so i've been working on someday my prince will come and i've gotten to this point of the song
where there's this 2-5-1 turn around on the repeat that takes me back to the top of the head
and it's got this nice static melody note here which offers me an opportunity to maybe sort of
mix it up a bit and break out of the typical routine sort of ways i might play a 2-5-1 and one
great way to do that is by throwing in some upper structures specifically what we're going to try
today is some upper structure chordals so what's going to happen is we're going to take some of the
upper structural chordal concepts that we talked about in our upper structure series uh season
two of our structure portals and we're gonna apply them at random here to see what i can do
to break myself from this sort of musical normalcy bias some of these routines i just kind of maybe
automatically fall into and see what kind of like new ideas might arise from just kind of
using these tried and tested concepts that we teach in our series and more to the point doing
them at random so just like our last video check that out if you haven't done so yet
we're going to lay out here all of the options as it relates to all of the episodes from season two
of upper structure friday's quartals so here i have my seven uh seven upper structures that
pair well with minor seven chords or minor seven flat five if we're going to borrow from minor
and here i have the ten options that pair well with chords in the dominant region specifically
our dominant seven chord and then over here i have the four options four options for upper structures
that go well with our one chord so if i do the math again what i'll get is seven times four
times ten for a grand total of 280 different options that i can get at random so what let's do
this let's throw all these options into our grab bags labeled accordingly to their lower structures
and see what we get if we start grabbing stuff at random so we've gone ahead and thrown all
of our options into their corresponding grab bags here so all of my upper structures that pair well
with minor seven chords uh down here so we're using that as a two minor seven
and again minor seven flat five is always an option as it relates to our two minor seven
because we would be borrowing from minor if we're doing that if you're not clearing how
that works check out our channel we have plenty of videos that explain a lot of harmonic techniques
like borrowing from minor but moving on then we would have our dominant seven chord
uh here that's represented by this back here so all the upper structures that pair well
with dominant seven chords are in this bag and then we're going to end on a one major seven uh
right there so let's go ahead and go into our bag grab at random uh some upper structures and then
plug them out up here relate them to the key that we're in and see what we get so first bag
here we have our our two chord r minor seven or minor seven flat five let's see what do we have
all right so a five four seven over uh a minor seven chord from episode
13 of upper structure fridays season two quartals so that would be let's do this
uh so five uh four seven five four seven over two minor seven next let's go to the dominant
grab bag here and see if we can get something for our five chord and i have i have this a
flat three four seven over dominant seven from episode seven we're going to plug that bad boy
in here flat three oh that is an awful flat side oh my goodness apologies flat three uh four seven
over five seven last but not least our point of resolution the one major seven chord
and we have what do we have seven four seven over major seven from episode 15. all right 747
over a one major seven now if i relate all of this to the key that we're in someday my
prince will come is in b-flat and this is what we'll get let's break this down
let's break this down one chord at a time so the two chord in the key of b flat is c minor seven
the five chord is f seven and our one chord of course is b flat major seven now all the
upper structures we grabbed uh before will look like this what is the five of c g so i need a g
four seven on top of c minor seven that's going to be our our first chord there now the flat
three of f is a flat so an a flat four seven part in the penmanship and lastly our one chord is b
flat major seven we have a seven four seven what's the seven of b flat a so i need an a
four seven over b flat major seven so here we have we have our chord progression mapped out
let's go over to the keyboard and and break this down so first let's take a look at the three upper
structure chordals we got from our grab bags and play them in context as they would relate
to the chord progression that we're applying it to so i have g47 and then a flat four seven
and then a47 so we've actually sort of by chance created a cool little chromatic line here
all of the notes in all three upper structure corals are moving parallel to one another
ascending and when you hear this by itself it sounds very
alien and like it has nothing to do with the original progression remember the original
progression was just a 2 5 1 and b flat right so there's our c minor our c minor 7 our f7
and our b flat major seven and here's what we're going to pair with it
all right so when you hear that at first glance especially in a vacuum or even right after the
251 it's kind of like how is that gonna work and what is it gonna sound like when we put
it together well let's check that out so if i put my my g47 with the c minor seven
so now that that lower structure is offering a little bit more context
which helps us out a lot and then i would move this
here's the uh here's the five chord here's the f7 on the bottom with the a flat four seven on
top and then all that resolves here so when you hear them back to back to back you get
it's pretty awesome so why why does all of this work let's take a look at the chord names
that we get and all the extensions and extra colors we're getting from these upper structure
chordals to answer that so first let's look at our g47 over c minor seven and see what we got here
so i'm playing a root third and seventh on my left hand my c e flat and b flat
and the g47 on the top gives me g c and f so the c that's i'm just doubling the root
there's nothing nothing special there the g is just the fifth of the chord also so we haven't
really done anything crazy yet until i consider the f on top of the upper structure quarter or
however you're voicing it wherever it might be the f is r11 and it's all of this is consistent
with the dorian scale which is usually what informs the two chords so all of this works really
really well and what we're getting at the end of the day with all of this which is up with this
upper structure chordal and my c minor seven on the bottom is just a c minor seven with an 11. so
i took my existing chord and just added some color to it while also revoicing it and when you put it
in context what comes with what comes next it gets even cooler so what's going on here right so here
i have my f7 on my left hand i'm just playing the root third and seventh again f a and e flat
and now we have on top we have an a flat and a d flat and a g flat this is giving us
an altered sound so what i have here is basically an f7 altered i have the sharp 9 up here in my
upper structure coral i've got the flat 9 and i've got a flat 13. so every extension that i'm adding
has been altered and we're going to get into in a minute into the theory of why all of this works
how such a drastic change from the original chord and port scale pairing how that makes sense but
just know for now this is an f altered i've got a flat 9 a sharp 9
and a flat 13. and then when i move my upper structure chordal up again oh that was a flat 7
a flat 7 over f7 by the way let's look at the a47 over b flat so what i have here i'm just playing a
fifth on my left hand the b flat and the f and the upper structure chordal gives me an a a d
and a g so the a is the major seven of the chord uh the d is just the third nothing crazy there
and then what i have up here this g uh is our six so you could probably perceive this chord
one of two ways you could see it as a b flat six with a major seven or a b flat major seven with
a six because basically more often than not a six chord and a major seven often function to
serve the same purpose so what your perspective is as to what you wanna call this chord six with
a seven seven with a six it's really just six in one hand and half a dozen in the other so if you
just want to completely divorce yourself from the theory altogether that's perfectly fine too
because now you know how to do it as it relates to a two five one if you have your two chord
just build your upper structural chordal from the fifth of that chord and then go up chromatically
from there and all the theory is built in well i hope that was useful not not too confusing
and also fun at the same time don't forget a lot of the stuff we're talking about today stems from
our upper structure series of which we have two seasons one completely designated to triads upper
structure triads and the other seasons season two focuses completely on what we were talking about
today upper structural portals both these seasons are currently available as interactive pdfs
complete with video lessons 12 key workouts and demo songs showing you how we use these techniques
over real jazz standards and if you've already purchased these courses or any of our stuff we
really appreciate it it really really helps us continue to make more of this content that
hopefully you guys enjoy and that is useful to you becoming uh the best musician you possibly can be
so having said that like subscribe comment all that good stuff and we'll catch you next time
hey youtube mdx music here and welcome back to another episode of upper structure fridays
a series where we look at how to use upper structures in piano voicings and
improvisation as always make sure to watch the introduction to the series so that you understand