All right I'm gonna set a timer over the next 15 minutes I'm gonna teach you all of the music
theory that you need to know to play jazz and go all right so let's take a look at this popular
Jazz standard called my shining hour now the first thing to notice is that we have three Flats in
the key signature this gets to our very first lesson that we need to figure out here is how
do we know what key we are in when we're working on a song so in comes the circle of fifths this
is a chart that's used for all of Music Theory to understand how many sharps or flats are in
a given key signature so for example in the key of C there are zero sharps or flats there's one
in the key of G two in the key of D three in the key of a four in the key of E five in the key of
B and six in the key of F sharp g flat those are n harmonic Keys then we have one flattened F two
in B flat three in E Flat four in a flat and five in D flat and the one that we care about today is
this one E flat three Flats in the key of E flat major now this is just one of those things that
you have to memorize like you have to memorize this chart how many sharps or flats are in each
key so a little bit of homework is due for this one so now that we've got that out of the way
now we see a slew of different chords that are playing out over top of these bars in my shining
hour the first chord is E flat major the second chord is C minor the third chord IS F minor seven
the fifth chord is B flat seven and the fifth chord is E flat major seven and so on and so
forth and of course you'll notice that underneath these chords I have these numbers one six two five
and one but how do we even know what these chord progressions or these chords actually even mean
that's where we start having to understand how to harmonize scales with seventh chords so since
we're in the key of E flat we need to start with the Baseline of the E flat major scale
but our goal here is we need to start building chords out of each one of these scale degrees
and so in order to do that we need to stack thirds on top of each one of these scale degrees so first
we'll go to the most basic kind of chord which is a Triad so after we're done stacking two-thirds on
top of the original scale tone we end up with an E flat an F minor a G minor A flat B flat C minor D
diminished and E flat but in jazz the Triad is actually not the chord that we are most often
using the most common and basic chords in jazz are seventh chords which means we have to stack
another third on top of those Triads and when we do that we end up with this result E flat major
seven F minor seven G minor seven a flat major seven B flat seven C minor seven d half diminished
or minor seven flat five and then back to E flat major seven and then I've course what we want to
do is assign a number to every single one of these the E flat major 7 is the one the F minor seven is
the two the G minor seven is the three a flat major seven is the four and so on and so forth
using Roman numerals the uppercase Roman numerals mean that it's a major quality and the lowercase
Roman numerals mean it's a minor quality but of course you may understand that while stacking
thirds on top of each other creates these cores how do we actually know why their major why
they're minor and why they're dominant and so on so there are simple formulas for all these
chords for a major chord it's root third fifth seventh for a dominant seventh chord it's root
third fifth flat seven for a minor seventh chord it's root flat three fifth flat seven for half
diminished Chords it's root flat three flat five flat seven and then for fully diminished chords
we have root flat three flat five double flat seven so simply by understanding these formulas
that's how we can know how to come up with these different chords so now we can look at my shining
hour a little bit differently we now see that E flat major seven is the one chord we know how we
got there C minor seven is the sixth chord we know how we got there as well F minor seven is the two
B flat seven is the five chord and E flat major seven is the one chord But Here Comes The Twist
the next bars are color coded in red and that is because we're going into what we call the relative
minor key which is C minor so looking back at our circle of fifths you'll notice that underneath all
of these chords there's a minor D minor G minor C minor and all of these represent the relative
minor keys so relative Keys is where we have a major key and a minor key that both share the
exact same key signature in other words the notes are exactly the same just starting and ending on
a different place so in our particular case E flat major is the relative major to C minor and
C minor is the relative minor to E flat major now of course you could memorize all of these
through the circle of fifths another way to think about it is think about the E flat major scale and
figure out what is the sixth tone of that scale in this particular case it is C so now we know that C
minor is the relative minor to E flat or if you're starting with the minor scale such as the C minor
scale you want to look at what the Third tone of that scale is which is E flat so E flat is the
relative major to C minor so looking back here at my shining hour we have a D minor seven flat five
chord we have a G7 chord in this case an altered chord but don't worry about that for now and then
a C minor seventh chord now I call this a 2 5 1 or in this case a two five of six if we're thinking
about the C minor being related to the parent key Center of E flat major however if we look back at
our harmonized major scale we look and we see that the two chord in fact is not a half diminished
chord and a v chord while it is a dominant seventh chord the one chord is not a minor seventh chord
and that's because when we're in a minor key we obviously have to harmonize the minor scale
with seventh chords the problem with that is there are three minor scales the natural minor scale the
harmonic minor scale and the melodic minor scale and depending on what scale you're harmonizing
you're gonna get slightly different results for each scale tone however this minor diatonic
series of seventh chords chart is kind of what I see most often is happening in jazz standards in
other words taking from all three of those scales these are the most common chords I see for each
degree the one the two the three the four the five the six and the seven so this top line here is not
a scale these are just the bass notes but then the quality is underneath so we have a C minor seven
a D minor seven an E flat major seven an F minor seven a G7 an A minor seven flat five and a B flat
seven representing the more common chords used in jazz standards in minor Keys all that being said
huge disclaimer please go through and harmonize all three of those scales that I mentioned because
they aren't always going to be like this there are discrepancies so you have to do your homework and
understand what the variations of these can be so now continuing through my shining hour we have a c
Minor 7 an A Minor 7 flat 5 which uses a 6 chord then again the two the five back to the one and
then we eventually further onto the song go into the key of A flat major which is the IV chord of
E flat major and we approach this with a two five one now again if we harmonize the a flat
major scale with seventh chords we would find that the two is B flat minor the five is E flat
seven and the one is a five major seven and in jazz standards this happens a lot you're going
to be switching through different Keys whether they're related to the parent key Center or not
and so it's important that you understand how we come up with chord progressions in music and in
jazz now of course there's a lot more fancy things that happen in jazz Harmony such as this side step
two five which is simply approaching a diatonic chord progression by a chromatic half step however
the more Jazz standards you learn the more you'll uncover this stuff as you go along and by the way
in my inner circle membership we actually study a new Jazz standard every single month and do things
like this to improve so you're interested in checking that out check out the link in
the description down below now so far we've been discussing what I call diatonic functional Harmony
in jazz however there's another kind of Harmony in jazz and that's called modal Harmony for example a
song like So What by Miles Davis uses this modal Harmony now modal Harmony is where the chords in
the song are not necessarily related to a parent key Center in fact often the chords aren't related
to each other at all and rather focus more on the modes associated with that chord more on modes in
just a second so in the case of so what we have a D Minor seventh chord and then later on we move to
an E flat minor seventh chord and really that's what the entire song is based off of this switch
from D minor seven to E flat minor seven which of course presents a different kind of challenge for
the Jazz improviser compared to the functional diatonic Harmony and as noted here over top of
the D Minor seventh you could play the D Dorian mode in a over top of the E flat minor seven you
could play the E flat Dorian mode so what exactly are the modes and why do they matter so the first
mode of the major scale is called ionian and that's just simply the major scale so in the key
of C it's that and the second mode of the major scale is called Dorian and it sounds like this
now modes seem really intimidating because they have these fancy names like ionian Dorian phrygian
lydian mixolydian aeolian and locrian however the concept of modes is surprisingly simple basically
if we start and end a major scale on the first degree it's called ionian if we start and end
it on the second degree it's called Dorian if we start and end it on the third degree it's
called phrygian if you start and end it on the fourth degree it's called lydian the fifth is
mixolydian the six is aeolian and the seventh is locrian so in other words simply starting
and ending the c major scale on different scale degrees creates these different modes and while
they might sound a little bit different they're all really just playing the exact same notes that
are within the major scale so when we look at a song like so what and we see that that D Minor
7 is based on the D Dorian we realize that D is the second tone of the c major scale so
essentially really we're basically playing over top of this demon D minor seven a C major scale
anything in the c major scale realm works over top of this D Dorian now looking back at our
functional diatonic Harmony we could technically look at this and go we play ionian over top of
the one chord we can play aeolian over top of the six we can play Dorian over top of the two and we
could play mixolydian over top of the V chord and while this works perfectly fine the big problem
with this is again we're only using notes from the parent scale which is going to make it not sound
like we're actually playing the chord changes which is what our favorite jazz musicians are
actually doing and we don't want to be starting the scale at the root every single time that's
not Musical and it doesn't sound like jazz instead what Jazz musicians are actually doing is focusing
on the chord tones of the chords themselves they're figuring out exactly how to play them
how to connect them together in terms of a chord progression and different strategies for how you
can resolve different notes within the scale or outside of the scale to these chord tones
so with that in mind if you want to start becoming better Jazz improvisers and learning
how to actually solo on top of these chord progressions then we need to get good at
strategies for resolving to these chord tones so I have a video on the screen right now called how
to create killer Jazz solos using chord tones it's going to really help you out so click on
that video next of course if you like this video be sure to like it and of course subscribe to the
channel if you've never subscribed to the channel before and we'll see you in the next one cheers