’ isn't always as smooth as it could be (especially between the 2nd and 3rd chords) but it's not bad.
PRACTICE THESE A LOT!
If you look back to the ‘circle’ in the second lesson, you'll see that within each of these progression the shapes progress clockwise round the circle. In all honesty, I don't really think of the progressions in this way when I'm actually playing, (I'd find it pretty confusing) but we've illustrated how these five ways of playing an important progression into a regular system.
So how do I think about these when I'm playing? It varies according to the context but it's usually along the lines of ‘IIm7, IIm6, I6’ or ‘IV,IV-but-with-note-5-replaced-by-the-one-a-fret-lower,4 I6’. These approaches lend themselves more to thinking in terms of how the individual notes move as opposed to reconstructing each chord from a new root note.
We've used some terminology in this lesson that we haven't properly defined yet but I wanted to get some real musical material under our belts before we delve into any more theory. Apart from anything else, it's better if we have something solid to which new concepts can be related.