How To Approach Advanced Jazz Standards
- Jazz Lesson Videos
- Jun 9
- 7 min read
Advanced jazz standards offer their own set of challenges. Tunes like 26-2 by John Coltrane or Cyclic Episode by Sam Rivers are made even more difficult by the fact that they have a lot of non-functional harmony, as well as altered tensions on a lot of different chords. The harmony moves in some unusual ways that you might not typically see in tunes that are in the Real Book. So all the materials we're going to be covering today come from Cecil’s latest course with Jazz Lesson Videos — Advanced Jazz Standards.
In this course, you'll find a full breakdown of a variety of advanced jazz standards, as well as harmonic analysis, ways of connecting the harmony to your ears, and also ways of connecting the melody to your improvisational vocabulary. If you want to see how Cecil plays through any of the examples we talk about today, make sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video, “How to Approach Advanced Jazz Standards.”
Now let’s get playing!
Contents
Simplifying the harmony
The first method that we're going to look at for playing over advanced jazz standards is going to come from one of the first sections of the course, where we take a look at the tune Stablemates, by Benny Golson and look at some ways of simplifying the harmony to give yourself an easier time when you're soloing.
There's quite a few ways that you can think about slowing the changes of a tune down a little bit, so that you have more time to think about what sorts of melodic ideas you want to use. Usually on fast moving ii-V progressions, especially ii-Vs that move outside of the key center.
What you have with a lot of these sorts of standards written by instrumentalists, is you can think about just playing off the dominant chord a lot of times. So we might just think of A7 moving to Ab7 and then into that Dbmaj7. That makes it easier to think about some lines that you might play around that harmony. Like for Cecil, he might think of doing the A dominant bebop scale to the Ab dominant bebop scale into Db bebop.
But there's all sorts of different ways that you could thread together those lines. You could even think about playing more of like an A7#11 sound into an Ab altered sound and move into that Db. Really, just thinking about the dominant frees you up to think about more scalar color options over those dominant chords.
So then over Db, you would just think of the regular major bebop or major scale, and then into C7#5, usually you’d think of Db melodic minor, or even Gb7 over that chord change. But if we’re thinking of Db melodic minor, we really don't have to change that much in our thinking from D major. We just have to lower the third there. So going from that sort of sound to a Dbm thing, that's going to also allow you to grab a lot of the altered tensions there, because Db melodic minor on top of C is going to be C altered, then over the ii-V into Gb, we would usually just think of Db7. So even though it's kind of a stretched out ii-V, we’re staying in this Db zone in terms of our thinking over the changes for a while. So then we move into Gb. And then again, we have this quick ii-V, where we’re just going to think C7 moving into Fm. And because this is sort of stretched out, you have a little bit more time to think.
And you might even think about like some different substitutions, like going Fm7, E7, over that Bb to get some altered tensions there.
Ebm, D7, over that Ab7, and then into Dbmaj7. But you could also just think of the related dominant chords there as well. So from the end of that second line, where we have that C7 moving into Fm, we could just think Bb7 instead to Ab7, maybe Ab altered into Db major.
Then over the B section, you have to think a little bit more blocky through the changes for at least part of it anyways. So, Fm, we mentioned before that we can kind of think of that as being like a new tonality. So we'd be thinking maybe F Dorian, or like a Bb dominant bebop sort of sound into the bII7, where we might just think of the V7, because those are kind of related. Like C altered is the same as like Gb7#11, then you have a V-I in C7 so V, moving into C7, the dominant chord. And then here's where you kind of have to think blocky through the B section—with these descending dominant chords.
So, B7, Bb7, A7 into Ab7, where you can get away with repeating the same idea, or variations on the same idea, moving down chromatically.
But you could also think of threading together longer, more complex lines through the harmony, because there is enough time to think through those different tonalities. But you should practice voice leading in some different directions through the harmony. So though the harmony moving down, you could play a line that moves up, for example, and that kind of gives more complexity to your lines.
And then all the same stuff that we talked about in the first A section will apply to the last A section as well.
Outlining with melodic cells
Our next method is going to be using melodic cells to outline fast-moving harmony. And we're going to show this using the tune “Voyage" by Kenny Barron. So now thinking of using some simple melodic cells through the tune, we’ll just quickly go through 1, 2, 3, 5s off the different chords.
We're skipping to the B section, moving up in half steps. And there's our last A section starting on that Fm.
Think about the bass notes
The next method is going to be using the bass notes to connect the harmony to your ears. We’ll be using the tune “Serenity” by Joe Henderson.
Taking a look at the bass notes to the tune, we see the harmony moves around a lot, but there's not really as many weird leaps in this as there were in Stablemates. It's a little bit more stepwise in terms of the bass line. So let’s look at the bass line in this form.
Next, try going four measures at a time and sing through the bass line—trying to make sure that you’re singing the right notes on the guitar.
You’re using the guitar to double check that you're singing the right notes.
Using harmonic analysis
Next up, we're going to be looking at some ways of applying harmonic analysis to a set of chord changes, using the tune “26-2” by John Coltrane. This one kind of plays off of the “Giant Steps” concept of these major third relationships. So it’s kind of centered around the augmented triad.
We're going to start on Fmaj7, and we have the related key centers with that augmented triad of A major and D flat major. So first we're going to go from that F major, V of D flat major, V of A major, then V7 in F. And then we're going to do the v7 to the V7/IV into Bb major.
Once we get to B flat, we change our augmented triad relationship at this point. So now our key centers are going to be Bb, D and Gb. So we do V in Gb, V in D. But instead of going to D major, we go to Dm7, which is going to then become the vi7 in the key of F, V7 to V, ii7 to V7. So an interesting mix of the augmented relationships, but also just diatonic harmony.
The second A is going to start off the same as the first, where we have V into D flat, V into A, V into F. But instead of going straight to F, we go v7, V7/IV into IV. And then we're going to do kind of borrowed relationship from that F augmented triad, and do the V7 into Dbmaj7, V7 to A, and then V7 into F.
Our B section is going to use a slightly different concept. We're going to start with v7, V7/IV, and then we're going to move that exact progression up a major third. So instead of doing it with key centers, we're doing it with ii-V progressions. At this point. we move then into Dmaj7, V7 into Bbmaj7. And that whole thing can be a really cool sub to use over a regular ii-V.
If you outline those changes really clearly, it'll create a very outside sound over the regular ii-V of C, F, and Bb. Then finally we have our first just regular ii-V into Dbmaj7, and then a ii-V back to the top, which will end the same way as the second A section.
So with this one, you know it's important to think of voice leading through the harmony really slowly, and when you make a mistake or you play something that you didn't really intend to, go back in your voice leading line and work out more melodic options that are more in line with what you're hearing. Don't keep going after you make the mistake. Try to go back and try to edit in an option that's more in line with what you would want to play.
Generalizing fast-moving harmony
Lastly, we're going to be looking at generalizing fast-moving harmony through the use of landing points, using the tune “Nobody Else but Me” by Jerome Kern.
A couple different ways that Cecil likes to think about soloing through this one is kind of just thinking of setting up the different landing points within the form. There are a ton of chords happening, even just the first couple of measures there, we set up Dm7, but you can think of Cmaj7, and then set up that Dm7 as the V7/ii, moving into ii7, and then just a long period where we’re playing out from G7 at that point.
So even over that ii chord, just thinking of G7 and then over the modulation F#7 into Bmaj7.
So just ignoring the ii chord altogether and thinking of some other landing points within the form— from Emaj7 to Fº, which is functioning as like the V/iii moving into the tonic and then V7/vi, thinking of playing things melodically to set up that vi7 in C major.
So whether that's V7 material or substitutions or whatever, it's just about that tension and resolution.
And same thing moving into the last section, where we set up that Fmaj7, you have all this material, this cadence into the vi7, cadence into v7, and then finally, that ii-V into the F. And you can think of that F as being like a landing point again in the form.
Well that’s all we have for today, but if you’re interested in learning more about playing on advanced jazz standards, make sure to check out our course called Advanced Jazz Standards, as well as our accompanying YouTube video.
We’ll see you next time!
Comments