You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How Does That Work? Chord Substitutions

Episode Date: October 30, 2019

It's part 3 of Adam's How Does That Work? series, and this time he shows how you don't always have to play the same chords over the course of a tune.For more lessons at the piano with Adam (and Peter!), check out our brand new course: Jazz Piano Technique. In Volume 1 of this series, you'll get a 4-week bootcamp entirely focused on improving your ability to play pentatonic scales. For more info, go to https://www.openstudiojazz.com/jazz-piano-techniqueLike those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Anas, and you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you. Day three of my solo week here at the piano, I'm having a good time rolling through these. We're doing these series this week on very basic jazz theory, just kind of the nuts and bolts of some things that we get asked a lot about about. And we're calling it, how does that work? Because I thought it was mildly funny. So today is chord subs. How does that work? Which is something we get asked a lot about here.

And by chord subs, I'm talking about chord substitutions. So let's define what a chord substitution is. So anytime we have any chord progression, as jazz positions, we have options to substitute whatever the agreed-upon chord is, or the typical chord you might play, for a number of options. And sort of the more you level up in jazz and understand the inner workings behind it, the more options you can use as you're playing through something. So if we take a tune, like have you met Miss Jones? right so in those first four bars we can apply a number of substitutions to almost any of those chords but we'll start

so here we have a three six going to the two right we have a minor d7 to g minor seven so our very level one chord substitution is what's called a tritone substitution this can be used on any dominant seventh chord really, especially ones that are going somewhere. But if we have a three-six here, we can use the same, we can use the dominant seven chord a tritone away from the dominant chord we're using here. In this case, it's D-7. So we can use an A-flat-7 as the tritone sub going to G minor, right? So we have F-major 7, A-minor 7, and instead of D-7, flat-9, we'll use A-flat-9.

flat 7 sharp 11 right so when we're soloing over this it gives us this chromatic movement um you might not do this substitution during the melody because it will clash with the melody and that's something to consider whether you're playing the melody or you're soloing but when we're soloing these substitutions are often used by jazz musicians as ways to sort of slip in and out of what our ear is expecting um when you're playing the melody that's a whole other story and it's definitely something to consider with your substitutions, you don't want to do anything that's going to clash with the melody. Melody is always king. So that's kind of the level one, right? The first thing that everybody talks about is the tritone substitution. But there are several others you can do. Yesterday,

we were talking about the diminished chord and the diminished scale. And one of my favorite substitutions is on a one chord, especially at the end of a resolution, say, of a ballad. You know, most American songbook ballads end with the melody on the tonic. Right? This is a perfect. opportunity to use a diminished chord even if it's just for a second it's great you can do it on the first uh note of a tune you know what's new is done quite often like that put a diminished seventh chord in place of a major chord essentially especially if the melody note is a sixth and you can do this as you're blowing too right so that's a two five and f uh g minor seven

C7. Instead of F major 7, we do F-diminish 7, complete with that diminished scale. A whole half-diminish scale. It provides a nice airy sound to the proceedings, and it's really, really nice to play. And usually gets a bit of stank face on your audience, a little bit of a woo.

Okay, so our third substitution, how does that work? we're going to do a chromatic substitution that you hear often and maybe you don't know what it is. This again can happen inside of a 251. So if we again, again, we're on our 251 and F, I don't know why I'm playing that lick so much today, but I'm really enjoying it. It's a variation of a tritone sub. We go G minor and instead of playing a full bar of G minor, we do two beats and then we do two beats of A flat minor. go up a half step. And then we do two beats of D flat seven,

like we're doing a two five, A flat minor seven to D flat seven, and then slide down to the C seven that we would have gone to, right? So you're extending, you're still doing G minor seven and C seven within the space of two bars. One, two, three, four, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. But we're adding this sort of half step slip in there. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. This is especially fun to superimpose upon a 251.

Really, really fun, really slick. So those are what typical chord substitutions are. There's a mess of them. And they can get very complicated. They can even get a little more basic. One that I kind of glossed over, but is a really fun one, is on a 251, instead of a D minor 7, G7, C7, if we're in the Q of C of C, you can use a dominant, right? You hear this one all the time. Very, very basic, but can be incredibly

effective. Why do we use these? We use these to add variety, to add novelty to our playing, to add drama, to really defy what expectations we've set up. So you might not throw every single substitution you know and every single tune that you do from the very first chorus. These can be, something that you kind of keep in your hip pocket and you bring out when things are starting to get interesting, right? Don't overplay these. Use these in a very tasteful way and you're going to get a lot of miles out of them. And listen for them. There's a ton of them in every recording you like, I'm sure. Some are superimposed. Some are there on purpose, but they're everywhere. And they're part of our bag of tricks or the language of the music. So yeah, that's it for today. That's how does that work?

chord subs, just kind of rolling through these. It's nice not to have the companion here, you know, slowing me down, dragging me through them. I'm just kidding. I miss you, Pete. I hope you having fun over in Europe. And yeah, we'll do this again tomorrow. Don't forget to go to Open Studio, Jazz.com. We have a brand new course called Jazz Piano Technique, Volume 1, pentatonics, where Peter and I actually have 20 guided practice sessions, each one practicing with you, getting your chops up to hopefully the best they've been. And it's really, really fun. And hopefully you've checked it out by now.

But if you haven't, go to openstudiojazz.com and check out the new jazz piano technique course. And until tomorrow, you'll hear it.