How to Learn Chord Changes Instantly
- Jazz Lesson Videos
- Dec 16, 2024
- 7 min read
It’s always impressive to see someone pick up a song right away, especially more advanced tunes. But how do people do this? And are there techniques to get better at learning by ear?
Today we’re going to look at the best way to learn by ear, and that’s by having an arsenal of chord changes in your back pocket. If you know your progressions, you can not only learn tunes quickly, but you can often predict what chord might come next.
Let’s check out five progressions that you’ll see in jazz standards—and will make a solid foundation. But if you want to grow your vocabulary for chord progressions, you’ll want to check out our resource Essential Changes, which covers some of the most popular chord progressions in jazz. Plus, make sure to check out our YouTube video “How to Learn Chord Changes Instantly” if you want to see how Jayden plays these examples.
Contents
ii-V wraparound
Our first progression is what we’ll call the ii-V wraparound. This is a really common chord progression that you’re bound to see in standards. This progression is ii - V - I - VI7.
How does this phrase work? Well we have our classic ii - V - I progression, but this also has the dominant chord built on the VI—or what we could also call a V/ii (V of ii). This gives the phrase a bit of instability at the end which makes it want to lead back to the ii chord and start the progression again.
Now let’s break this down. You can see we’re starting on the 7 of this ii chord and we go down the arpeggio. It’s important to note this is a chord-tone phrase, meaning it’s just going to utilize our 1, 3, 5, and 7. So we go down that arpeggio and land on the root note on beat 3. This is a strong beat and a good place to land on a root. Then we’ll move straight back up the arpeggio and resolve nicely to the 3 of the V. Then again using a slightly different version of the arpeggio and we end on the 7 on beat three and we move down to the 5. We jump back up to the root note on beat one of measure three, so we’re now to that tonic chord, but that’s not the end of the phrase just yet.
So we’re at the root, we move down to the fifth and we’ll just move up the arpeggio. Starting from the fifth, we jump up to the seventh and just move up the arpeggio from there, and of course that leads nicely into the third of the VI chord. Then this VI chord wraps us nicely back to our ii chord.
Circle progression
This next one is also very common. The circle progression (named for the circle of fifths) takes that VI chord, makes it vi, and moves it to the front of the progression. As the name suggests, this runs the outside of the circle of fifths, and so it’s a very common and pleasing progression—it’s vi - ii - V - I. You may quickly recognize that this progression is the start of “All the Things You Are.” So once again we see this progression a good amount.
For this phrase, we’re going to utilize chord scales—so not just 1, 3, 5, 7, but all of the notes in the diatonic scale.
Starting on beat one, we have a nice little embellishment up to the 9. We then lead to the third and we’ve got that triplet embellishment. So we actually move up the arpeggio and land on the 9 and once again to the 3, and we move down the Dorian scale. Of course with that F# there, we’re able to lead nicely into the 3 of the ii chord. From that 3, we move up to the 5 and then we’re able to add a quick little resolution to the I chord on beat two. From there, we’re able to lead nicely again to the 9. So kind of a common theme with the vi and V. We’ll start again on the 9 in that measure and we have another triplet embellishment. The triplet is not really using the arpeggio, it’s got a couple of chord tones in there, but it’s also got the 11, which acts like a sort of passing tone to the 3 on beat three.
Once again this gets us putting chord tones on the strong beat. Then we’ll lead nicely down the scale to the 3 of the I chord. What’s happening over this I is we’re wrapping back around as if we were going to wrap around to the 6. We start there on the 3 and jump up to the 5, moving around the scale for a bit. We jump up to the 9, and we’re back down the scale to wrap nicely around the 6 again.
Backdoor progression
Next up we’re going to check out the backdoor progression—which is also called the backdoor ii-V. Now of course the real spelling for these chords is actually iv7 to bVII7 to Imaj7. But the way to think about this progression is as a backdoor to the V chord. Usually we think of the V resolving down (from sol to do). But with this bVII chord, it doesn’t make sense to resolve the root motion down—instead it wants to resolve up (from te to do) or resolving through the backdoor in a sense.
You’ll hear this progression in tons of music, like “Yardbird Suite,” “There’ll Never Be Another You,” and more.
So on this example, we’ll look at a chromatic phrase, so we have a bit more going on than just a chord scale. We’ll use chromatic passing tones, enclosures, approach notes, and all that. Jumping in, we’re starting on a chromatic passing tone. You can think of this as the #1, but really what we’re doing here is chromatically enclosing the b3 on beat three. Then we’ve got a 1, 2, 3, 5 cell starting on the third. From there we lead into another chromatic passing tone and we delay that resolution to the third there on beat one, and that’s on the backdoor V or the bVII7. From the 3 on that bVII7, we move up a diminished arpeggio, and then we’ll move down chromatically, landing on the #11 of the I chord. What we’re doing is delaying the resolution a whole lot. Then we’re moving front he #11 to the 6 and then the 9. We chromatically resolve to the 1 then on beat three. And on that beat three, we move down to what is essentially a b6 and this implies another V chord, where we end up resolving nicely to the 3 on beat one of measure four and subsequently to the 6 at the end of the measure.
Confirmation progression
This next one is something you see in “Confirmation” and “Bird Blues.” The way you can think about this progression is as I - (ii-V)/vi - vi - V/V - (ii-V)/IV - IV - ii - V.
For this one, we’re going to look at another chord-tone phrase. We’ll start on the I chord, and we have the 7 on beat one. We move straight up that arpeggio and resolve on the root on beat three, resolving to the 7 of the ii/vi chord. So this whole measure is just a minor ii-V to the vi chord on beat one of measure three. Now in that ii, we just move straight down the arpeggio and resolve it nicely back up to the 3 of the V chord. So of course when we’re utilizing chord tones, our voice leading from chord tone to chord tone, regardless of how large the jump, is always going to sound good. That’s why we’re able to go from the root of the ii all the way up to the 3 of the V chord. From that, we’re able to resolve down a half step nicely to the 7 of the vi chord, and once again moving straight back down that arpeggio. Similarly, we’re resolving up to the 3 of the V. We’re thinking of this as a V/V, and while the next chord has the same root note as V, it’s really a ii/IV. From there we hit the 7 of the ii/IV chord, and we’ve got a nice triplet and embellishment moving down the arpeggio once again, resolving up to the third of the V/IV. From there we’re able to land on the 7 of the dominant chord—our V/IV. We’ve got a few quarter notes here, and since we’re playing a bebop phrase we can make those quarter notes nice and fat.
We go from the b7 to the 3 to the 5 and we’ve got a nice quarter note rest there leaving a bit of space and then wrapping back around to the I with a major ii-V.
Diminished walkup
Now on to our final progression. This one is interesting and a bit less common, but it really helps to know it. So what we’re looking at is a I - #iº - ii - #iiº. This progression really highlights the flexibility of diminished chords — remember that a diminished chord can be infinitely inverted, i.e. any one of its notes can be its root.
This progression is a great way to extend the tonality of the I chord, especially in classical music. But you also see it in tunes like “It Could Happen to You.”
This time around, we’ll utilize chord scales, and in this case it’s the diminished scale—specifically the whole-half diminished scale.
We’ll start on the 7 and move down 6, 5 and skip down to the 3. Then we’ll use the same cell but with 9,1,7 and skip down to 5. We jump up to the root note of our next chord on beat one of measure two. Now we bring in the whole-half diminished scale, and we just walk right up the scale, until we resolve to the 5 in the next measure. From the 5, we have a nice triplet embellishment where we move down to the 3, 1 and skip down to the 5, so we have a nice minor arpeggio there. We jump up to the 9 and we’ve got that same cell that we actually saw in the first measure. So we’re moving down by step before skipping down to the 5 and we end up there on the minor 3 of the chord there on beat one of measure four. In our next diminished chord, we jump up and once again we’re actually moving down that whole-half diminished scale. And we end up resolving to the 7 of the I chord quite nicely.
So that’s all we have for today—but if you want to learn more about this, make sure to check out our resource Essential Changes, as well as our YouTube video “How to Learn Changes Instantly.” We’ll see you next time!
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