Something we’ve talked a bit about before is how helpful it is to categorize some of your essential changes and make them part of your musical vocabulary.
This way, instead of remembering that a song goes Am7 / Dm7 / G7 / Cmaj7, you can just say it’s a vi-ii-V-I in C major. This not only gives you a framework that you can memorize, but it also makes it easier to transpose. Because now you can play that same song in D, without having to transpose each individual chord—you can just say vi is Bm7, ii is Em7, V is A7, and I is Dmaj7, and voilà!
But there are some strategies you can take to master this approach—and some of the essential chord progressions that you need to know as a jazz player. This will help you further internalize them so you can play more fluidly.
One major problem is just that developing players don’t know the progressions. But if you isolate them and work on them, you’ll be ready the next time you need to improv on them.
If you want to dive deeper into the concepts we’re about to cover, be sure to check out Andrew’s new PDF package “Essential Changes” in both treble and bass clefs on jazzlessonvideos.com and our accompanying YouTube video, “How to Master Chord Changes on Jazz Standards.”
Now let’s get playing!
Contents
Identifying some common chord progressions
So for our purposes, essential changes are just common short chord progressions. Let’s check out “All the Things You Are” as an example.
Taking just the first four bars, you’ll see that we have a minor vi chord, a minor ii, a dominant V, and then the root, or I.
This is also the chord progression we use in “Fly Me To The Moon!”
We also start on the vi, then go to the ii, then the V, and finish on the I. It’s just in a different key.
Something else to keep in mind is that this progression can also take several shapes in the same tune! Like in “All the Things You Are,” we see that it happens again later on in the tune, but in a different key.
So even just talking about this short progression and how it happens, you can get an idea of how common it is and how often it comes up in jazz.
And once you can recognize these bite-sized pieces—not memorizing the chords, but the progression as a whole—you can start to learn tunes faster and improvise over them better.
Using arpeggios
Let’s take a further look at the chord progression on “All the Things You Are.” With the first example, one of the things Andrew did was just to outline each chord clearly, using nothing but the arpeggio notes from that chord. This is one of the most helpful ways to really get the sound of a progression in your ears—and best of all, if you stick with the arpeggio notes, then you literally can’t go wrong in your solos.
So on this first bar, we have a Dm7, and we start on the C which is just the 7th of the chord. We then go back to fifth, A, then the third, F, then down to the root, D, then we go straight back up that same exact arpeggio again. So we can just think of this as an arpeggio descending from the 7 then coming back up.
We go into the next bar with a Gm7 by resolving down a whole step from the C, right down into the third of Gm7, which is Bb. This helps establish the sound quickly, because the third is such an important marker of the tonality of a chord.
We’ll go from that Bb up to the F, which is the minor 7—another key note for establishing the chord quality. From there, we’ll drop down into the fifth, D, back to the third Bb, root/G, down to D again, coming up to the seventh, F, and then resolving down a half step into E, which is the third of C7. This bit of voice leading is really nice, because we get a half step resolution into the third of the next chord—which is a defining note for that chord. Next, up to the fifth, root, and step down to the seventh. This arpeggio shape is a little more unique than a straight up arpeggio, since it goes 3, 5, 1, 7, and this is really helpful for keeping your lines sounding fresh.
Getting into the next bar, we have a little pickup that goes G, Bb, C, or 5, 7, 1, and then resolving right on to the major third of F, which is A, then back up to the fifth, C, and finally ending our line on the root, F.
Now as you can see, we haven’t used anything other than the notes of the arpeggios to clearly outline the sound of each chord change and voice lead clearly from one chord change into the next.
Progressions with secondary dominants and extended resolutions
So for our next example, we’ll look at the first four measures of “Confirmation,” and this is a really cool one, which has a bit more harmonic motion happening. This whole progression is really just trying to move from the I to the IV chord, but we have some ii-V progressions in between to keep pushing us along.
Starting on our I chord D major, we’ll go down a half step to our C#m7b5 and then our F#7b9, which just serves as a minor ii-V of our vi, which we then resolve to in bar 3. But that vi chord also functions as a ii in a ii-V of the V. From there we have a ii-V of IV, resolving to IV.
There’s a good amount of chord motion happening here, so one of the most helpful things you can do is literally just play the root notes so you can hear the root movement.
Another common spot you’ll see this progression is in the tune “Blues for Alice,” written by Charlie Parker.
Something interesting to note is that this is the exact same chord progression, but “Confirmation” is a 32 bar AABA form, while “Blues for Alice” is a 12 bar blues form with some extra chords thrown in.
For our next example, we’re going to take it a step further—instead of just adding arpeggio notes, we’ll also use some scalar notes, too, from the scales diatonic to each chord.
We’ll start on the I chord, then begin a scalar line from the fifth that descends all the way down, just the major scale down to its root. Then we go back up from the root, D, E, F#, A. So we have our root, our major third, and our fifth in there, connecting the root to the major third with our scalar passing tones. In that next bar, we’ll resolve down from that A to the G, which is an important chord tone for our C#m7b5. We got to b5, 11, down to 3, and then our b9, D, resolving down a half step to the C# over the F#7b9. Then we’ll continue down the scale from C#, B, A# into our root, F# and again up to the root of the next chord, Bm7 then we’ll move from B up to C#, D, then up to F#, where we resolve down to our new root of E, with a jump up to the fifth of the E7. We go to our third, G#, and we’ll use the ninth as an enclosure, going from F# to G#, enclosing G natural, which is our seventh of Am7. Like most of our voice leading before, it is an easy movement into an important tone of the chord, which makes it sound so good. So as we go from that G up to A, we’ll continue up the scale B, C, and jump down to A, which is the fifth of D7, down the scale from the fourth, G minor the major third F#, D, then finally resolving to the root of the IV chord, G.
Adding some chromaticism
For our last example, we’re going to check out the tune “Just Friends,” checking out how we go from the IV to iv. On the first few bars, we start off on the IV for 2 measures. Then that becomes minor and we go to its corresponding V, which you might recognize as the sound of a backdoor ii-V, which then finally resolves to the home key in bar 5.
We see variations of this progression in several other tunes, such as “After You’ve Gone,” “All of Me,” and “All the Things You Are” as well. But there are a few variations here, it’s not just two bars of the IV to the iv, some are just one bar each.
For this line, we used a bit more chromaticism to add some melodic tension throughout the lines, but we still prioritized the chord tones in the right spot. Let’s break it down.
Bar one starts off with an enclosure, with F to D#, or the b13 to #11 in A, all just to enclose our fifth E on beat two. Then we walk down from E to D, down into C#, all clearly outlining our notes within the major scale. Then we jump down to the fifth E, up to the 13th F# and up to our 9th, B.
In the next bar, we’ll start with another enclosure. We play Bb, which is the b9 in relation to our chord root. But we quickly resolve by going down to the seventh, G# and up to the root A, where we’ll continue walking up the scale to B, C#, and E, playing a 1, 2, 3, 5. Then we’ll use that D to resolve down by a whole step into the minor third, C, of Am7. It’s very important that since we have C# highlighted over the major, that we lean into the C natural to point out that we are firmly on an Am.
From that C, we’re going to go up to the fifth, down to the ninth, which becomes the first note of our enclosure. Then we play G#, which is our #7 in Am to enclose the root. Then we’ll go up the scale A, B, C, E, and then from E we still stay in A minor for the first bit of the D7 by arpeggiating up E, G, B, and not we get into the D7 sound, which is a bit delayed, just for more tension by resolving to C natural, our b7 over D7. Coming down the arpeggio, A, F#, D, C all clearly outlining the ascending D7 arpeggio, finally resolving to the fifth of our Emaj7, going down to the fourth to the ninth, then some more chromaticism by playing a G natural leading up to the G#, which is our major third for E.
The chromatic notes in this tune are not random—they are a way to highlight our motion as we move within the key. They may be passing tones, enclosures, etc. This way, even though they have tension for a second, they resolve quickly and add a bit more color and nuance to your line.
So as a quick recap, here are a few ways you can internalize these essential progressions:
Play the roots in succession so you can get the sound of the notes in order
Arpeggiate each chord
Improvise with the arpeggio notes
Add diatonic scalar passing tones
Add chromatic passing tones
If you work on this, you’ll notice a huge difference in your playing. But if you want to dive in deeper, be sure to check out our PDF package “Essential Changes” on jazzlessonvideos.com, as well as our accompanying YouTube video, “How to Master Chord Changes on Jazz Standards.”
Until next time!