The ii-V-I chord progression is a jazz staple. It quickly establishes a key center with tension and release, and because of this, it’s often used to change keys quickly and easily.
One flavor of ii-V is the short ii-V, meaning it happens in one measure (rather than over 2 measures like the aptly named long ii-V). Since the ii-V fits into one measure, each of the chords gets one beat.
You can also use the short ii-V as a way to spice up a vamp on the tonic chord.
But when you’re improvising, these chords happen quickly and it can be overwhelming to try and create a line over them. In a fast tune, you get less than a second to consider things like chord tones, making a melody, voice leading, and all the other options like pentatonics, enclosures, and substitutions.
So how do we effectively conquer short ii-Vs in our improvised solos? Well today we’re going to run through 5 tips that can help you nail these short ii-Vs. All of these examples come from our resource entitled 100 Short ii-V Phrases, which includes 50 major and 50 minor phrases starting from all 12 pitches of the chromatic scale. They’re organized by diatonic phrases to lines with alterations, then non-diatonic starting points, and transcribed vocabulary from the masters like Bird and Cannonball. Plus, there’s an extra 12 lines for both major and minor keys to keep you shedding. If you want to hear how Nathan plays through any of this material, make sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video, How to NAIL Short ii-Vs.
Now let’s get going!
Contents
Get to know the short ii-V
Our first tip is nothing crazy, but it is going to be huge in terms of progress for you. That’s getting to know your short ii-Vs by studying and memorizing a ton of great examples. A short ii-V should feel like one unit of information rather than a bunch of separate notes.
We’re going to start by looking at one of Cannonball’s tunes, “Minority.”
The first five notes make up a pretty common enclosure in bebop. We’re essential playing two voices at once that target a note from above and below. In this case, the target is the third of G7—which is B, and we approach it from above, starting on the root of this Dm7 chord and gradually walking down until it arrives to the target note, B. From here, we finally deviate by arpeggiating up a fully diminished upper structure. Normally this b9 wants to resolve down to the 5 of our tonic chord, but Cannonball cleverly delays this resolution by adding two chromatic approach notes from below, then we land on the 5.
Another great example is this one from John Coltrane.
As you can see here, we’re going to chromatically approach the 5 of this Fm7 chord and walk down a backwards 1, 2, 3, 5 cell in F minor. When we arrive at the end of the cell, we are now on the 5 of our Bb7 chord, and we simply walk up the Bb dominant scale until we arrive on the root. And then we resolve to the tonic chord, Ebmaj7 and drop down to a chromatic approach tone that targets the 3 of this chord. Then we play the root and return to the 3 that now acts as an approach tone to the 4. Finally, we walk down the scale until we arrive at the 9.
But besides the greats, you can study some standard minor ii-Vs as well. Here’s one from the C minor section of the book.
We’re starting on the Dm7b5 chord but from the 6 of D Locrian and playing a Bb 1, 2, 3, 5 cell, which gives us this chord’s b6, b7, 1, and b3. Then on the V chord, we start on the b9 and chromatically fall down to the b7 and play a two-note enclosure that targets the b3 of the tonic chord.
Here’s another minor ii-V, this time also from Coltrane.
This time we’ll start on the b5 of Dm7b5 and walk down the D Locrian scale, and then back up until we land on the 11 of the G7b9. From here, we can just play thirds in G Phrygian Dominant, first going up and then going down. You can call these zigzag thirds or up-down, forward-backward thirds or whatever makes sense to you. The last two notes end up being a nice enclosure around the root of our tonic chord, and we end off with a melodic figure of 5, 4, b3, 5.
Change up the rhythm
Now we’re on to our second tip, which is to change up the rhythm. Whenever something is just a bunch of eighth notes, consider it like a blank canvas, ready for you to embellish the rhythm. If you play a constant stream of eighth notes in your solo, you run the risk of sounding like a robot.
Let’s check out a few ways you can make things more interesting by altering the rhythm. Here’s a phrase that we can look at from the resource.
Now think of this as a starting point. Take away the duration of these notes and just feel different ways to work through the contour.
To see some of the ways that Nathan alters the rhythm of this phrase, make sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video, How to NAIL Short ii-Vs.
Extend the V chord
Our third tip is to not overcomplicate things. Instead of thinking how to play over a ii and a V within one bar, think about just playing over the V.
What’s cool is how this also enables you to easily make substitutions. For example in the fourth bar of a blues, we have a short ii-V to the Eb7. We can take this short ii-V and see it as just a Bb7.