Okay so we've got all of the upper structures from Season 1 broken down here on these three
bags. So basically each one of these pieces of paper represents an episode from Season 1 and
the three types of chords we use in season 1 to apply upper structures too, so our minor sevens and
our minor7b5 here, upper structures that go well with dominant seventh chords here and
then other upper structures that pair well with major seven chords here and the upper structures
are on the cards what we're going to do, is basically throw these these upper structures
into the corresponding bags and pull them out at random later to show you how we can apply these
upper structures to these three chords. So here on the minor7b5 bag, I've got five
separate options that we can pick and choose from -- all corresponding with 5 episodes from
Season 1 -- So we're going to throw those in the bag there, mix them up and I got my eleven upper
structures that correspond with dominant seven chords here, gonna throw those in there, and then
the four upper structures that go with the major seven chord there. So let's break this down a
little bit here on our board right so we had our two, our iim chord -- also from time from time
to time might be a minor7b5 -- then we've got -- I'm going to use a brighter color for
more tension on the dominant region -- we've got our V7 here and this will all resolve
eventually on a nice cool one major7. So the reason I just I didn't really at random pick a
ii-V-I, right. If I'm looking at these lower structures that we're pairing the upper
structures with, it kind of automatically spells out a ii-V-I progression a minor7 a
dominant 7 and a major7. So for the purposes of this exercise we're going to apply
it too ii-V-I, but as you'll see later we don't have to these are gonna work really
well with a ton of different chords and if I consider -- do some math real quick -- if I consider
the five upper structures that will be in that bag and the eleven upper structures that will be
in the dominant 7 bag and the four that we said that are in the major7 bag and we do
"The Maths" we get two hundred and twenty options with just three chords and the upper structures
that we compare with them. So let's see what we can do with this let's go over to the piano and
pick at random from the bag while blindfolded some of these chords and then play them and see
what they sound like. All right so let's pick at random any upper structure that pairs well with
a minor7 chord or a minor7b5. A quick note about that so yeah we can use the
minor7b5 don't forget because we can always borrow from minor and since we're targeting
a major7 chord -- or a major chord in this case -- that's effectively what we would be doing if I
were to play an upper structure on top of a minor7b5 we would just be borrowing from
minor for a split second, but that's why you see both of those chord symbols as lower structures
on this back as an option. So let's go ahead and randomly pick an upper structure for the minor7
let's see here... we get... from episode 9: five minor over minor seven, so let's think about that
here. So five minor over up in this case because of our progression a two minor 7th chord alright
let's keep going here let's get all them out of the bag first and then we'll write out the actual
progression on the board so what's going to go on top of our dominant 7 chord -- our five chord in
this case -- we have a alright a major six chord over the dominant seven chord so that would be
major six over dominant seven. One more so we're here's our major seven chord this is our targets
let's see.. what do we get here.. from episode 5 a major five chord on top of our major seven chord
which in this case is our one. All right so if we if we were to do this in C what we were to
get here what's the two of C -- et's write out the actual progression first -- so we would be going
D minor, G7, C major7. So there's our ii-V-I in C. Let's do the upper structures now of
those based on our random choices. Alright so the five of D is A, that means I'm doing an A minor
over D minor (cool voicing). The six of G is E and it's a major chord so I'm remember I'm playing
E major over G7 and the five of C is G. So there we go: A minor over D minor, E over G7 and G over C.
Let's check out what this actually sounds like. So before we actually play the progression in
its entirety, let's take a second and listen and look at what these upper structures these
triads we found, at random from our bags, would sound like in a vacuum by themselves...
very... very weird almost disparate like they have nothing to do with one another because
I mean they really don't, not in not in that context anyways. So we're gonna see
now what this progression sounds like with the connective tissue that is these original ii-V-I
chords that those lower structures remember we're using a ii-V-I right now but
you can do these on top of a lot of other progressions on a lot of other
chords besides just a ii-V-I. So D minor, with the A minor on top, so we have this... and then...
Ah! That makes much more sense, right. It sounds really cool and now you can
see how those seemingly disparate sounds are all tied together and what it does to
the voicings in the color it can add and the separate sort of context it creates...
(ROOF!!!)
So while yes like on their own they sound out of context and weird, but when you hear them with the
ii-V-I chords with the D minor and the G7 and the C, you can see the extra texture and color
these upper structures provide us and how it's a really sort of easy way to kind of make the
chord sound more jazzy if you will right so let's listen to it again so A minor, E, G -- using inversions
now to make the voice leading a little smoother to right -- so I'm going a root position A minor,
first inversion E and then a root position G on my right hand and something else we'll
talk about later how to voice these course to create the desired effect of either whether you
want to use smooth voice leading or something else. So here there here's the chords again right...
Really cool! Great, great texture great color and there's that jazzy sound we were talking about.
So to illustrate how flexible this idea of using upper structure triads on top of chords is, I
got a Real Book out here we got "Misty" and we're gonna just look at the first four bars and take
everything we just at random grabbed from those grab bags and apply it to all of the chords in
the first four bars of "Misty" because all we have in the first four bars of mystery, uh "Misty"
is major7 chords, minor7 chords and and dominant 7th chords. So not only can we apply
the idea of upper structures to this, we can use exactly what we grabbed at random and wrote on the
whiteboard earlier to all of these chords in the first four bars of "Misty." So taking the three types
of chords we're playing our upper structures on top of that we talked about earlier in the video
the major7, the minor7 and the dominant 7, we see our first chord in "Misty" is a major
seventh chord, so that's going to correlate really nicely with the major five chord on top of that.
So we have Eb major7 -- five major on top of that -- that's going to give us Bb. So Bb on
top of Eb major7. All right so now on the downbeat of measure two we have a minor 7th chord
that's when we're using our five minor so in this case we have F minor over Bb minor7. So
on the third beat of the same measure, we see our first instance of a dominant 7 chord -- Eb7 --
this is when we use the six major remember earlier for random grab-bag experiment so we have
a six major that's going to give us a C. So C over Eb7. On the downbeat measure three we go
back to the major7 chord we have an Ab major7 so that's a five major over Ab major7
-- Eb over Ab major7-- and then we moved to an Ab minor7 there's our
five minor upper structure so we get Eb minor over Ab minor7 remember the five of Ab
is Eb, that's so we're basing all of these upper structures. All right so five minor -- the fifth of
Ab: Eb -- then we're gonna go to in the same measure a dominant seven chord -- Db7 -- so
there we use the six major, so the sixth of Db is Bb. I got my Bb major chord on top and my
Db7 on the bottom and we're gonna go into the next measure and resolve this harmony with an
Eb major7 so there's my major7 chord again, we're gonna go five major -- the five of Eb
is Bb -- so I got a Bb major triad on top of Eb major7 and if we put all that
together, let's see what it sounds like...
And as you can see, it works perfectly and with little
to no effort once you understand which upper structures pair with which chords... "Always substitute an
altar of chord -- a b9 -- with another altered chord -- a #9 -- and that's exactly what we're gonna do today..."
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stay up to date with the current content and we'll catch you next time... "D47 over E minor7b5, which also
sounds as a C7(9) chord, which could be used as a substitute for the A7 under the tritone system!
The whole point is that you look at upper structures from different perspectives each
perspective will open up different doors. Any of these ways of thinking is useful..."