You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 5 Easy Chord Substitutions

Episode Date: April 3, 2020

Today, Peter and Adam show you some different shades of musical colors you can use if you find your usual stuff is starting to sound a little stale.5 Easy Chord SubstitutionsThe tritoneThe V of VThe diminishedV7alt. from a half-step belowThe flat-iii diminishedBONUSFor more live Open Studio action, check out a solo piano performance from Peter Martin tonight - Friday, April 3 at 8:00 PM EDT. There's a good chance you've been itchin' for some live music, so scratch that itch by going to Peter's YouTube channel this Friday night.In light of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, we understand that money is tight for a lot of people right now. That's why we've decided that for the duration of this crisis, we'll be running a Choose What You Pay campaign at Open Studio. Choose whichever course you want and then let us know how much you're willing to pay - that's it. For more info, click this link.Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey, what do you know about? And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the Google Here podcast. Daily music advice coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open Studio Jazz for all your jazz lessons needs. Yes.

And we are back on the YouTube's. What's up, YouTube? We ask that you like, subscribe, and... Put the bell on. What? How did you know about that? If I were a bell, I would subscribe to this. When you hear this song?

To this channel. Smash that bell button. Now there's some... Okay, so I'm glad we're starting this, because there's a ton of two five ones in this that we could use some of our easy chord substitutions. That's right, because you see those chords and then you play them. So we are titling this episode five easy chord substitutions,

and that means that you don't get to comment that these are too easy. That's right. We put it out there. If you clicked on this, you're obviously interested in easy chord substitution. I love that pretty much every video we do, we get a comment that, like, this is way too hard for anything you're trying to do, and this is way too easy. I was born knowing this information.

How could you... It's a sweet spot that we have not yet attained on the you'll hear podcast. But it doesn't keep us from keep trying, you know? So I have easy. These are really just basic. These are like when you start learning about jazz and you want to learn how to substitute chords,

these are kind of like the entry level, the starting... That's right. The starting zone for basic court substitutions. And we've done some court substitution episodes before, but none in the new pod suite. And so now we have the light-up keyboard. And we've got the...

YouTube. going, you know what I'm down to get started. So the first one, the king of the easy court substitution is really the first one like 101. It's rather difficult actually. It is rather difficult at first to get your mind around. That's the tritone substitution. You've probably heard this if you heard anything about jazz theory before. Did we actually play this one in the intro? Because we did some complicated ones on I forget. I forgot it was easy. There's a couple of ways that you can think about it.

The tritone substitution means that you're substituting on a dominant chord on a five chord. In this case, if we do a two, five, one in the key of F, we have our G minor seven, we have our C-7, and then we have our F. Plain but acceptable. Major seven. Yeah, plain but acceptable. Now, on the five chord, that C-7, we can substitute that C-7. Here I have a C-dominant nine chord for the dominant chord a tritone away. In this case, G-flat. Oh, don't. Oh, sorry. That's right. It's easy. The G flat to the F. So instead of G minor 7 to C7 to F, we have G minor 7 to G flat. 13 in this case, but G flat dominant 7.

And a lot of people would say, wow, it sounds like you hardly change things, but that's because not only did you change the root, you use good voice leading to keep things close, so you didn't go. Well, the reason why this works so well, if we look at the third and the seventh of C, right, we have B and B flat.

BK, A, the shell. The shell. And if we look at the shell, of G flat, we have F flat or E and B flat. It's the same notes. So fussy with your F flat. Well, it's true. But it uses the same shell, and that's why it sounds perfectly acceptable to...

Although, if you play the violin, an Flaat and an E natural, slightly different. Slightly different, right? Fussy, fussy, fussy. You think I'm fussy. So that's our kind of first level of easy chord substitution. Can I just throw a little next level. advanced thing that you can do. We're going to get letters.

No, no, no, no, no, because this way maybe we can satisfy everybody. Okay. Because it's still basic, it's still easy. So G minor 7, F sharp. But think about going to the F sharp as you tritone substitution, but keep your chord voicing the same as you would have over C7. So maybe you go G minor 9 to C13 to F major. G minor 9, do a C7-13 in the right hand and go to F sharp and left in.

Oh, crunchy. Crunchy. I love it. Captain Crunch. Captain Crunch. That sounds awesome. Yeah. That sounds awesome.

And so basically I've got the same voicing I did here, but it gets crunchy when you go down there. And it's actually kind of an easy way to get into some more alterations on the tritone sub. So that's your basic tritone sub. Yes. You just borrow from the dominant chord. What's great about it, too, is it gets that nice half-step motion down. You can do stuff like that. Please don't ever do that.

Our second level is the five of five. Level two. Five of five. Well, what do we mean by five of five? Again, on a two-five-one, we have our two, we have our five, we have our one. Our two chord is almost always a minor seven, a Dorian seven. Now, one of the first substitutions we learn is to take this two chord, and instead of a minor seven, we make it a dominant seven. Yep.

Thus making it a five-o-five, right? Now this dominant seven becomes like a five. It acts as a dominant chord to that five, to that one. And you just keep going. But the five of five is a real thing. And you can actually go to a minor sound first if you want. But you could just go straight substitution, you know, even when you're blowing changes. Like these are all substitutions you can make without really working out anything with the bass player or with the horn players.

It's kind of something that all sort of pro-level jazz musicians can just hear at this point. And then this works with the tritone sub. Same thing. And here's another thing. You can actually tritone sub out this new five to five. So if you have our G7 here is the five of five, right? G7, you could use the tritone of G7. So D-flat, seven to the five to the one.

And then you could do a tritone of the tritone. I was just thinking about that. D-flat to G-flat. you could sub out both those five foot and then you could do a tritone of the one also beat that's not oh now we're then go to the one we're taking it we're taking but you could do that those are all ways that depends on what state you live in some of the southern states have out kept out on the books that they're not enforced but that's an easy one to implement because you're literally just taking that two chord and instead of minor seven you're turning it

into a dominant yeah and then of course once it's dominant all of those tritone sub rules can apply you can do the same once you go dominant you can You never go tonic. Can we get a t-shirt of that, Ryan? Please. Once you go dominant, you never go tonic. Except you always go tonic. That's right.

After dominant. Well, the thing I love about this, too, the five of five, and you took it through some nice places. But that concept of dominant to tonic is so strong. And so when you double it up and go dope you with that, it really opens up some nice things, I think. That's great. Yeah. Number three. Okay, this is, oh, I see why you were saying, oh, don't go there yet.

So this is interesting. I never really thought. about this as a substitution, but it is, I guess. And that's the diminished for the one chord. That's right. And so I think what I played before, G minor 7, C7, 13, Jarb 11. Fully diminished? Instead of a major seven.

And you can either stay there or you can go to the major seven. It sounds great. It sounds really, really. Put that again. So play a 25 and off. Now the reason why this works so well is oftentimes when we have a 2-5 on like a tonic cadence, the melody is the one, right? It ends on the one. And so if you're doing, you know, you could do the regular major six, but it's nice to sometimes play it diminished and then go to

the major six. It's a little, a little delay. And depending on what your melody is, or if you even need to worry about that, what Adam was doing, the reason it's not a little different. It was like a six. I was playing with a major seventh, which works nice, but you have the melody's up on, like a nine or three or five for sure. And then for improvising, one thing I like to try it pair. E major triad to F major. So over there on that F diminished chord, you're using an F, sorry, an E major triag. Yeah.

Yeah. To them to the F major. Yeah. That's so great. And that triad pair is, it's funny because it's like a major and minor so you can get some blues stuff. Yeah, yeah. Because the F and the A flat both were. That's so great.

So this is really our first example of sort of masking or delaying what's a resolution. And there's a ton of different ways you could do that. You could do that with like a fridgin sound going to that or you could do it with a, you know, I love a good. Yeah. Suss sound or you can even. Sus, you know, I knew high ridge was right around the corner. High Ridge is always there. You could go with a four minor.

But this diminished, replacing just the same route and using the diminished to the one is a sort of level one entry point to that. Yep, very good, very good. Our next substitution, this is, again, a substitution on a five chord. And if we have our 251, again, an F, we're just going to stay in F. And our 251 and F, G minor 7, C7, G minor 7, C7, F major 7. This is really, this gets us kind of in a realm of some church changes, maybe, some gospel changes. This is, you use the, instead of a five chord, you go to the seven and you do like, like a dominant seven altered sound, right?

Like a 7 sharp 9 sound. So G minor 7 and then E7 alter, E7, flat 13, sharp 9. The reason why this works so well are really the flat 13 sharp 9. Here on E7, we have C natural and G natural, and going to the F that works so well.

You could do the diminish there. All these kind of work to each other, for sure. And then this one also, Also, like one thing that I could tell you just kind of, you can extend the two because that's the five of what? The three. Right, right, right. Is that legal, though? That's legal.

The only thing that I wouldn't do over this one on your E7 alt, I might not do like a tritone sub over it. Because it's not a functional way to do it. No. Yeah, it's not. It's called nonfunctional. Yeah, exactly. Great. Okay, so that's number four.

So we're all the way up to number five. And I don't know if you notice. I put a little bonus. So we're going to do that after a very special message. Oh, I love a bonus. Yeah, the bonus is kind of a cool one. So why don't you give us number five? So number five is using the flat three diminished instead of a six chord.

So when we have our 3625 here in the key of F, we have A minor seven, and then you might have D7 altered and then G minor seven and then C7, two, one. Right? Three, six, two, five, one. I hear that all the time. A great substitution that works, especially in this scenario, is you could do. a tritone sub to just a flat 7 right that's totally legal jazz police will not arrest you for that but a great use of the melody usually is with instead of that a flat being a dominant chord to make it a a diminished chord there's so many great voice leading opportunities here yeah so that if you want to know

is a minor 7 and then a flat diminished a flat f b natural c flat b flat g natural b flat d flat all these great extended diminished sounds G minor 11 G flat 13 sharp 11 that's the tritone sub of the 5 and then F diminished those are like all everything we're talking about

here actually let me make the G minor 7 a dominant core and now we'll have all the everything The PS de rest of the solst the 5 easy is that a hat on a hat on a hat It's five hats It's five hats on and pulled it all But you know one thing if you want to get that nice Adam Manus voice leading is this not going to be an automatic, but one little clue, one little pro tip is get your base, your root movement going in the opposite direction as your top melody note. That really opens that. That's a nice way. It's not the only way, but it's a nice way. That's a pro tip. Again, so we're taking instead of a D7 here as our, which would be like the six chord in the key of F and we're using like a secondary dominant right. It's like a D7. It's great to use this flat three or a flat diminish.

Great sound. Yeah, awesome. Cool. Well, there we go. We got one more bonus coming up for you. I don't know if it's going to be as exciting as that one, but I think it's kind of cool. It's a fun little,

it's back to the simple one. It's back to an easy one, so we'll be there. But we are brought to you by Open Studio Jazz, and we actually have the first of a nice little series of messages from some real live members of Open Studio. Check this out. Hey, this is Rob, long-time listener of the podcast

and a big fan of Adam and Pete. I just wanted to tell you all about a little thing that happened to me, which tied a bunch of the podcasts together. So Adam and Pete always say, you know, listen, if you're going to play, play your horn, like, touch your instrument 15 minutes a day and don't miss too many days. So I had a day where I was, had missed a couple of days before and wanted to get on the horn, and it was just messing around, flailing around. And I was sitting back to the episode of how to rock a 15-minute practice. and I said, okay, I'm going to concentrate for 15 minutes.

I'm going to get something done. And I was thinking, they did a recent podcast on the Frigian mode. I'm like, well, the Frigian mode. I hadn't thought about that. So I'm going to play the Frigian scale in all 12 keys. And I know my major scales. And so I thought I'd do the Frigian in all 12 keys. Then I thought, I'm also going to do Dorian because they'd had an episode on Creative Scale practice.

So I'm going to do the Dorian scale in all 12 keys. I'm going to do it in third. So I'm fancy, so I'm going to do it alternating up a third, down a third, up a third, because I know my scales. So first of all, I don't know my Phrygian scale at all because I had to relate it back in every instance to the major key. And it's like that's not how you should really think about the scale. You need to think about it because I don't think about the Dorian scale that way. It's not a second to a second. It's the Dorian scale.

So I got deep into it. I'm like, okay, I don't know the Phrygian scale. So then I did my Dorian scales. And it's good for D-Dorian, G-Dorian. But do I really know A-flat Dorian up and down, alternating thirds? And the answer is no. So that 15-minute practice session turned into a 45-minute practice session, super efficient, and got it done. That's my story.

Awesome. Thank you, Rob. Yeah, so, okay, here's our bonus here. This is back old school, back to the easy. I don't want to give, you know, something easy. Hit me. Hit me. Here we go.

So we got F is the one, six, two, five. How many times does that happen to us? One six, two, five. I mean, I either day. That happens a lot. So how about, we talked about some tritones earlier. Typically we're saying from the five or the two, but you can do it from the six. How does that sound?

So F to D7, tritone substitution of D7, which is the six, A flat. A flat seven, yeah, yeah. And then maybe a little five of five. Five of five. Yeah. Oh, can I throw in five bonus on that? Just all tritones of those five of fives. Oh, I really did all tritones.

You'll hear it.