One of the most important music theory concepts that you need to know to make learning and
improvising over jazz standards much easier let's talk about it if your goal is to learn
jazz standards and improvise over them well i would highly recommend using music theory
to help analyze them think of it as a really helpful tool for understanding and organizing
the music that you're learning so the first music theory concept you really need to know
is secondary dominance so taking a look at there will never be another u which sounds like this
okay we have a e flat major 7 that starts here and this is what the key of the song is in it's in
concert e flat major now an important thing to understand about keys in jazz is
the harmonic series so if we have an e flat major scale and we harmonize it with
seventh chords it goes like this it goes e flat major seven to f minor seven to g minor seven
to a flat major seven okay so then we keep going on through the rest of the scale however what
we need to know is that these are diatonic to the key center so when we're looking at jazz standards
we really want to think about what chords are diatonic to the key center so for example
when we get to this c minor in bar five we know that that is the sixth chord of e flat major
but we have two chords in the way of that and that's a d minor seven flat five and a g seven
right now this is a two five one of c minor seven whenever you see a half diminished chord followed
by a dominant seventh chord resolving to a minor seventh chord that is a two five one in a minor
key now however what we need to understand about this c minor seven is again it is the
sixth chord of a major key e flat major so a secondary dominant is this chord right here
the g seventh chord and a secondary dominant by definition is any dominant seventh chord that is
tonicizing another chord within the diatonic key center so in other words g7 isn't in the key of
e flat major but it's serving as a purpose to make the ear sound as if the c minor 7 is a new
one chord even though it's still technically the sixth chord within the key of e flat major so
secondary dominants you're gonna see these come up a lot so it's simply tonicizing another diatonic
chord within the series making it sound like a new tonal center at least momentarily the second
music theory concept that we need to talk about is another dominant seventh chord and it's called
the back door dominant now this comes up quite a bit and if you're seeing it in jazz standards
you're trying to learn it could be confusing to you at first until you learn to recognize what
it is so in this particular case of there will never be another u we actually see it come up
in bar 10. so we have this resolution to an a flat major and then we have a
d flat seven and the important thing to look at when you're looking at a dominant seventh chord
is where is it resolving to so kind of like how the g7 resolved to a c minor seven we call it
secondary dominant we actually can look and see that this d flat seven resolves to an e flat major
seven now remember we're in the key of e flat for there will never be another u so in other words
we're resolving to that e flat major seven so this d flat seven is called the backdoor dominant and
you can also think of it as a flat seven of the key center so a backdoor dominant by definition
is a dominant seventh chord that approaches a one chord from a whole step below so d flat seven is
a whole step below than e flat major seven okay now the reason that works is because actually
there are some shared tension tones with the five chord of e flat major seven the five chord being
b flat seven so particularly there's the flat seven and the flat nine that they share
but because you're kind of getting this muddied version of a dominant seventh sound and it
has this resolution up a whole step it sounds pleasing to the ear and it makes this
backdoor dominant sound like a resolution chord to someone chord so that's a backdoor dominant comes
up quite a bit in jazz standards now the third important music theory concept you need to know is
what's called relative keys so one jazz scenario that's a great example of this is autumn leaves
okay now what really we have going on inside of this tune is two key centers we have
b flat major seven and g minor seven or at least i think that's the easiest way to really think
about this particular tune and when we look at the key signature we have a b-flat and an e-flat so
in this particular case this tune is actually in the key of g minor okay we resolved the g minor
throughout the tune we resolved to g minor at the end now the reason that's even a question to worry
about is the fact that we have what's called relative keys the key of b flat major and the
key of g minor share the exact same key signature as each other two flats b-flat and e-flat meaning
they share all of the same notes in the scales except for they're just arranged in a different
way another way to even analyze autumn leaves with the first three bars which i have is c minor 7
f 7 b flat major 7 which is a 2 5 1 in b flat major another way to analyze that is
simply relating all these chords to g minor and so actually the c minor chord is also the four chord
of g minor and the f seven is actually the seventh chord of g minor so they all share
the same key signature but they share the same key center and you're going to see this come up
a lot in jazz standards so if you can recognize relative keys and how they relate to each other
it's going to be helpful for you to organize the jazz standards that you're learning now speaking
of keys the next music theory concept i want you to understand is what's called parallel keys okay
parallel keys and parallel keys a good example of that shows up in on green dolphin street
right that tune so we have a c major seven to start out the tune and then in bar three we move
to a minor c so we have c minor all of a sudden and you'll notice that i have this labeled as
a minor one chord so we call this parallel keys meaning that we have whatever major key we have
c and parallel key is simply taking that exact same note value so c in this particular case
but turning the chord quality value into its minor key right so it could go the other way around two
we could have c minor to start and the parallel major would be c major right and so the parallel
minor to c major is obviously c minor so it's a pretty simple concept but one that you'll
certainly see play out many different times within jazz standards and before we go on
to the next music theory concepts it's important to tell you that learning more jazz standards is
going to help you recognize these music theory concepts come up over and over again and if
this is confusing at first it gets way easier to recognize these the more jazz standards you learn
so if you want help with learning jazz standards definitely check out my free guide called
learn jazz standards the smart way five step process to learning jazz standards by ear
learn jazz standards the smartway.com is where you can get that all right let's
move on to the next music theory concept the next music theory concept you need to know
is called side step two fives and good example of this shows up in just friends
okay that tune so we start with a c major seven that goes to a c minor seven f seven
it's actually reflecting the parallel minor but let's not worry about for right now we resolve
to the g major seven and by the way did you notice that this f7 is also a backdoor dominant going to
g major seven wanna tie that concept back in while we're talking about this one
but once we get to this g major seven we have this line that goes
b flat minor seven e flat seven now again whenever we're analyzing harmony we have to
look at what comes before it and after it we know that g major seven comes before it so b
flat minor seven to e flat seven now this e flat seven resolves to an a minor seven
d seven a minor seven d seven in the key of g major is a two five chord progression and
b flat minor seven and e flat seven is a two five chord progression within a flat major so whenever
we have these two fives that approach each other chromatically like that we call this a side step
two five by approaching it chromatically i also like to call these chromatic two fives because
they move in half step so sometimes these are baked in to the actual compositions themselves
like just friends but sometimes solos will just superimpose these into their compositions
right something like that right so chromatic approaches
to the one chord so that is side step two five's important concept to know the next
music theory concept you need to know is what are called hybrid two fives and hybrid
two five a great example of that comes up in the jazz standard alone together
and that's right there that's at this d major chord that happens at the end of
the first a section so a hybrid two five is where we're taking what would seem
like a minor two five one chord progression we have this e minor seven e minor seven flat five
and instead of resolving the two e minor seven flat five a seven to a d minor seventh chord
we're resolving to a d major seven chords so we're borrowing from the parallel major see
why it's helpful to understand what those concepts are we also by the way call this
modal interchange we're interchanging these two key centers with each other so a hybrid two five
is when you have a minor two five progression that instead of resolving to its minor chord
resolves to a major seventh chord and you'll see this happen in tunes like beatrice and i love you
and a bunch of other tunes so be on the lookout for these hybrid two fives the next important
music theory concept you wanna know about is called deceptive cadences deceptive cadences
sometimes when we're looking at jazz standards we just can't make sense
of why the composer chose a certain chord and sometimes having a label
like deceptive cadence can be helpful for example in some day my prince will come
right so we have this b flat major seven so one chord it's the key center b flat major to a d7
sharp five now that's the three dominant seventh chord it's also a five of six five
of six that means it's a secondary dominant it's tonicizing the six chord so you would
actually expect it to go to the sixth chord which would be g minor seven or in this
particular case and some my day my prince will come it actually resolves to another secondary
dominant which is the dominant sixth chord that might sound really confusing but all that to say
we actually don't resolve to that six chord we have this e flat major seven in the way we have
right that's actually an e flat major seven sharp eleven at least that melody note is the sharp
eleven and then we get to the dominant six chord so when we have a chord that's being resolved to
that is unexpected that wouldn't normally be resolved to you from the chord coming before it we
call this a deceptive cadence it's temporarily in this case replacing the six chord again this is a
helpful way to look at a set of chord progressions that may confuse you at first and putting a label
to it to better understand it the next music theory concept you need to understand is what's
called passing diminished chords now passing diminished chords come up all the time in jazz
standards such as in this b section if you could call the b section of someday my prince will come
right so we have this d minor 7 to a d d-flat diminished 7th to a c minor 7 to an
f7 so in this particular case we're moving down through the roots we have d to d-flat to
c minor and we know that d minor right here that's the three chord and we know that c
minor is the two chord so the passing diminished chord is really just serving to connect the d
minor seven the three chord to the two chord which is the c minor seven to the f seven so two
five in b flat major so that's one way a passing diminished chord can function it sounds beautiful
right has a beautiful sound connecting him together but another way you can find
a passing diminished chord functioning is kind of like what we see in have you met miss jones
where we have an f major seventh chord followed by an f sharp diminished seventh chord and a g
minor seven chord now in this particular case it's actually a substitution for a chord it's a
substitution for the sixth chord so instead of going one six the sixth chord would be
d seven then we are instead substituting it with an f sharp diminished seventh right now it's still
a passing diminished chord because it's going f to f sharp to g to g minor seventh right
so it's still moving in those half step directions connecting them together but
the f sharp diminished if you actually take a look at that chord it's the same as playing a d7
flat nine okay so in other words they're completely related chords to each other the
d7 flat nine the dominant six chord flat nine and the passing diminished chord so sometimes
you have a scenario as in someday my prince will come where it's not substituting a chord it's just
passing through and also a situation where you are substituting a chord like in have you met miss
jones now like i mentioned if there's a lot of terms for you and you're just wondering how can i
find these and learn these better simply learning more jazz standards is going to absolutely
help you get more familiar with these and start identifying these so i have a video on the screen
right now it is a set of 10 jazz standards that i think are really awesome to learn and you'll
find a lot of these concepts in them so be sure to click on that video and watch that one next
and pick a few of those jazz standards to learn hope you found this video helpful make sure you
like it if you found it helpful subscribe to the channel and we'll see you in the next video cheers