You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 4 Easy Chord Substitutions on a 2-5-1 - #17

Episode Date: February 16, 2018

These 4 common substitutions are a great way to mix it up when you're playing 2-5-1's. Tri-tones, 4-minor, gospel subs, and even Coltrane changes. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Peter Martin. And I'm Adam Anus. Welcome to the You'll Hear It podcast. Hey, everyone. Today we're going to give you four easy chord substitutions on a 251. Was it like calculus or something? Well, it's going to be simplified calculus. We would call it jazz calculus, perhaps.

Jazz calculus. That doesn't sound very complicated. That's right, right, right. So this, we should be able to use these for any 251, not just a 251, right? Yeah, no, it should be any chord progression that is a. A251, be it major or minor, because what we're talking about really mostly is substituting the dominant chord, right? The five. That's the most malleable chord in any progression. It's the one that creates tension, and therefore you can add a lot of stuff there to create

more tension as you go to the one. The old tension and release trick. The old tension and release trick. Okay. Now with all these, I think, you know, substitutions, anything that has the possibility of kind of being nerded out on from a theoretical standpoint, I think we want to keep in mind that the ultimate test on these is how they sound. Okay, so we're going to give you some ideas, but try them out different situations or whatever, and if you like them, then you use them in your improv and your accompaniment, that kind of a thing.

They're options to go to. Exactly. These are just some common ones, and maybe they're not part of your sound, but it's kind of good to know what everybody else is doing first, and then you decide if you like it or not. Cool. Why don't you kick it off with number one? Yeah, so the first one is the classic tritone substitution. This is usually the first substitution that anybody learned,

when they're learning jazz. And in a 251, let's say we're in C, we have D minor, G7, and C major 7. So when we talk about a tritone substitution, again, we're talking about that dominant chord. And the tone that's a tritone away from the dominant chord, which is G in this case, is a D flat. Right? So we just want to literally substitute a G7. We want to put in its, its place a D-flat-7. So here's how that would sound. This is D minor 7, D-flat-7, C-major 7. Now I added a little sharp 11 there for my own personal flavor, but this tritone substitution is a very common sound you hear all the time. It gets this great chromatic movement in the bass, and it's a really common substitution. It should be the first thing on your list

of substitutions to learn. Yeah, and so I was just thinking, too, a lot of times people ask us, okay, what if you're playing, you know, your saxophone player, you're a singer, and you want to do the substitution, but you don't know if the bass player, or even if the rhythm section is going to do it, can you still do it? And I would say you can, and maybe we could just kind of show like what you just played. We start on the two. And then now in the right hand, Adam's going to go to the substitution, but I'm going to stay in the bass on the regular five. and then maybe I hear it and I shift down and then resolve but either way it can work so this does not have to be a coordinated thing

where you're turning around signaling to the bass player and sometimes the bass player you might hear him go him or her go and that's going to be your signal that that's that tritone substitution then you could catch up on it and to opposite that so play the D flat and I'll just play G it's actually pretty hip you know

and that is actually the advantage of this particular substitution the tritone substitution The reason why it's so common is because it can be replaced so easily with the other, and you don't even really notice. It's just a different, it's like a different shade of the same color. Yes, absolutely. Cool. Okay, so that's number one.

Let's move on to number two for our easy chord subs on 251s. And this one's a little bit, I wanted to go a little bit unusual, give you some different ideas. This is a half step below approach to the one chord. So we've got two. Yeah, let's go to another key for fun. We got two, we're in the key of E flat, so the two is F minor seven, F minor nine, then we've got the five, B flat seven to E flat major. But we're going to do an approach to the one from a half step below. So again, we're substituting in the position of the five chords.

We got two, and then we go half step below, D7, sharp nine to E flat major. I like it, okay? So here, some different, different voicing, different voice leading. Different actual chords, we'll talk about that a little bit, but basically the ideas we're hearing up from that root movement. So as opposed to to 5.1.2, major 7 to 1. And now I'm not even really saying the chord, although I can tell you that this is F minor 9, D7, sharp 9, flat 13, the E flat major. But I like us to kind of think about what that root movement sounds and what the bass voice leading is.

So that's why I'm describing it as half step below and then it resolves up. And that's a great substitution. And if any of our listeners, if you listen to any modern gospel music at all, you probably hear that a lot. You recognize that sound. It's used a lot in modern gospel music. But it's very applicable to jazz. Our next substitution is, this is one of my favorites. This is borrowing from the four minor region.

Now, what do I mean by that? So if we go back to C, no, you know what? Let's not go back to C. Let's go to F. So if we go to the key of F, and we do a 251 in F, that's G minor 7. C7, flat 9 in this case, and then F major. So when we borrow from the four minor, we mean the four of F, which is B flat, and the minor. And in this case, I'm going to choose Dorian.

It could be melodic minor or harmonic minor, but we'll choose the Dorian mode. I mean, it's a common sound you hear a lot, especially in classical music and pop music even. And you can add this to your 251. So instead of G minor 7, C7, F. You can do G minor 7, B flat minor 7, F. And that's a great sound. And you can hear this on some modern jazz recordings. You can even hear like, some players will do this on rhythm changes, right? If a particularly fast rhythm changes, and they want to add a modern sound, they'll do a bar of B flat 7. And then they'll just do a bar of E flat minor 7. and then a bar of b flat minor seven as almost like a five one you know when the change are moving fast and all of a sudden it takes you out of like this like change change change change

and you have this great open modern kind of sound so the four minor and by the way it's not just that four chord like in back to the key of f the b flat minor to the f you can use anything in that dorean scale of b flat minor you could use d flat you know however you want to think about it. You could even use like C minor, which is in that any of those chords that borrow from that four minor region are

fair play. Great. Good stuff. Good stuff. Okay, so the last easy chord substitution for a 251, this we're getting into some more complex territory but some really exciting things. And this is the Coltrane well one of his many

substitutions for a 251s and this is based on shame on me for forgetting the name of this tune. Countdown. Countdown, right. Which is tune up was the original tune, I believe, or the chord change that was based upon. So basically, we're starting with a 251

extended out over a number of bars to D major. So it's like E minor 7 to A7 to D, and then it keeps going. But with the countdown, we've got... So we actually... It's more of like adding in a bunch of chords before it gets to the 5-1. So you start on the 2,

Then you go addition, addition, addition, and then you get the 5A7 to D major. But what's cool about this, and I think a nice way to learn this, is to think again about the root movement and what's happening down there, what that melodic pattern that's established from that movement. So we've got E minor, and then we're not even going to think about the chord. We're just going to go up a half step, and this is the dominant chord, F7. And then we're going to resolve that. So 5 to 1, F7 to B. B-flat major. Okay?

Now we're going to go up a minor third, D-flat, and that's a dominant chord. And we're going to resolve that one. Now we're going to go up another minor third. That's G-flat major, by the way. And now we're back home because we're to the D major. So the whole thing is we know we're starting on 2, E minor, and that we're eventually going to get to D major. And we don't even have to think about how many chords are in there once we start the pattern. So we go up half step, dominant, resolve it.

resolve it. It's always alternating between dominant major, dominant major. Then we go up a minor third. Dominant major, resolve it. Then we go up a minor third, dominant, resolve it. We could keep going forever if we want. So that's a full one. So Peter, with this one, going back to the should you tell the bass player about what you're doing. Now for me, I would just start playing this, hoping that the bass player I'm playing with would catch it. But even if they don't, I know that it's because of the pattern. It's still going to sound good. Exactly.

It just kind of extends over. So that would be like if the bass player was like staying and you were playing. Because that whole area where you're potentially, you know, clashing between your substitute chords. In fact, that is, there's supposed to be some tension in that area anyway. That's that kind of dominant chord area. So I think that's a time when you can have a little bit of more tension even if the bass player catches some of it. That's great. If not, they don't.

So there you go. Have fun with 251s. And, you know, as you learn these sounds, I think there's a lot of different areas that you can kind of, you know, apply these sounds for. I was just thinking about the, you know, what you were talking about with the four minor.

I think that was the third one we looked at. You know, it's not just for 251s. That's a good place. But, wow, that's a nice little sound. I'm going to play around with. There you go. I mean, generally, we want to move towards an area where you'll hear it. That's it for today's episode of the You'll Hear It podcast.

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