(upbeat jazz music)
- I'm Adam Maness
and you're listening to the "You'll Hear It" podcast,
daily jazz advice coming at ya'.
Coming at ya' solo today
because Peter is in Europe and I'm here in St Louis.
I think he's gonna be checking in a little bit,
next week with his own versions on the road,
of the "You'll Hear It" podcast.
But this week, I am going to take the helm at the piano
with some solo versions,
and I want to do something a little bit different.
I want to do a brief series of basic jazz theory
called, "How Does That Work?"
And today is our first edition,
and this will be all about altered dominant chords.
How does that work?
I'm gonna tell you.
So, altered dominant chord might be a term
that you've heard before.
Maybe you know all about them,
if so you can press next, to the next one.
But if you want a refresher on them, and how to use them,
and how to create them, you're at the right place.
Well, let's start with, what is a dominant chord?
So a dominant chord is a seventh chord.
So if we're in the key of C, you would see C7.
(piano music)
Right, it's that sound.
Now we call these dominant chords because they usually lead
to the tonic, right? (piano music)
This is kind of the second strongest chord
in any given key, (piano music)
and they resolve just beautifully
(piano music)
to the I of a key.
Whether that's major or minor. (piano music)
So a dominant seventh chord is built off of the root
of the fifth degree of the Ionian scale,
for instance, in the major key.
So if we're in the key of F,
it's C, E, G, and then B flat, (piano music)
Right, because we're in the key of F.
(piano music)
Now in jazz, we like to throw in extensions
on most of our chords.
So we're not satisfied with this.
(piano music)
We like to add in the ninth,
(piano music)
and then we like to go even further
with the eleventh. (piano music)
Except on the dominant chord, we like to sharp it.
(piano music)
This is our first altered dominant chord,
because F sharp is not in the key of F major, obviously.
It's not in the C Mixolydian scale.
(piano music)
Right?
Which is what we've built this on so far,
we've built it on the Mixolydian scale, right?
And so when we add the eleventh, the sharp eleventh,
now we're out of that sound and it's an altered dominant,
because it's altered from it's original scale.
We also like to add the thirteen,
so here's the natural thirteen.
Now often you hear this very voicing,
C, E, B flat, we leave out the fifth completely,
nine, D, sharp eleven, F sharp,
and thirteen, A.
(plays chord) Alright this is called
a C seven sharp eleven,
or C thirteen sharp eleven if you want to get very,
very specific.
But often times you'll see C seven sharp eleven and
it's perfectly great to play this.
(C7#11 chord)
Right?
So, within any altered dominant chord,
basically any of the extensions: the ninth, the eleventh
or the thirteenth, can be altered.
The ninth can go either way, sharp or flat.
So here's what a C seven sharp nine sounds like.
(C7#9 chord)
You've heard that before right?
This is a really interesting chord because
you have both the E and the E flat, right?
The major third and the minor third,
only it's the sharp nine.
Now you can't have an E flat in this C seven,
and call it a sharp nine,
unless you have an E natural somewhere in the chord.
If not, it's just a minor chord,
because that is just the third, right?
So you have to have, for it to be an E seven sharp nine,
you have to have the E natural in there somewhere
so that it's a dominant chord.
And you've heard this all... (piano riff)
Jimmy Hendrix.
But especially in jazz, you know?
Duke Ellington loved these chords.
So that's the sharp nine, now you can also have
the flat nine, right? (C7b9 chord)
So C...
C, E, B flat and D flat.
Now we can add the thirteen to this,
and the sharp eleven,
and this is a C thirteen sharp eleven flat nine.
Now you're saying, "Adam why would you ever use that?"
Well this is built off of... (arpeggiated chord)
the half whole diminished scale,
which is a great scale to use going to your one.
(arpeggiated chord to tonic)
So this C seven flat nine sharp eleven with
a natural thirteen,
C, E, B flat, D flat, F sharp, A,
is just a really great altered dominant chord
and scale off that half whole. (scale)
Half step, whole step starting on C,
going to F.
(piano doodling)
Right?
Sounds great, you've heard that sound a million times.
(combs chord)
Very common, C seven flat nine sharp eleven with a
natural thirteen.
And it sounds more complicated than it is, really.
it's just those are the altered extensions, right?
The ninth, the eleventh and the thirteenth.
Thirteenth is the only one that's natural,
the eleventh is sharp and the ninth is flat.
Okay, another altered dominant we can do is the
sharp nine, flat thirteen.
(C7#9b13 chord)
Right?
So pianist often think of this as like an A flat triad
over a C seven.
We have C, E, B flat, and then like put an A flat triad
over there, it sounds just great.
Now this is based on the altered scale.
(altered scale)
Which is based off the seventh degree of a D flat
melodic minor.
Easy way to think of it is the melodic minor
from a half step above your root, your C.
So D flat melodic minor starting on C.
C, D flat, E flat, E natural, G flat, A flat B flat, C.
Right, so this is...
This chord is called the sharp nine flat thirteen,
but it's based off of the altered scale.
And it's close to our last, our final altered dominant,
and really our most, kind of crunchy one.
Which is the C seven altered. (dissonant altered chord)
Now the altered is all of the altered extensions.
So we have, and it's based off,
again, off the altered scale.
(altered scale)
So we have flat nine, sharp nine, sharp eleven,
flat thirteen. (Groomed chord)
All those in any combination. (piano doodling)
So when you see C seven alt, that's what that means.
It means that all of those upper extensions,
the ninth, the eleventh, and the thirteenth,
are altered.
The ninth is both flatted and sharped,
The eleventh is sharped,
And the thirteen is flat.
By the way the ninth is the only one that can be both
flatted and sharped.
The eleventh is almost always sharped and the thirteenth
is almost always flat.
If the thirteenth was sharped it'd just be
the dominant seven.
An altered dominant chord wouldn't make sense
to have two B flats in there, you already have it,
it's represented.
So that's altered dominants, how do they work.
I hope you enjoyed it.
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And until tomorrow, you'll hear it.
(music plays louder)