How do you jazzers memorize chord substitutions and chord extensions?
There are 9 comments, leave a comment.
for me, thinking in terms of roman numeral notation has been a helpful stepping stone (jerry coker's book 'improvising jazz' has info on this).
but ultimately there is no quick way. you just have to practice ii v is both maj and min, practice iii vi ii v is, practice left hand voicings of these. practice tritone substitution versions (eg. ii bii i) etc.
practice playing relevant pentatonics over ii v is, practice other relevant scales over ii v is, eg. maj, jazz min, blues.
practice everything in all keys until it becomes familiar... do it again, keep doing it. try and make your practice swing.
to give this practical application, learn songs. i have found that songs contribute a lot to my harmonic understanding. eg. bill evans' waltz for debby illustrates amongst other things how you can substitute iiim7 for im7. play this song enough and that relationship will sink in. irving berlin's 'there may be trouble ahead' has helped me to start to understand the relationships between chords in a minor key.
work through scot's blues lessons on this site. there are also many blues variation in the coker book.
look at scot's walking bass lesson. walking bass really gets the left hand going and since the left hand has a lot to do with stating your harmonic intentions it is a good way to become familiar with substitution - ie alternate root notes. it also helps with swing.
generally speaking, quite a lot of patience (or stubbornness) is needed i think.
loveforjazz forgive me but i sense that, like myself, perhaps you are slightly impatient...
don't worry, just keep playing and you will get there.
paul (just another student on another journey)
in addition to practicing tunes in all keys, i recommend practicing common chord progressions like 12-bar blues, rhythm changes and turnarounds in all keys. when you know them backwards and forwards, you can then practice them with various substitutions. eventually you'll find your self substituting spontaneously - on the fly
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by Scot Ranney on 03/19/2009, 10:07
the logic is interesting!
personally i would think of this more as 'reharmonisation' than 'substitution'.
one way of looking at it would be:
d7 is the v chord in the key of g.
bb7 is the v in the key of eb.
eb and g are a major 3rd apart, so you could think of this as tonal centre movement by a major 3rd, as with giant steps/coltrane changes.
i like the sound of bb7 into gm7, especially if you precede the bb7 by it's ii chord: fm7, so the progression becomes fm7,bb7, gm7.
the implied tonality shifts from eb back to g. it's a 'deceptive cadence'.
i think trying to theoretically build a bb7 from the possible extensions of a d7 is an unusual way of looking at this though - all of the d7 extensions add their own unique colour to the d7,some are from lyd dom, some from alt and some from b9(dim scale). i wouldn't normally think of them all together and try and build chords from them, although i'm not saying it's 'wrong', so i suppose why not?!
it's funny but the more i play, the more i realise a 7 chord can lead almost anywhere...
ab is the tritone sub of d7.
f7 is the ivm resolution with the ivm chord missing: cm7 f7 gmaj.
b7 is the tritone of f7, and could have an f#m7 in front: f#m7 b7 gmaj7.
these 4 chords d7, f7, ab7 and b7 are a minor third apart.
sorry, this doesn't help justify bb7 to gmaj, but it's interesting nonetheless!
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