So how do you master the seemingly difficult but important jazz song form rhythm changes well today
i'm going to show you eight simple steps to do exactly that coming up rhythm changes is a common
song form used in jazz it's based off of george gershwin's i got rhythm but artists like charlie
parker sonny rollins and many others have created melodies over top of this important song form and
therefore it's really important to know if you want to be a great jazz musician jazz improviser
and really if you master rhythm changes it's gonna help you in all of the rest of your other jazz
playing so step number one is to learn the chords and understand them now this might seem like an
obvious first step but honestly we're not gonna be great improvisers if we don't really know
these chord changes really well and understand how they harmonically work so taking a look at rhythm
changes we're looking actually at the head olio but these are just the chord changes here so we
have b flat major 7 g7 c minor 7 and f7 and that's a one six two five chord progression and now this
is super super important that you understand what that means we're in the key of concert
b flat major and what we're essentially saying is that the six chord within the key center of b flat
major is g now we're making it a g7 that's called a secondary dominant meaning that it's tonicizing
this c minor the two chord but in general the g in rhythm changes is going to be a dominant seventh
chord the the sixth chord so b flat major seven g seven c minor seven is the two chord and f seven
is the five chord if you understand roman numeral analysis this is gonna be super helpful moving on
we have d minor seven which is the three chord to a g7 the six and then a two and a five again
now going back to bar five now we go back to our one chord that's b flat major and then we do some
blues harmony here so we go one to the four which is e flat seven to this e diminished seven that's
a sharp four diminished blues harmony right there and then a one six two five this is the main chord
progressions that are in rhythm changes so while rhythm changes is a 32 bar form just knowing these
eight bars is pretty much going to get you 75 percent of the way there we go on to the second
a section here which is bars 9 through 16 and really it's just a repeat of the first a section
other than just ending on a 2-5-1 to kind of end out that phrase now going into the bridge is where
it gets kind of fun and interesting instead of a billion chords going by we actually have chords
that last two bars each so we start with this d7 which is actually just a dominant three chord
to a g7 which is that dominant six chord we've been talking about from the a sections
to the c7 which is a dominant 2 chord to f7 the 5 chord so basically all we're doing is we're doing
a 3 6 2 5 we're just making them all dominant seventh chords so this really provides a challenge
for improvising over because you have these stagnant dominant seventh chords that don't really
move quickly so you have to figure out some creative musical solutions to play over top
of these now finishing off the tune is the last a section which is essentially just a copy of the
first a section so again as long as you know these a sections you're pretty much going to be most of
the way there to understanding how rhythm changes works step number two is to learn a rhythm changes
head now there are tons of melodies we call them heads for rhythm changes you have charlie
parker heads like anthropology and you have a head like this which is oleo by sonny rollins
right so you want to learn a rhythm changes head olio is a great one ultimately you want
to repeat this step over many many different times i think it's a good idea to have in your arsenal
at least five rhythm changes heads that you're able to play and not only is this important to
be able to play the melody to rhythm changes to actually perform the tune but there's actually
a lot of great musical information involved in these especially if you learn bebop heads
like anthropology and so on and so forth over top of rhythm changes so learn a rhythm changes head
and repeat this process over many different times now step number three is where we really have to
start tackling the problem of how do we actually improvise over these really fast moving chord
progressions right because this is really the hardest part what i hear from a lot of students is
how do you improvise over chords that are going by this fast do i play every single note what do
i do i can't play this quickly i can't think this quickly well we need to start breaking it down and
so step number three is to learn and memorize and really ingrain the chord tones okay so the chord
tones are the first place i always start with improvising because really at the end of the day
they are the core structures of the chords that we're trying to play so if we get really good at
chord tones we're gonna be really really well off just take a look at this first two bars of this
chord tone map it's b flat major seven g seven c minor seven f seven that's that one six two
five chord progression that just repeats itself all the time so we really need to master this in
rhythm changes and so all we're gonna do is start by walking up that b flat major seven arpeggio so
root third fifth seventh right root third fifth seventh and then what i want to do is i want to
connect this to the nearest chord tone of the g7 the six chord and in this particular case
i'm going to choose the note g that's the root so now we're going to go root to the seventh
to the fifth to the third okay so locking them down and i like to do it this way
we call this voice leading because really when we're improvising we're not just going
up the arpeggios like that from the root on up we're trying to
connect lines and melodies together so this is a good exercise to do so
now up that c minor seven i'm going to connect it right here to the root again because it's
a close tone so we have c which is the root and the third the fifth and the seventh
and then i'm going to connect to this f7 the v chord with this a natural note okay so a natural
that's the third so we're gonna go third root seventh and then fifth okay so all in all the
way i've played these chord tones over top of this one six two five sounds like this
right and even just by playing this you can already hear the chord changes
starting to come out if your guitar player like me play this in a couple different positions
if you're a saxophone player trumpet player piano player play these in different octaves
as well and also figure out different ways that you can connect chord tones together so for
example instead of starting on the root like we do on the b flat major seventh you could actually
start on the third and build out and connect the chord tones that way so the better you get at this
the easier it's going to be for you to start navigating these fast moving chord changes
now step number four is to master guide tones over rhythm changes so guide tones are the
thirds and the sevenths of each chord and the reason why i always like to tell my students to
focus on guide tones at some point in time is because these are the notes that we want to be
thinking about resolving to in our solos they're really the notes that will make the chord changes
pop it's like putting spice into your food or salt right it's really going to make the flavors pop
and that's kind of what guide tones do as well so it's not necessarily that we want a solo like this
but we want to get into the habit of being able to identify them on our instrument so that we're
comfortable starting to create lines around these guide tones so for example again over the first
two bars b flat major sevens g seven c minor seven f seven the third
is going to be d over top of that b flat major seven and then we have a which is the
seventh so third seventh and then we're going to connect up using voice leading to the g7 we're
gonna go up to the b natural and that's the third so we're gonna go third seventh over the g7 so
and then over the c minor seven we have this e flat note so that's the third
and then b flat is the seventh and then over the f7 we have a two
e flat right so that's the third to the flat seven so it sounds like this
again play this in different octaves play this in different positions depending on what instrument
you play but just getting into the habit of identifying these not only does this take your
note choices way down so you have to worry about playing a bunch of notes over these
chords it's going to help you start thinking about important notes to resolve to now step
number five is to get really good at using approach notes okay so instead of thinking about
scales or big long linear things to play over top of rhythm changes it's way more
beneficial to think about what are those important notes those chord tones of those
guide tones and how do i approach them in order to start creating musical lines so
again just taking a look at these first two bars on this approach tone map we actually
study it in our rhythm changes accelerator course in our inner circle membership we see that we have
these arrows and these represent what our target notes are so target notes are simply the notes
that we want to resolve to so you'll notice that oftentimes these are really just chord tones
or guide tones that we're trying to target which is why we studied those but what we're going to do
is use approach tones so really any note in this is an approach tone of approach tone is just
approaching a target note but i like to really focus on the two notes that come before it right
so in this particular case we have this b flat major 7 to this g7 so we have f g a c b natural so
okay so we're targeting this b natural that's the third over g7 by going a c b and you'll notice
that the a is lower in pitch than our target note and the c is higher in pitch than our target note
we call this enclosure that's a really common approach tone strategy that be boppers use so
okay then our next approach tone is here
and we have above below and arriving with an f and a d and an e so it sounds like this
okay again we call this an enclosure so starting from the b flat major we have
and then we're arriving at this a natural over the f7 okay the a natural again that's
the third of the f7 so that's our target note and we approach it with a g and a b
so below and above approaching this target note so this entire line sounds like this
okay so you can hear we're already starting to turn these chord tones and these guide tones
into actual musical lines when we're using approach tones whether they're diatonic or
chromatic so so far we've been really focusing on the theoretical side of improvising the technical
side which is really important it's really helpful but at the end of the day we really need to start
learning some actual language to play over top of the chord progressions of rhythm changes so
that's why step number six is actually to learn a rhythm changes solo now you can learn an etude
like this particular etude that we study in our rhythm changes accelerator course in our
inner circle membership or you can learn a solo off of a recording that you really like now you
can also learn smaller bits of information like just over top of this 1625 if you want to right
because that's going to be a really powerful line to learn now for example this could be
really handy when we come to the bridge right here like with the d7 that's our three dominant chord
and then the g7 right our dominic six chord and what kind of musical lines can we play
over top of this so a good idea is to go to a pro and really hear what some good
lines sound like to give yourself some ideas here's what this particular line sounds like
right over top of that three and over top of that six so really nice beautiful line
super melodic lots of approach tones in there lots of core tones in there
so really interesting and you don't even at this step need to analyze it if you don't want to right
it's more just like getting it in your ear and internalizing
it and sure if you want taking it to other keys to further internalize it
but you can also analyze it for example that c sharp at the end on that g7 is actually the
sharp 11. so we're actually targeting instead of a chord tone in this example we're targeting an
altered extension that sharp 11. so when we start analyzing yes we can start understanding better
what this musician's doing but more importantly is exposing ourselves to these different ideas
so that they can come out hopefully in our solos later speaking of getting these ideas to come out
in our solos later step number seven is to compose your own rhythm changes solo now this is something
i always recommend to my students in my inner circle because we really want to focus on slowing
the improvisation process down allowing ourselves to take the things that we've learned right like
in our core tone maps or our approach tones or our etudes that we're learning and actually
make them into our own musical melodic ideas and by slowing the improvisation process down
it gives us the opportunity to do that i would recommend actually composing a 32 bar solo over
top of the form like for example over the 1 6 2 5 i might come up with a melodic idea like this
right it's just a very simple
maybe that's something that i'm hearing in my head so by composing that not necessarily writing
down but at least memorizing it starts to allow them that music that you're hearing in your head
to come out onto your instrument and solidify it for yourself now step number eight is just
to practice improvising over rhythm changes a lot so after we've done all of this work this
heavy lifting we just need to expose ourself and allow ourself to make mistakes as much as
possible over top of rhythm changes so that we can learn from those mistakes so that we
can continually get used to navigating these waters which are rhythm changes and so if we're
not actually going out and improvising putting on backing tracks going out with other people
and playing rhythm changes we're not going to be getting as good at it as we possibly could or at
least not as quickly as we would like to but hey going back and speaking of learning solos
of rhythm changes i always recommend actually doing it by ear if you really truly want to
get that stuff internalized for yourself so i have a video on the screen right now it's
called how to learn a jazz solo by ear step by step i walk you through my entire process
of doing that to make it as easy as possible and yes you can absolutely do so click that
on the screen right now to watch that video make sure you like this video if you found it
valuable make sure you subscribe to the channel and we'll see you in the next video cheers