You’ve definitely played over a short ii-V-I progression before—and for seasoned jazz musicians, it’s one of the most common building blocks you’ll see in jazz.
But as with anything that you play often, it has the potential to become stale or too predictable. Today, we’re going to double your jazz vocabulary with a few cool tricks.
Contents
The short ii-V-I
We’ll start with the short ii-V-I phrase. This is a progression where ii and V are in one measure (usually two beats each) and the I is in a bar of its own, usually 4 beats. This is distinct from the long ii-V-I, where the ii and V have a whole measure each.
These short ii-V-I progressions are super common in jazz—if we look at the second half of the jazz standard Recordame, it’s chock full of short ii-V-I phrases.
Now in measures like this, you don’t get a lot of time to improvise brand new sounds that are coming to you in the moment. These measures are where you show off your craft and showcase the labor of all the language you spent drilling in the practice room.
A lot of the harder tunes in jazz are where these short ii-V-I are really abundant in multiple different keys at a fast tempo, such as “Moment’s Notice” and “Giant Steps.” However, practicing short ii-V-I progressions is actually pretty simple and fun. There are so many ways to configure one, and the jazz legends of the past have shown us examples in the solos that jazz musicians still study today.
If you want to really up your ii-V game, make sure to check out our resource called 100 Short ii-V-I Phrases — which includes 50 in major keys and 50 in minor keys. In it, you’ll find a variety of practical nice sounding short ii-V language with multiple examples from all 12 potential starting points. There’s a mix of traditional jazz vocabulary from past masters like Charlie Parker and Sonny Stitt, as well as some original lines Nathan composed himself! Each phrases is notated in all 12 keys, and you can listen to recordings of Nathan playing each of the phrases over backing tracks. You’ll also want to check out our YouTube video with Nathan: Double Your Jazz Vocabulary with this ONE Trick.
Step 1: Finding examples
The first thing you want to do is find a variety of short ii-V progressions that you really like how they sound. Bonus points if they start on different starting points (also called access points). We’ll take a look at a few phrases that we picked from our resource.
Here’s an example that starts from the root. This one’s about as simple as it gets, but very effective. We outline the chord tones of the Cm7 chord, then voice lead down by a half step to the third of F7. Then from here, we’re going to stack more diatonic thirds, but move them all down an octave. This is called a pivot arpeggio. In this case, we’re pivoting this Am7b5 upper structure here, which is just a chord that’s naturally found by stacking thirds on top of the third of the dominant chord. We’ll end off by again voice leading down into the fifth this time of the resolution chord.
Now here’s our second phrase.
This one starts on the minor third of our ii chord. We’ll go up the scale then back down, ending us on the b7 of F7. Now we just arpeggiate down this chord but raise the root up a half step, giving us a b9 instead for a little extra spice. It also lets us voice lead smoothly with a half step to the fifth of our destination chord.
Alright, here’s another one, but this time, we’ll start on the fifth of our ii chord.
You’ve probably heard this one before, it’s very established jazz language. We arpeggiate down this minor triad, starting on the fifth. Then on the F7 chord, we play a chromatic enclosure around the third, then we skip up with the large interval to the b9 and voice lead down to the fifth.
Now our last phrase here starts on the b7 of our ii chord.
We’re back to all diatonic for this one. We’ll start on the b7, skip up a chord tone and arpeggiate back down. We’ll voice lead to the third of our F7, then play the major ninth, then a diatonic enclosure around the third of the resolution chord, which makes for a pleasant sound.
Step 2: Full mastery
Now that we’ve established a few short ii-V-I phrases we really like the next step is to master them in all 12 keys.
And what we mean here is the point where you don’t even have to think at all to play them. It’s going to take at least a few days, oftentimes weeks, but maybe even months. Honestly, the longer you spend on it, the better but usually just a few days of consistent, diligent, focused repetitions should be sufficient enough to at least start the third step.
Step 3: Application of ii-V phrases
Our third step is application. Like, did you know there are more places you can fit short ii-V-I vocabulary over than just short ii-V progressions? For example, it’s very common to think of a short ii-V as one measure of the V7 chord.
If we look at a phrase that we might play over a V and instead play it over a ii-V, you’ll see that it still works! There are some subtle differences, and you’re going to hear the sound of your fourth resolving to the third within this chord, so this emphasis on the fourth can be thought of as implying a V7sus sound, because we’re suspending, aka delaying, the resolution of the guide tone.
You’ll see this kind of thing happening all the time. In John Coltrane’s solo over “Blue Train,” if you take a look at the 12th bar of his solo, it’s an F7 chord. But if you hear and look at the notes he’s playing, he’s absolutely outlining a quick ii-V-I in his F major. Beat one is a clear Gm7 arpeggiation downwards. Beat 3 is 3, 4, 5, 3 of a C7, then the rest descends the F major bebop scale, and he ends it with a well-timed enclosure around the third.
That’s pretty cool, but we’re not done yet—it goes even deeper. You can also play an entire short ii-V over a ii7 as well. This ends up sounding like we’re embracing the sound of the Dorian mode, and it totally works.
Step 4: Combine short phrases
Where this really starts to take shape is over long ii-V progressions where both the ii7 and V7 have their own full measure, as with a long ii-V-I. In this case, we can take two different short ii-V phrases and stitch them together to outline ii-V, ii-V.
Here’s lines 1 and 3 from earlier. If we take out the resolution, we’re left with just ii-V. Putting them together we get a cool sound.
Step 5: Substitutions on the second phrase
Now for our final trick—it’s all been leading up to this! This is only going to be feasible if you can play your lines in all 12 keys without having to think about it.
The trick is … after playing your short ii-V phrase over the ii7 chord like we did above, you can try playing your second short ii-V phrase (over the V chord) up a tritone or a minor third. This will create some awesome substitutions.
This works because a dominant chord and its tritone substitution have the exact same guide tones, the seventh and third, but they’re upside down from each other. These guide tones are the glue that keeps our harmonies smoothly voice leading to each other.
You can add colorful extensions as you please.
We also mentioned that you can shift up a minor third—this will automatically turn your V7 into a backdoor short ii-V substitution. The backdoor ii-V is a iv7 and a bVII7. You’ll see this naturally in tunes like “Just Friends” in measures 3–5 and “After You’ve Gone” in measures 3–5. Any set of chords contained within the tonality of your home key’s iv sounds really nice when it resolves back into the I of the home key.
When we take a short ii-V and play it within a ii7 measure and then think of another short ii-V line up a minor third for the V7, you end up with this shortcut to outlining this iv7 to bVII7 to Imaj7.
The possibilities with these licks are endless—and guess what? That was just 4 of them—there are 96 more in our resource 100 Short ii-V Phrases. If you want to dive deeper on this topic, make sure to check out that resource and also our YouTube video “Double Your Jazz Vocabulary with this ONE Trick.”
See you next time!