You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 5 Levels of a 6 Chord

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

Adam focuses on how to approach that 6 chord in harmonic progressions. Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

I'm Adam Madison, and you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Well, today you'll hear it,ers, we are going to cover something that I don't think we've ever covered here at Open Studio, but it's kind of one of the most fundamental chord changes that you can understand. And what I love about teaching this fundamental core change is it does so much to help us with things like tritone substitutions and general chord substitutions because it's kind of one of the first malleable chord progressions that we learn as jazz pianists. And the chord progression is as follows. It's a 3, 6, 2, 5, right? The old 3, 6, 2, 5. Maybe it's a turnaround at the end of a tune. Maybe it's the turnaround at the end of an A section.

Maybe it's right in the middle of a standard. But whatever it is, it's something that is very, very common in most great American songbook standards and a lot of jazz standards. and it's one of those things that can be done in a variety of ways. And we're really going to be talking about one chord out of these four chords, and that is the sixth chord. So let's get to it. A 3625 in the key of C means that we start on the three chord,

E minor seven. Then we go to the six chord, A minor seven, or is it A minor seven? We'll talk about that. And then a two chord, D minor seven, and then a five chord, G7. And usually you might end up, you know, at the one, right? You could see this at the end of a tune, something like, you know, we've heard it a million times. Now, the reason why we're talking about this is because there's so many ways to approach

this six chord. We just talked on Wednesday about diatonic seventh and their secondary dominance. So if we stick to the diatonic sevens here, these are all diatonic root movements. And sort of the most level one basic version of this is for everything to be diatonic. So the E minor 7 is literally E minor 7, Frigian mode, remember. Go Phrygian or go home. The A minor 7 is another minor 7. However, Aeolian, all the white keys from A to A, right?

The D minor 7 is Dorian, and the G7 could be a Mixalidian, maybe it's a half-hole diminished, whatever your dominant chord you want it to be. Right? So this is kind of the level one, this diatonic minor 7. Now, we're really going to be talking here as if we're improvising, right? We're not playing a specific melody. We are in the middle of a solo and there's a 3625, right? So the first version might be just complete diatonic where the six chord is minor seven.

It's a beautiful sound. You probably don't play that sound enough because it's kind of overlooked for fancier things. But it is a gorgeous sound. Now, again, a lot of beginners, I hear all of these Dorian. Right? why not try to stay diatonic? It's actually more challenging to stay in the key that you're in. Right?

So if you're in the key of C, having everything be sort of based off of the white key scales, right? The diatonic scales. It sounds easy, but it's actually hard to make sound good. That's level one, is the sixth chord is just the diatonic minor. Level two is exactly what we were talking about Wednesday. We take that sixth chord and we turn it into a secondary dominant chord, right? So an A7, and because we're going, remember, we're going to a minor seven chord in the D minor,

it's an A7, flat 9, flat 13 based off of that A-Frigian dominant scale, A, B-flat, C-sharp, D, E, F, G, A, right? The D-harmonic minor scale starting on A, fifth mode of the harmonic minor scale. This is a great option. And this is where we start to get kind of spicy with things. Right, so this, using this sort of secondary dominant chord can be a great way to add some tension. That's kind of level two. Now, level three is so much fun. And it's something that you've probably seen in the real book a million times in published sheet music a million times. And now we're actually going to address it and how important it is. Barry Harris talks about this chord. This is the flat three diminished. Specifically going to our two chord here. So we have

three, E minor seven, flat three diminished, E flat diminished to the two chord D minor seven, to a a five chord of our choice to the one, right? It's so flipping gorgeous, it doesn't get any better than this. And so this can be used a lot. Like, I love this chord. Listen to that. That's a B on top here. So I have an E flat diminished seventh chord,

but I've got this B natural here at the top of it. You know, actually, you could hear this in Someday My Prince will come. Right? Isn't that beautiful? Or maybe a D on top. This is a sound that you hear just all the time from the masters. Now, the scale that this is built off of is the whole half-diminish scale. Just the diminished scale.

So whole step, half-step, E-flat, F, G-flat, A-natural, A-natural, C, D. Which is why that B sounds so good. It's part of the scale. Right? There's two diminished chords that make up an E-flat, diminish-seventh. E-flat, diminish-seventh, and F, right, because of the whole half-ness of it, right? So all of these F diminished seventh tones are like butter notes for this for this chord. So even F natural, you know.

Ah, it's so crunchy. So do not sleep on the E flat diminished seventh chord. It's so important to the history of the music. Honestly, it's such a beautiful way to get from the three chord down to the two chord. Again, talking like, continuing on Wednesday's discussion, these diatonic sevenths are so important, but so are the chords in between to get to the diatone. and that flat three diminished is one of the most common ways to get to a two chord it's so beautiful

okay so that's sort of level three level four is an e flat chord but it's an e flat seven chord right this is a tritone sub so you know level two is that a seven flat nine flat 13 if we take a a seven flat nine flat 13 voicing say just a standard like g b flat c sharp and f in our right hand we have a in the base now put an e flat in the base that's an e-flat 7. It's a tritone sub going to a D minor 7. It's a great substitution. Maybe it's a Lydian dominant.

Going to your two-cord. But it's such a great way to add that chromatic motion. Again, you hear it all the time. Oh, maybe a tritone sub going to the C. So that's kind of the level four. Now, the level five version of this is still an E-flat in the base, still that chromatic movement, but now it's a parallel minor.

So it's E minor 7, E flat minor 7 to D minor 7. Now, maybe this is an opportunity where everything is Dorian so that you can get a nice chromatic movement. So much fun. And maybe a tritone sub going to C. So those are kind of the five basic options. That's all just on one chord of a 3625, right? So you have the six as a natural minor.

You have the six as a secondary dominant, 9, flat 9, flat 13, going to minor. You have the six as the flat three diminished. Ah, so good. You have the six as the tritone sub, the flat three dominant seven. And then you have the six as the parallel minor, minor seven going to a little slip sliding,

going to the D minor seven. That's what substitutions are all about right there. That really is. I mean, that's so much fun, isn't it just taking one chord of a very simple standard chord progression and look what you could do with one chord we didn't even talk about any of the other chords you know there's so much that you can do so enjoy that have fun with that poke around with that

with other keys try it in the key of b flat e flat f a flat g all of these common keys that you play in all the time and see if you can find things like that i mean that flat three diminished when you understand the value of that it can be a game changer for how you sound all right enjoy folks until next time you'll hear it