Hi I'm Jamie Anderson and you're watching Get Your Sax Together. I sax
up every Sunday for you with free online saxophone lessons to help improve your
technique, improvise great solos and learn your favourite songs. On this week's show
you're gonna learn what a two five one chord sequence is and how to get started
improvising on it. Last year, I didn't cover much jazz on the channel as I
mistakenly thought that most people would be interested in other stuff.
However, after all you generous people filled in my quiz recently (you know who
you are, and thank you) I realised that the majority of my audience IS
interested in jazz. If you're NOT interested in playing jazz, fear not,
there's still gonna be loads of funk soul pop and rock stuff as usual,
it's just that I'm gonna throw in more jazz on top, which is GREAT, because
amongst other things, I'm a TOTAL jazz head! If you're new to the channel, make
sure you go and pick up my special free gift to you, which is a one hour
Saxophone Success Masterclass - jam packed with everything I know about sax that I could fit into sixty minutes. It's a totally insane giveaway suitable for beginners
on sax right up to advanced players. Just click the link in the description
for the video or go to www.getyoursaxtogether.com/master class Also, there's a free
pdf cheat sheet for this lesson covering everything you're going to learn today
and you can get that from the link in the description as well. All good in the
hood, let's crack on with a lesson now, and make sure you keep watching to the
end because I've got a great bonus for you oooh! Today's goal is to learn the
basics of two five ones, so the first question is - what IS a two five one? To
answer this I'm gonna jump behind the screen for this lesson... First of all if
you haven't already you DEFINITELY need to go and watch at LEAST the first two
videos in my four-part series on basic music harmony. These videos will explain
all about scales keys and chords. The card for that playlist is above now.
If you haven't watched them, even if you think you already know what you're
talking about, pause this video now, go and watch them, then come back.
So now that you're up to speed on the basics - here's a C major
scale. If we call C number one, D number two, E number three, and so on, we get this...
But in music we use Roman numerals to label each degree of the scale. This
makes it look like this... Roman numerals are the numbers we're
talking about when we say "two", "five" and "one". The two five and one just means the
second, fifth, and first degree of the major scale of the key you're in.
Next, only using notes from the C major scale we stack up 7th chords on each scale
degree. This just means we make a chord going up in thirds on each scale note. It
looks and sounds like this...
Let's take away all the cords apart from the two five and one chords. Seeing
as you've already watched the first two lessons from a harmony series, you'll now
know that the cords were left with our D minor seven, G seven and C major seven. That my friend
is a two five one chord sequence in C major and, with the chords just played in root
position it sounds like this...
If we redistribute those exact same notes across different octaves it sounds
like this...
So to recap then, a two five one chord sequence uses chords built on the second, fifth and
first note of the major scale of the key you're using, with all the chord notes
coming from that home major scale. The two chord is a minor seven the five chord is a
dominant seven and the one chord is a major seven. Simple as that...
So now we know what a two five one IS, but why do we use it? The answer is explained in part three of my
music harmony series (linked on the card above), so the easiest thing to do is to
go and watch that video now. However, just to quickly summarise it here, chord one of
the home key always sounds very final and doesn't want to go anywhere,
whereas chord five of the key feels like it wants to resolve to chord one.
That creates tension. You can almost feel it physically in your body.
Those dissonant notes just LONG to resolve, and when they do you can breathe
a sigh of relief and all's well in the world. This tension and release is the
basis of all Western music harmony. We can preempt the extreme tension of the
five chord by using a two chord. This sets up the five chord. In rock-and-roll
and classical music this two chord is usually a four chord.
So that's why we use two five one chord sequences. This particular combination of
chords creates a bit of tension with the minor seven "two" chord, then A LOT of tension
with the dominant seven "five" chord, which then resolves in a satisfying way to the home
major seven chord of the key. This incremental tension and release gives
shape and structure to almost every melody in the jazz standard repertoire
and much more besides. To understand and recognize two five ones is to hold the
keys to the kingdom of jazz standards. Make sure you get familiar with this
stuff in all twelve keys, plus the two five ones in minor keys as well. Then suddenly,
instead of seeing a sea of disconnected chords you'll see clusters of two five
ones in various keys. For example, here's a jazz standard, A Weaver of
Dreams. I've highlighted the chords that DON'T fit into some variety of two five
one. As you can see, there's only two chords in the whole thirty-two bar
sequence that don't fit into some form of major or minor two five one.
We'll cover more advanced two five one stuff, like minor two-fives
and three six two five ones, in a later lesson, but today is all about the basics.
And what you REALLY need to know is what to play on this chord sequence when
you're improvising. As you can imagine you could spend the rest of your life
exploring what to play on two fives, but let's just cover three tips that will
give you the biggest bang for buck, and here they are... Number one - use the notes
of each chord. Number two - join up the notes of the chord with the major scale
of the key and Number three - use enclosures to frame chord notes.
So first up, tip number one - use chord notes. This is as easy as pie. You just
use the four notes from each chord of the sequence and jumble them up to
create a new line. For example, if you're in C you would use D F A and C for the D
minor seven chord, G B D and F for the G seven chord and C E G and B for
C major seven chord. I'll give you a quick demo of that now...
Next, tip number two, you can start on one of those chord notes and use the notes of the home major scale to
travel to other chord notes. Here's an example of that...
Finally, tip three - using enclosures. This is what really gets you sounding like a
jazz musician, but it's a bit more complicated. In a nutshell, you choose a
chord note, but before you hit that note, you play the scale note above and below,
or vice versa. This would be called a diatonic enclosure, which means enclosing
the chord tone with notes from the home major scale. A variation on this is to
use the CHROMATIC notes above and below the chord note. This is known as a
chromatic enclosure. Finally, you can enclose your chosen code
note with TWO notes above and below, again either chromatically or diatonically.
Doing all this in theory is fine, but to really use enclosures well you need
to transcribe great bebop and hard bop players. Go to the card linked above to
learn how to transcribe. They've done the hard work of sifting through all the
various combinations of diatonic and chromatic enclosures to get the best
ones, so I just copy them if I were you. Here's an example of using enclosures...
Here's what to do if you want to learn how to improvise on two five ones then...
First - learn what the chords are for two five ones in all the keys, or at least
most of the main ones. Second - get super familiar with the chord notes for each
of those two fives. It's important to target the right chord notes if you want
to sound convincing. Finally transcribe some hard bop
players and see what THEY do, to get familiar with how to use enclosures etc.
I promised you there would be a great bonus, and here it is. I'm going to give
you five great two five one licks to get you started. To make it simple they're all
played on tenor, in C, but make sure you learn the licks
and start transposing them through every key. Each example emphasises one of the
tips we've learned. Remember to go into the description and click the link to
get your PDF which has everything from the lesson as well as these licks. Here we go...
So that's it for this week. I hope I've helped you clear some of the fog surrounding
two five ones. I can't do any of the hard practice for you, but at
least I can show you the way! Don't forget to watch my free is Saxophone
Success Masterclass linked in the description and pick up your free PDF
for this lesson. I really appreciate you watching this channel and you can
continue to support me by leaving me a comment, like and subscribe,
ring the bell icon and visit my socials - insta and Facebook. Next week it's back
to a solo breakdown - Michael Brecker's iconic solo on Still Crazy After All
These Years by Paul Simon. Until then, enjoy you two fives and I'll see you later.
If you're new to the channel... I can't do that with my nose in the middle of a take come off it
just click the link in ...arghhh!!