Welcome to our Decoding Jazz Standard Series and we're studying Alice In Wonderland. By the
end of this unit, you will be able to play this song by memory and in any key!
Not only that, you will also have a bunch of harmonic techniques to re-harmonize the song in real time.
So with Unit 1 we're going to be using Alice In Wonderland to learn a bunch of concepts in
harmony so that you can not only learn how to play Alice In Wonderland and transpose it into any key,
but also to use these new harmonic perspectives to approach any jazz standard let's take a listen...
So with Unit 1 we're going to dissect and break down the most fundamental aspect
of this song or any song really and that's the bass line. So our
song's in the key of C and uh so you're gonna see all the notes in the C scale...
show up in this initial seven measures, we're gonna break down the first seven measures
to start talking about the baseline, and if you do that what you're going to see are a D, G, C
F, B, E and A, which are all of the notes in the C scale. Not in a linear fashion mind you, not
in a way we're normally used to seeing a scale but rather superimposed onto the
circle of fifths. So in Tessitura Pro here we have exactly that, we have our S scale mapped around
the circle of fifths and you'll see exactly what's going on in the first seven measures
of Alice in Wonderland if you see the C scale from this perspective. So you'll see
D and then one note over, G, and then another note over, C, F and then across the graph, B,
E, A and then we're back to where we started it again on that D It's also helpful to see
this scale by way of the scale degrees. So now what we do, if we start on D, we can start on any note
really but our song starts on D, we see it now from this perspective of 2 5 1 4 7 3 6 and then back to 2
D G C F B E A D ... g c f b e a... So one thing worth noting is that all of these intervals are fifths
as we travel counter clockwise around the circle except for the F to the B, you see that diagonal
line connecting F to B across the circle of fifths. This is a "tritone" and this always happens
between, we look at the notes again by way of the scale degrees, between the four and the seven of
any major scale. This is worth noting because as we spoke about earlier we're going to be trying
to transpose this piece or be able to play it in any context, in any setting, in any key, at any time
and these perspectives of seeing the purpose or the functions of the notes and the harmony
is really important so i'd like to make that connection between the four and
the seven of the scale being a tritone and then every other note on the circle of fifths being a fifth.
So this idea of following the notes of a scale around the circle of fifths is really crucial
to our song, especially when we start on the 2. All sorts of really cool things happen when you
do that, like 2 5 1's or 6 2 5 1's or 3 6 2 5 1's all are a consequence
of this idea, of following notes of a scale around the circle of fifths. So you could see
I guess from one perspective that learning this bass pattern is essential to learning
Alice In Wonderland. But, this bass line is not a consequence of us learning Alice In Wonderland
it's actually the opposite. This sort of movement in the bass is so fundamental
and so important you're going to see it in so many other songs which is why we're going to
suggest that you learn all 12 of your major scales in this fashion: so you take the notes of any scale,
start on the 2, and then just follow the notes of the scale around your circle that fifths...
So the issue with this is it's seven notes so it's kind of weird so we're going to round it
out a little bit and make it eight measures via eight notes by just doing this one simple thing.
We're gonna go D G C F B E A and as an approach to get back to the beginning again, to get back to
the D, to get back to the 2, we're going to approach it by way of a half step from above...
So that'll give us a nice round eight measure exercise and a nice even number of notes...
Let's try the same exact pattern in the key of Eb: 2 5 1 4 7 3 6
and then we're going to approach the 2 by way of a half step from above
and then rinse and repeat the pattern again and again. We have a related video that you guys can
check out, we have a play-along content that you can do this workout in all 12 keys check that out...
So now we're going to go to our mDecks wheel of harmony and randomly pick one of these
harmonic techniques see if it exists in our song and if it doesn't we're going to find a place
where we can apply it and remember it's from the perspective of these harmonic techniques
that you can truly understand your music, which will allow you to memorize it, play it in any
key, or reharmonize it on the fly! So let's spin the wheel and see what we end up with this time...
Sub V7. All right the sub V7! Let's go work on this. So you can always find a sub V7 in your
song when you see a dominant chord a half step above of whatever it's targeting. So that gives
us this sound... so there we have everything I just spoke about a dominant chord -- Eb7 #11 --
targeting by way of a half step above the chord it's going to, in this case D minor7. So if you
ever see a dominant sounding chord or a dominant chord going a half step down, you can see that as
a sub V7. The cool thing about our jazz standards progression book is we have all this information
already encoded into the chart, so anywhere you see a dotted line, a dotted arrow, those
are indications of sub V7 and when you see the solid arrows in the chart that's just indicative
of a dominant chord uh either going to a tonic chord or tonicizing another chord so you get this
V-I dominant tectonic sound. This is important as relates to what we're going to do next, which is
apply the subdominant sound somewhere else in the song. So we just found out where it actually exists
let's see if we can interject it elsewhere within the piece so the first thing we're
going to do is look for any sort of solid arrow, because that indicates a sort of V-I
dominant tectonic movement which is a perfect candidate for our sub V7 and I see so right away
when I go from measure two to measure three so this was a 2 5 1. So what we're gonna do
here is a 2 sub5 to 1. So let's substitute out this G7 chord that targets a C with the sub5.
So I can think of it like this I can say okay i'm targeting a C what's a half step above C?
Db and then boom I know what my sub V7 is. So before we had this...
So now let's swap out the G7 for the db7 we'll get this...
beautiful and both, both work the G7 creates this tension release when we go to the C, just like
the subV7 does. So now just know this anywhere you're looking at the chart and you see a solid
arrow, you can swap it out for the subV7 and it works both ways you can swap out a subV7
for its V so you could take that Eb7 #11 at measure eight that
goes to D minor7, and you just play the V of D minor7 there -- A7 -- and
the reason these two chords are so interchangeable and the reason that they work so well with
one another, is that they have the same exact tritone within them. So in other words, the G7
now we swapped out in measure two has this tritone between the third -- the B --
and the seven -- the F -- The Db7 that we swapped it out for contains the same tritone
only now it's between the seventh and the third. So that tritone and the tension there within
so greatly defines the G7 or the Db7 that either one of them work!