If You Can Play Rhythm Changes, You Can Play Anything… (feat. Kellin Hanas)
- Jazz Lesson Videos
- 11 minutes ago
- 9 min read
As jazz musicians, there’s one thing that’s certain … at some point, you’re going to have to play over Rhythm changes.
And it’s a great form to get used to so that you can be prepared. And there are plenty of places that these changes pop up. It comes from George Gershwin’s tune, “I’ve Got Rhythm” and it is a 32 bar AABA chord progression. This is one of the most foundational forms that you find in jazz. It’s been used in countless standards and bebop heads such as Anthropology, Dexterity, Cottontail and more. Because this progression is so common, studying how musicians navigate its fast moving harmony is essential for developing jazz musicians.
Rhythm changes can be especially tricky. There's a lot of fast moving harmony that can challenge even experienced improvisers. Now, most players know the form—they know the chords, they even know the scales to fit the chords, but when the changes start rushing by, everything can start to sound disconnected. When Kellin started playing over this progression, she felt super lost. She was technically making the changes, but her ideas weren't very fluid.
Now, if we take that same form and apply a few core concepts like approach tones, enclosures and the blues, we already feel like we can be more musical and intentional.
So it might sound difficult, but once you understand and utilize the wide array of ideas that you can use on Rhythm changes, it'll really take your playing to the next level. And so that's exactly what we're going to get into today. We’re going to look at five straight-ahead techniques that you can start using today to improve your Rhythm changes solos.
And every example that we’ll look at today comes from our resource, 25 Rhythm Changes Etudes. In this resource, you'll find a wide range of etudes written specifically over Rhythm changes, covering approach tones and enclosures, rhythmic pacing, rhythmic development, bebop scales, harmonic substitutions and more.
And if you want to hear how Kellin plays through anything we talk about today, make sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video, If You Can Play Rhythm Changes, You Can Play Anything… (feat. Kellin Hanas).
Now let’s get playing!
Contents
Hearing the harmony
So how do we even start to grasp Rhythm changes? Well, first we have to focus on concept one of the day: hearing the harmony. We focus so much on music theory that sometimes we forget to go back to the basics—making sure that our ears are caught up before we get into some of the trickier concepts will help you tremendously.
You’d be amazed how if you just aren’t grasping a set of changes, but then you listen to a few recordings and punch it out on the piano, your solos may be noticeably better afterward.
That's because your ears are the first ones to send info to your brain as to what's going on. If you can hear and feel the harmonic movement before you get to anything else, you're in a great spot. Start by focusing your solos around chord tones, key centers and thinking diatonically. This first step is so important, so that you have more context to back up our next concept.
Something that Kellin started doing very early on to learn any kind of changes, not just Rhythm changes, is to sing and play the piano, singing the roots along with the chords.
So for the root motion, we’re going to sing…
1 ,6, 2, 5 3, 6, 2, 5 5, 1, 4, b7 3, 6, 2, 5, 1
If you didn't quite get it the first time, make sure to keep trying. Once you can hear those roots, you’ll start seeing it in a different way.
Even though there's a lot of harmonic movement, you can play in Bb blues, or generally in the key of B flat. And you can see this in a line from one of the etudes from the resource.
Rhythm changes is a very symmetrical progression. That means that everything relates back to the original key of Bb. Anything that you play in Bb is going to work over these A sections, whether that be minor pentatonics or anything from the blues scale. You can practice this even just by playing the Bb blues scale over that A section and just trying that out first.
Here you can see some of those blues concepts at work.
So we’re not necessarily making all of the changes and moving with every single chord change, but we’re playing generally in the key of Bb, and that's why it works. This is a great place to start, because if you can play in the key center of Bb, then you'll be ready to move on to the other harmonic changes that are going on.
Some other things that can help you really look into this basic harmony are permutations. That's basically taking the root, the 3, the 5, the 7, and whatever other extensions and playing them in different orders.
So for example, if you wanted to go through the form and play 1, 3, 5, 7 … 3, 5, 7, 1 … 5, 7, 1, 3, etc—that really helps you get that sound in your ear, playing and learning the chords on the piano and singing the chord tones like we just did, and also listening and transcribing solos is something that helped Kellin so much. Charlie Parker on Anthropology is obviously an amazing solo. So is Miles Davis on Oleo. And then something a little bit more advanced is Greg Gisbert solo’s on Eternal Triangle.
Approach tones and enclosures
The second concept that we're going to look at is approach tones and enclosures. First off, with approach tones, it's exactly what it sounds like. They are notes that are used to approach the chord tones. Kellin describes them as kind of a bridge from one chord tone to the next. The reason why we use approach tones is because it gives us so many more options while playing a solo of just chord tones would technically be making the changes. Approach tones help us extend our ideas. They make our lines less choppy, and they also give us options to add some color and phrasing.
The same thing goes for enclosures. An enclosure is when you take a chord tone and enclose it with a note chromatically or diatonically, above or below (or both!). It's another way to extend and make your ideas more cohesive. Here's an example from the resource that utilizes both approach tones and enclosures.
As you can see, we use a lot of approach tones and enclosures, but specifically let’s talk about the second measure of this solo on Rhythm changes.
In this bar, we diatonically enclose the b3 of the ii chord, and then at the end of that measure, we chromatically enclose the 3 of the following measure, which is Dm. It’s helpful to practice enclosures with diatonic tones and chromatic tones because they give different levels of voice leading. Something that Kellin likes to practice is going through the form and just trying to approach each root with an approach tone or enclose it just like this.
And eventually, after practicing those approach tones and enclosures, it will turn into something like this.
Rhythmic development
The third concept of the day is rhythmic development. Rhythmic development is what keeps a solo from sounding like a string of licks. We’re all guilty of playing an all eighth note solo, but sometimes when we start to solo, there's so much adrenaline that we just put it all out there.
However, part of the art of improvisation is telling a story, and we do this through intentional phrasing and motivic development. By repeating and varying rhythmic ideas, you can better tell your own story in your solo. Here's an example from the resource—see if you can pick out which ideas we’re repeating and developing.
So as you just heard in that little excerpt, we repeat this idea three separate times.
The first time is just a very simple idea, and then we play it twice more, and each time we kind of change it around a little bit. We can either add a note to it or change the pitches of certain notes, but it's all kind of the same rhythmic idea with certain variations.
Repeating ideas helps develop your solos in a more musical and cohesive way. Some ways that you can practice this with the new resource is taking maybe an idea that Kellin plays in one of her etudes and seeing if you can build upon that. So maybe play one of her ideas, then play one of your ideas that's based off of the idea and go from there.
Another thing that Kellin likes to do is when you're taking a solo is to play an idea at the beginning that you kind of like, move away from it, and then at the end of your solo, if you can remember it and bring it back, it gives your solo this nice, clear beginning and ending.
One more idea that you could do is take one of Kellin’s ideas. You could take a two-bar phrase that Kellin played, and then you could do another two-bar phrase of your own, and go back and forth and kind of trade and see if you can come up with anything new that you like. Thinking rhythmically and motifically like this is really going to help make your phrasing better, and it just makes your playing a little bit more intentional.
Bebop scales
Concept four is all about bebop scales. Bebop scales help you line up chord tones on down beats, which is crucial for blowing over tunes and changes like Rhythm changes. They're a tool for navigating dominant chords and keeping your lines rooted in the basic harmony.
Today we'll be looking at the dominant bebop scale, which adds a chromatic passing tone, also known as the major 7, in between the b7 and the root. Now check out how Kellin uses these scales in conjunction with some of the other concepts.
One of the hardest parts of rhythm changes is the bridge, because there's less harmonic movement than the A sections. Using the bebop scale on the bridge helps you lock into its harmony.
For example, let's go through each of the chords on the B section and play the bebop skill that aligns with it.
We have the bebop scale over the first chord of the bridge, which is D7, then we would move to the G dominant bebop scale,
Then we would move to the C bebop scale, and then to F.
Obviously you wouldn't play these scales exactly, but it's this kind of movement between the major and the flat 7 that gives that bebop sound to some of your lines. The reason why we add an extra note in between the b7 and the root is so that all of the chord tones land on the big beats of the measure. You can use the scale on any three of the chords in a ii-V-I progression, and by adding that extra note between the root and the b7, all of those chord tones are going to land once again on those big beats.
Harmonic substitutions
And finally, for concept five, we're going to look at some harmonic substitutions, things like tritone subs, passing dominants, and altered dominants add color to your lines, and it gives a bit more flexibility, especially over the bridge.
Tritone Substitutions are a great way to do this. A tritone substitution is when you take a dominant chord and switch it out with another dominant chord that is a tritone (or six half steps) away. This works because the two chords share their 3 and 7, except they're flipped. So over the bridge of Rhythm changes in concert key, instead of the typical iii-vi-ii-V progression, you could switch out the dominant chords with chords that are a tritone away—switch the D7 to a G#7. Then the G7 to a C#7. C7, to an F#7 and F7 to a B7. This gives a different color to the bridge and gives us a lot more to work with.
Here's an example from the resource that utilizes this tritone substitution sound.
As you can see in this excerpt from the etude, we’re taking each chord in the bridge and imposing the sound of the tritone. That sounds more complicated than it actually is. The way you can think about it is playing in the key that's a tritone away from the key of the actual chord in the bridge. So for example, in the first two bars of the bridge here, instead of playing that D7 sound, we’re playing more in Ab. In the next two bars, instead of playing in the G7 sound, we’re focusing in the key of Db. Then in the next two bars, we kind of go back to that C7 sound that's actually in the changes.
But once we get to that F7 we’re focusing more on playing in B. The way that we can start doing this is just by playing triads. When you get to the bridge and you have that D7, instead start playing an Ab triad, just to get that sound inside of your ear.
Well that’s all we have for today, but if you want to dive even deeper, make sure to check out our resource 25 Rhythm Changes Etudes, as well as our accompanying YouTube video, If You Can Play Rhythm Changes, You Can Play Anything… (feat. Kellin Hanas).
We’ll see you next time!
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