Welcome back as we again go to our mDecks Wheel of Harmony to pick at random one of these 12 harmonic
techniques. So after we pick our technique we'll talk briefly about it describe what it is and
maybe how it works and then pick a jazz standard that we can apply it to and remember it's from the
perspective of these 12 harmonic techniques that we can truly understand how harmony works in jazz,
help us to memorize songs, help us to transpose songs and also re-harmonize on the fly!
All right so let's spin today's wheel and see which harmonic technique we come up with... "line cliches!"
A line cliche is a stepwise melodic line -- ascending or descending -- that modifies a static harmonic progression.
This line can be found on any of the voices but the most common ones are found in the bass.
And while you can use them on major chords, the most often used line cliches are found on
minor chords -- where the root descends stepwise -- you'll often see this in two forms: embedded in
the chord symbols or in the bass expressed as slash chords. Let me show you an example of the
first type of line cliche that I just mentioned one in which the line informs the chord symbols.
So here I have "My Funny Valentine" as shown in our Jazz Standards Progressions Book Volume 1.
So the first four measures are just a one minor chord, but if you look at the chord symbols you
can see that we have C minor as a triad and then C minor major 7, then C minor 7 and finally
C minor 6. When I play these chords -- in order, in root position -- you can clearly see the descending line
C, B, Bb and A in the top of the chords. To clarify the chords don't have to be in
root position, in fact if we play these chords using inversions for example: second inversion
you can still see and hear the line being created. This technique is used by many composers, musicians
and songwriters as a way of taking an otherwise static chord and creating more movement and making
it more interesting. So when looking to apply this technique you should look for a song that contains
several measures of the same chord. So for example in "I Love Paris" -- also found in our Jazz Standards
Progression Book -- I have two places where I see right away where we can use this technique right
in the first three measures of line one and also in the first two measures of line two and there are
two ways of going about this let me show you. So in the first three bars we just see this like static
C minor seven that's staying there the whole time and not really going anywhere or doing anything...
so a great way to mix that up or like we said before impart some movement into that is instead
of just doing C minor seven over and over again we're going to create a line cliche with this
static chord. The first thing i'm gonna do in order to create this line cliche is get rid of the 7
and just start with a regular old C minor triad because I want to use that 7 later within my line cliche.
So what we're going to do to create this line cliche is start like we said with a regular
C minor triad and then go to C minor major 7 and then C minor 7 and then C minor 6
which is really cool because what's gonna happen in the next chord change
is this line is going to continue into one of the notes of the next chord -- D minor 7b5 --
and then we go into our G7b9 right there. So now we're gonna have this...
which is a much more interesting take on these three bars than just...
So you'll notice I have three measures to create this line and yet four chords to do it with so
it's going to require some creativity as it relates to the rhythm to make sure you get the
four chords within the three measures and you'll notice we did that by way of a couple whole notes
in the first two bars and then we switched to a half note rhythm in the third bar which actually
led very nicely into the fourth measure which already had two chords anyway so we're going
to keep using those half notes it's almost like a rhythmic foreshadowing that we created. So be
mindful if you choose to implement this technique of how many beats in which you have to implement
that technique and make sure your rhythm sort of caters to that. So as we mentioned before the other
way of implementing this line cliche technique is doing it in the base. This would give us a bunch
of slash chords: C minor, C minor over B and so on and so on. So now you're going to hear the line
down in the bass on the left hand, this produces the same desired effect of introducing
movement into an otherwise static sort of environment so what we'll get is this...
So what's cool about some of the chords in the progression -- like the D minor 7b5 and
then also the G -- is that I can extend the line cliche into bar 4 if I use
an inversion of the D minor 7b5. So with the bass line that I just played I just got C, B
Bb, A and then I jumped up to the root of D and then back down to the root of G which is
which is fine there's nothing wrong with that but if I want to create a completely stepwise
line all the way down to the G I can because the Ab, that I would need in order to do that,
is in the D minor 7b5. So if I play a D minor 7b5 over Ab I'll get this really nice cool
continual stepwise bass line all the way through that first phrase it'll sound like this...
So now we have an opportunity to use a couple of techniques at the same time to further our intent
of creating a line out of the base. And you can continue this line cliche technique in the base
into line two over the next two bars using that half note rhythm that we talked about earlier.
That's going to do it for today's Wheel of Harmony video. Thanks again for joining us
and come back next time where we explore a new harmonic technique
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