Today we're talking about the classic minor jazz standard softly as in a morning sunrise
we'll take a look at the chords to figure out the most efficient way to learn it as well as
some harmonic secrets within the tune that will help us improvise over it let's do this thing so
softly's in the morning sunrise is a classic jam session jazz standard it's a minor jazz standard
and a really important one to know so if you're not familiar with it here's what it sounds like
so
so that's the two a sections of softly is in morning sunrise now
the melody is really important to learn and i would highly recommend doing it by ear now if
you have no idea how to learn a melody by ear that's completely brand new to you never done
it before then i recommend using my list process for learning jazz standards that stands for listen
internalize sing and transfer and i have a completely free guide that will help you learn how
to do that called learn jazz standards the smart way so you can find that in the description as
well as the show notes but moving on to taking a look at this chords analysis our very first chord
is c minor seven and we also know that is the key of the tune because we have three flats in
the key signature which means that we are in the key of c minor so the very first chord is c minor
we know we're in the key of c minor now let's take a look at the first four bars so we have c minor
followed by a d minor seven flat five g seven flat nine to a c minor seven so d minor seven flat nine
g seven to c minor seven now this is what we call a minor two five one okay now the two five one
most important chord progression and all of jazz really get used to seeing these both in major and
minor keys and always when i'm looking at a minor key i'm looking to see is the two chord a half
diminished chord meaning a minor seven flat five so in our case a d minor seven flat five right and
that way i automatically know that we're dealing with a 2-5-1 and a minor key now often times in
minor keys you'll see an altered extension like a g7 in this case we have a g7 flat 9 but in jazz
it's also important to know that we can do a lot of different things to these chords we could do a
flat 13 chord right we could do a sharp nine chord right uh we could do technically a sharp 11 chord
as well but really any altered extension that resolves back to your one chord right so to start
off the tune all we really have is a one c minor seven two five one and then bar four two five
one okay and we're gonna go back and talk about some alternate changes that we can play over this
in one second but continuing on through the rest of this a section we once again have a d minor
seven a two five one and then we have something called a tritone substitution a flat seven
to g7 which is a five chord going back to our one chord for our second a section okay
so tritone substitution let's talk about what this a flat seventh chord is okay so tritone
substitution is where you're substituting a chord with a dominant seventh chord a tritone interval
away so in this particular case it's a tritone sub of two so remember what is the two chord
in c minor seven we discussed that it's d minor seven flat five so now all we really need to know
is what is a tritone interval away well you can think of it as a flat five or a sharp four-way
so a tritone away from d is a flat okay so hence tritone substitution so we're taking
a dominant seventh chord in this case a flat seven a tritone away from our two chord right
and it works really nicely because we have an a flat seven tritone sub resolves a half step
down to our g7 our dominant 75 chord that resolves to our one chord so we do this a lot actually in
you know in blues right we have this because it really works
it really works to outline that that a flat 7
really makes a bluesy sound so a tritone sub of two is a really great technique that you can learn
in blues okay but let's go ahead and really quickly talk about this first a section right
here because you'll see above the first two bars that i have some alternate changes right because
we have our basic one two five one and that's actually pretty simple as long as you understand
what those chord progressions are it's really just one two five one one two five one we just
have the tritone sub at the end to turn us around back to the second a section right
so fairly simple but what can happen a lot when we're comping or improvising over a tune like
softly's in the morning sunrise is it can all start to sound very monotonous and the same
so it can be helpful to have some substitutions so let's go ahead and go over this first
substitution that we can do and it's very simple so what we can do is go
one then six which is e-flat major seven to two five right so one six two five right
so one six two five one that's one substitution we could do but if you really wanna dig into
the blues another substitution we can do for the one two five is one
flat seven okay it's b flat seven so c minor seven flat seven then the tritone sub of
two that we talked about to the g7 you hear this all the time in blue shuffle stuff like
right so
right we hear this all the time so that's one flat seven tritone sub of two five
to one right so those are some different options that you can play to kind of keep this song fresh
and interesting now by the way totally goes without saying one of the best ways to memorize
this tune and of course not get lost in the sea of one two fives is to really know that melody well
right and if you're able to associate that with each chord
right that was two five to one so associating the melody with chords is a really important thing to
do have playing in the back of your head while you're improvising or comping or whatever you
happen to play on your instrument now looking forward at the second a section because this is
indeed an aaba form we can see that we have a repeat of really the same as the first a
with a little difference at the end so we have one two five one two five one two five one now the
difference though is whenever i'm analyzing chords i always need to know what chord comes before
and what chord comes after right so if i'm looking at the next bar here which is f minor seven b flat
7 to e flat major 7 in the bridge i want to know what the heck does this f minor 7 and
b flat 7 have to do with anything well it's a 2 5 of 3 which is the e flat major seventh chord
which we'll talk about in a second so two five one basically we're making a turn around to go
into the bridge now before we go any further into the song i just wanted to let you know that we
actually do have a very full study of sophomores in the morning sunrise within our ljs inner
circle membership which is where we study new jazz standards every single month including softly as a
morning sunrise we do chords analysis a training video improv exercises we have a composed etude
from our in-house composer to help you start soloing over it and a really awesome community
of other musicians doing it as well so go ahead and check that out i'll leave a link in the
description down below or in the show notes okay so now we move into the bridge and i've actually
color coded this red red being the relative major now it's important to understand what relative
keys are and what relative keys are is when they share the same key signature in this case
three flats right we know that they're relative keys basically they have the same notes in their
scale they're just starting and ending on a different place of the scale so for example
if we are in the key of c minor e flat would be the three chord which is the relative major
if we were in the key of e flat major c minor would be the sixth chord but it's the relative
minor right in this case we're in a minor key so now we're moving to the relative major which is e
flat major now e flat major hangs out for two bars right and by the way the part of the melody is
right that's the melody that we're dealing with so e flat major seven for two bars
then we go to this e diminished seventh we call this the flat two diminished and it's a diminished
substitution for the five of two okay we'll talk about that in one second but the important thing
again when we're looking at chords is what chord comes from before it's e flat then we go to e
diminished and the next chord is f minor seven so if you look at the root bass notes we have
e flat e to f so we call this a passing diminished chord right e flat major 7
e diminished 7 to f minor 7. now looking ahead we also have a g flat diminished chord
after that f minor seven resolving to a g7 chord it's the dominant three chord
basically is what it's acting as okay so in other words the whole bridge is chromatic
moving bass notes however there's a few different ways to understand these diminished seventh chords
right because as we know diminished seventh chords are kind of tricky to improvise over
and by the way i would recommend when you're trying to improvise with diminished seventh chords
really focus on the arpeggios and a better way to think about them than scales
is approaching them with whole steps and half steps the core tone so
so that's a really great way to think about improvising using the chord tones
of diminished chords approaching them with half steps and whole steps instead of thinking about
playing them as a scale but really when we actually look at an e diminished seventh
it's actually very similar if not the same as the five chord of f minor seven which is c7
so c7 is the five of f minor seven right so e flat diminished seven
is like playing a c seven flat nine so if you want you could actually think of this as
e flat major seven to c seven f minor seven to d7 which is the 5 of g7 so the g flat diminished 7
is really the same as a d7 flat 9. so that could really help with your improvisation
right think about it as a five chord or
right that was like a d7 altered to your g7 right so thinking about them as five chords is another
way to go about it if you don't want to play the diminished seventh chords right but these are
just some strategies to think about when you're learning the tune and understanding harmonically
how they work together now of course we end the bridge with a two five back to c minor seven so
d minor seven flat five g seven back to c minor seven and again the beauty of an aaba song form
is that once you learn one a and you learn the variation at the end of the second day
you now know 75 of the tune because the last a is pretty much the exact same as the first day
we have one two five one two five one two five one and then that tritone sub to turn us back
around to the top so we can start improvising so the next natural question is how do i actually
go about improvising over softly as in a morning sunrise so on the screen right now i have a video
that talks about how to go from amateur to pro level jazz solos i'm going to give you some very
specific strategies that should help you in your journey towards becoming a better jazz improviser
so go ahead and check that out on the screen right now if you like this video make sure you
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