Jazz Chords

[MixolydianPony]

...How do?

Where do I start learning how to think in jazz chords? I understand theory, but I don't get how jazz musicians come up with these crazy substitutions and whatnot. My background is in music that is either riff based, or just plays the same 4 chords over and over again. Jazz is foreign to me, but I love it.

I understand that ii V I is the "jazz equivalent" of I IV V, but that's about it.

Any tips on learning how to compose jazz, specifically in the harmony department? I assume that analysis is a good starting point, so I bought a fake book of a bunch of jazz standards. I'll go through and analyze the chords.

It's not so much that I don't understand the chords themselves, I just don't understand how people come up with them. It seems to me that jazz musicians write chords the way everyone else writes melody, if that makes any sense.

[ChromaticChaosPony]

Use lots of 7th and diminished chords as opposed to only major and minor. And try some far out intervals, like the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 9th, 11th, and 13th.

Also (I'm not sure how well this works in 'real' jazz), try using chords without important intervals. Example: remove/replace the 3rd (major and/or minor) or 5th interval. Suspended 2nd and 4th chords are the perfect example of this. Removing certain key intervals can make your chords tonally ambiguous, thus adding color to the song. Don't do this to every chord in the song though. You don't want the melody of the chords to be unresolved by the end of the song. There's really a lot of stuff that goes into this.

[Versilaryan]

As people mentioned, you need to learn classical theory, and then learn how to use chord extensions. Just having basic triads isn't enough -- you need to add 7ths, 9ths, augmented 4ths, what have you now. You play guitar, right? A common chord shape you'll see is x5455x (going from low E to high E, and of course movable) or 5x567x for dominant 9th chords. You'll notice that the 5th is never present, and the root is always followed either by the third or the seventh. That's something very common to jazz voicings. Assuming your root note isn't going crazy, the second-lowest note is almost always the seventh or the third (followed by the seventh), and having spaced-out voicings like that is a huge part of what makes a jazz chord sound, well, jazzy.

When you get to more modern jazz, you'll see people putting almost random notes in the bass. That also plays a lot into voicing and it's something you're going to have to play around with to learn. Having the bass be some dissonant interval from the actual root is really popular in fusion jazz.

In terms of theory, knowing basic chord structure is an absolute must. Study some classical music and watch how the harmony progresses through the song, rarely repeating and always finding some way to move forward. It's a completely different mentality from styles like rock where you'll have a lot of repetition in little chunks. Instead, think in terms of longer phrases, adding more chords between the start and the finish. Chord substitutions, secondary dominants, and other embellishments help a lot with that, but it's definitely possible to come up with a good jazz progression using only notes found in the key you're writing in.

And then want to know how they come up with those crazy substitutions? Oftentimes, you have your melody, and maybe one other note you know you want in the chord (like if you want to do cool chromatic things with the progression, or something). So find a chord, a jazzy chord, that happens to have those two notes in it. To hell with whether or not the notes exist in the key you're playing in. Try it out, mess with the bass note and the voicing, and if it sounds terrible, just find a new one. If you know the next chord in the song, it really helps to understand voice leading (how the notes of different chords lead into each other) to find a good fit for your song.

I recommend studying the Brecker Brothers if you're into fusion, or otherwise just weirder stuff like Thelonius Monk or Miles Davis' post-Cool stuff. It's really eye-opening what you can get away with and still have sound good. Even bebop-era charts are good just to see how the chords lead into each other. From an harmonic standpoint, swing era stuff isn't going to be very eye-opening unless you get a full chart and study all the interwoven harmonies you get when you've got a full big band playing.

[LunchBagMusic]

The way I write Jazz progressions is I play a chord on the piano, then I precede to:

1) Jump to another chord in the scale (usually a minor7 or major6)

2) Alter the current chord by a couple of notes (ie C becomes C augmented).

3) Adjust bass note.


That's basically all there is to it. Theory helps, but that's only if you want to understand the chords.

[Warbalist]

As long as you know how to create chords by stacking the notes in thirds, you're well on your way to playing jazz. And instead of always thinking of chord substitutions, think also of what might make the chords you wrote more or less tense. A major 6th interval in a minor chord can throw some serious crunch your way.

What is most important though, as Kyoga said, study up by playing the stuff like crazy and by analyzing the chords to find their relationships. Single chords no matter how cool they sound on their own, must has a good relationship with their neighbors.

As far as where to start structure-wise? Can't go wrong with "Misty." ii V I. ii V I everywhere!

One last thing, and this is my own opinion, start with early jazz songs and work your way to the weird stuff that happened in the 60's. Since you're a rock guy you should understand the importance of knowing how a certain type of music evolved.

[prettiestPony]

I think jazz musicians come up with their chord substitutions mostly by ear. I don't mean because they're uneducated--jazz players are probably the second most likely musician to have a solid grasp on theory, after classical musicians--but just because it's the nature of the style.

That said, there are some common strategies that have developed over the years.

The basic principle of chord substitutions, in jazz and otherwise, is that you replace a chord with another that shares some of the same notes. Since Western harmony is based on thirds, an easy way to do that is to start with a chord that's a third higher or lower. So, if you have a C7 chord, being C-E-G-Bb, you might try substituting a half- or fully-diminished E seventh chord, E-G-Bb-D (or E-G-Bb-Db). The "E-G-Bb" part remains common between them. Alternatively, you might keep only two of the notes: say the C and E, in which case you might try chords like Amin7, A#dim7, or Fmaj7. These may be less likely to work, since they share fewer notes with the original, but they might be worth experimenting with.

A big part of whether a chord substitution will sound appropriate or not has to do with which notes you preserve versus those you substitute. Mostly this boils down to functionality and "structural necessity". That is, the more necessary a note is to a chord's identity or function, the more likely it is that a substitution chord will feel better if it has that note.

Deceptive cadence example. According to basic music theory, as you probably know, the vi chord can be used in place of a I chord after a dominant harmony, which creates a "deceptive cadence". Part of the reason this works is because the vi chord shares two notes with the I chord: the first and third of the I chord, which are the two most important notes for the I chord's identity. (For example, C and E in the key of C.) You can sort of make a deceptive resolution to the iii chord instead of the vi chord, since iii also has two notes in common with I (that is, E and G in the key of C), but it doesn't work as well, because the tonic is integral to the I chord's identity, and because the leading tone of the dominant feels like it should resolve to the tonic as well.

Tritone substitution example. The most important part of a dominant harmony is usually the tritone formed between the leading tone and the 4th scale degree. Thus, you can stick any other chord with that tritone in it wherever you'd normally have a V7 chord, more or less. So, in the key of C, the leading tone and 4th are B and F, which we see in the V7 chord as G-B-D-F. Another common dominant harmony is one that's up a third from that, which is to say, a diminished B chord: either B-D-F-A or B-D-F-Ab. You see that in both classical music and jazz a fair amount. In jazz, there is also the idiomatic "tritone substitution", where you get a dominant 7th a tritone away from what you'd normally use: so, instead of a G7, you'd use a C#7 (or Db7 depending on how you want to spell it). This is basically the same thing as using a dominant 7th chord one half step above where it will resolve--e.g., instead of Dmin7, G7, C, you might have Dmin7, Db7, C.

To see why this works, spell out Db7: it is Db, F, Ab, Cb. Now, Cb is enharmonically equivalent to B, which means that Db7 contains the same B and F that, as I said earlier, are what's most important for a dominant function in C.

(Another potential reason this might work is that a dominant 7th resolving down one half-step also has the same notes as a German sixth resolving from a pre-dominant to a dominant, but let's not get into that.)


... Ehrm, let me know if this doesn't make any sense, I'm kind of spacey feeling as I write this.