You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Diatonix!

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

Adam talks all about an exercise that unveils diatonic 7th chords and their secondary dominants/tritone subs. 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 Annes and you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Today, we're going to do an exercise that we've been doing over on Open Studio Pro for the last several weeks. And it's actually something that's kind of tied to my brand new course at Open Studio Jazz Scales for Beginners. It is an exercise that unveils the brilliance of diatonic seventh chords and their secondary dominance and their tritone sounds. That's a mouthful, but it's actually a pretty simple process here. And what it does is it helps us to answer the question. what scale goes with what chord. So all we need to know is what key is the cadence that we're playing in, right?

What tune is, are we playing? And what key is the tune we're playing in? Those are very helpful questions to ask ourselves. And we can usually answer them with the diatonic seventh chords, their secondary dominance, and their tritone subs. It gets us like 90% of the way through a lot of functional harmony standards. So what am I talking about when I talk about diatonic seventh chords and their secondary dominance and their tritone subs? I'm literally talking about if we take the C major scale, that old chestnut, you ever heard of it?

And we make a seventh chord out of this scale by playing our root and then skipping a note all the way up so that we have four notes, C, E, G, and B, right? We have a C major seven chord. And then if we move all of these notes up the C major scale, the next chord that we get here is a D minor seven chord, right? And this is called the Dorian mode. It's based off the Dorian scale, D to D in the key of C, all white keys, right? If we do this again, we get an E minor seven chord, but it's a different scale that we use, right? It's the Phrygian scale, E to E.

And you're like, well, I know the modes, Adam. Why is this important? Because what we learn when we do this is that if we're in the key of C, and we see an E minor. Our first thought might not be Dorian. It might not be what you think. I hear a lot of beginner and intermediate players. Whenever they see a minor seven chord or play a minor seven chord,

it's always Dorian. If you're in the K of C and you play an E minor seven, which is the three, why not play a Phrygian? It sounds great. It's also what we can build our chord voicing. Of course, the fourth mode and the fourth seventh chord in the KofC is F major seven. Lydian scale, right?

That sharp 4, that B natural in the key of F. This makes a difference because, again, if we're in the key of C and we see in F major 7, there's a good chance that it might be a Lidion, a sharp 11. Now, there's a chance that it might not be. You might be just going to the 4, right, briefly kind of almost changing keys to the subdominate. But there is a chance that there would be a Lidian,

and the clue would be, I'm in the key of C. If we're in the key of C in there, we see a G7 chord. Our first choice should be Mixolydian, right? That's the most unaltered dominant you can get. If we're in the key of C and we see the A minor 7, which is a six chord, right? Again, if we're building our chord up from the six degree of C, our first choice for what scale, what's our pallet of notes to play? Should be an Aeolian scale.

Right? Again, I hear a lot of players playing Dorian. Nothing terribly wrong with that. There's a great place for that, but why not an aeolian? Get some great sounds. And this is one that always boggles me. When you're in the key of C and you see a B minor 7 flat 5, you might consider playing the diatonic mode,

the Locrean mode. I hear a lot of Locrian natural twos. I hear a lot of other weird scales. That Locrian is a beautiful scale. It sounds great. Again, just B-to-B, all white keys in the key of C. So, okay, that's great. know now if we're playing a tune and we're in the key of C, these modes, right, these seventh

chords all the way up should be our guide and that we can improvise using a sonic color palette based on, again, in C, the C major scale from D to D if we're on a D minor 7. That's why that matters, because the context of what key you're in matters in the cadence or the key of the tune. Now, here's where we really get to know some things because that's like, I don't know, maybe 40% of what we see, right? But what do you do if you're in the key of C and you see an A7? Right? If you're in the key of C and you see an A7, do you play Aixilidian? Well, you know, that's from the key of D major. That's not from the key of C major. So what is this A7? Well, this A7 in the key of C, if it's going to, I should clarify, if it's going to

a D chord, right, a D minor, we'll say a D minor seven. It could be a number of, of options here but if it's going to a d minor seven right so it's an a seven heading up a fourth or down a fifth to a d minor seven the d minor seven of course is the diatonic two chord right this is a secondary dominant chord it's what it's called the secondary dominant chord it's a dominant chord going to uh a target of a fourth up or a fifth down in the root and these are really important because you often see entire tunes made up of diatonic seventh chords and their secondary dominance. So we can do this little exercise

that's so helpful all of the diatonic seventh chords in the key of C with their secondary dominance. Now, there's a cool little rule that we can make for ourselves that gets very, very handy and practical. And this is where I think a lot of the Open Studio Pro members' minds have been blown. So if we're heading to a minor chord

using a secondary dominant, right? So again, if we're heading to D minor, right? We can just play, right? We're heading to D minor, but we're going to put a side. it's secondary dominant, which is A7. We're going to use an A7, flat 9, flat 13. Now, this is based off of the D harmonic minor scale.

This is where it gets really good. So you can improvise using the harmonic minor scale from D over this A7. And this is often what you hear with the language. I mean, you hear so many players. Same thing if we're going to the three-core. Remember that Phrygian? Right? And you have a B-7 going there, right?

It's five, it's secondary dominant. It's B-7. That B-7 could be, again, based off of that E harmonic minor. Now the harmonic minor, if you don't know in E is E, F-sharp, G, A, B, C, natural, and then D-sharp. When we play it from its fifth degree, when we play that from B, that's called a Phrygian dominant. Not a Phrygian, a Phrygian dominant. Right?

So if we are going to any of these diatonic seventh chords, we're going to use a secondary dominant to get there. And this is, I mean, not if you're going there and you want to put something, but oftentimes you'll see like a 1625. Why is it on that A7, this flat 9, flat 13 sounds better going to the D minor. It's based off of that A3.

a Phrygian dominant. And we can do this all the way up. Now, if you're going to a major diatonic seven, so let's say we're going to the F. For that, you can just use a simple unaltered mixillian dominant. So going to F, we could use a C-7, unaltered C-7 chord. Right? So we've been doing this exercise, which is really great.

So we start off by just playing the diatonic seventh chords, right? Up and down. In the key of C. I'm doing a very simple voice in here. I've got the root and the 5 in my left hand. And then I have 3-7-3 in my right hand. So E-B-E, and I'm just moving that up the white keys. And you might think C-major 7, B-minor 7,

you might think 3, 4-chord, 5-cord, 6-cord, 7-cord, and back to the root. And then what we can do now is we can add in secondary dominance, using that rule of if it's going to a minor chord, we're going to use our flat 9, flat 13 dominant chord. A7, flat 9, flat 13 to D minor 7, B7, 9, flat 13, going to E minor 7. Regular old C7 going to F major.

Regular old D7 going to G7, the 5. E7, flat 9, flat 13, because we're going to a minor. and we're going to use F sharp, flat 9, flat 13, going to our 7 chord B half to mid as 7. You know what I mean? So each one of our diatonic seventh chords has a secondary dominant, and each one helps us to understand

some really easy functional relationships. You can see how this would be so helpful, because if you pick any tune out of the real book, you're going to see mostly this. This is what you see. And so when you understand, okay, from the key of E flat, and I'm going to say a flat major, right?

And you see like an E flat 7 to A flat major in the key V flat. You know, oh, that's probably, I can use just a straight mix of lillian. But if I'm going to C minor in the key of E flat, and you just see G7, right, in the real book, you know that that's probably going to sound good as a flat 9, flat 13 because it's going to a minor. So it kind of helps us determine on any diatonic seventh chord, I can simply play the diatonic scale that's associated with.

with the key that we're in. And if there's a 5-1 to one of our diatonic sevens, if it's going to a minor, I can use a flat-9-13 dominant chord. If it's going to a major, I can use a regular mixolydian dominant seven-dominate nine chord. Now, that's just a suggestion. You don't have to do that all the time.

And certainly, like, there are loads of exceptions to this, but this is a great general rule to get you started. And like I said, can get you through like a lot of standards. And it's always gonna sound pretty good. because it's the sound. You know, it's the way that a lot of these tunes were crafted. So have fun kicking that around. If you need to go back and listen to it again,

because there is a lot of jargon tone in there. If you're familiar with this at all, like you might understand diatonic seventh chords. You might understand the concept of a secondary dominant, but go through every key and see if you can easily get in the secondary dominance of all the diatonic seventh chords in that key. And see if you can do this trick of flat 9, flat 13, going to a minor, unaltered, regular mixillitian dominant going to a major, and have fun with it

because it's so much fun and it sounds great. All right, I'm going to be back on Friday. Until then, you'll hear.