You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The 3 Different Minor 7 Chords

Episode Date: February 26, 2020

It's time for some theory talk today as Peter and Adam discuss the different minor seventh chords.Want to add some Brazilian flair to your own playing? The Samba Pack is now available from Open Studio! Featuring 7 curated lessons from our roster of Brazilian artists (including Helio Alves, Edu Ribeiro, and Romero Lubambo), the Samba Pack is also our lowest-price course ever from Open Studio.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. You know what to play over a three chord? Um, no. And I'm looking at this, I'm just, I got to tell you, I'm nervous AF. I'm here to learn. I don't understand what we're doing today. You got to be frigging kidding me.

Come on, man. I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily music advice coming at you. Coming at you. Hey, oh. Hey, Ian.

Oh. Yeah, we're going modes, buddy. Man, now that I said that I don't know what's going on, you're just rubbing it in at this point. I stand at the, at the altar of your knowledge. We're going to be music theory geeking out a little bit today. So we're going to be talking about some minor chords and the modes that we can use over different minor chords. Because I have some people emailing me saying like, it's just all Dorian, right? That was me emailing you.

You didn't see who it came from? The answer is sometimes it's all Dorian. But sometimes a good fridgin, a nice aeolian. What is fridgin? Fridgin is a mode of the major scales. And we're going to get into it. So let's start with the fridion, hey? Okay.

Is this related to the fridion? Phrygian. What are you Greek? It's all Greek to me. Oh, big shout out to YouTube. We're back on the YouTube's today. Did you know that? I did. I wore my hat. Yeah, that's how I knew. And the cameras were on. We're having some fun on the YouTube. We've got the... I'm just playing chromatic because I don't understand these, but I'm looking

forward to some understanding. Have you ever seen me this lost? No, whenever you talk about music theory, you always say, I don't understand it. And then you play something and it's exactly what we're talking about. You're just like, yeah, I don't get that. And you know, you've always... always play it. So we're talking about, in the major scale, there are seven modes, of course, and three of those are minor seven chords if you're creating seven chords, right? If we're in the C, it's D minor seven, E minor seven, and A minor seven. Okay. Now, but how are those different?

Well, because they're all related to C, and so they contain different notes. So you're saying that I see the chord first and, okay, that's exactly what I'm saying. Oh, you are saying. That's exactly what I got it. So we'll start with the first one. which is D, which is the Dorian. Now this is the granddaddy. This is what, as jazz musicians. Now, you know what that chord is, the beginning of a great record.

Intercity Blues, right? Exactly. That's how you can remember that one. Totally, Marvin Gay. But it's also, you know, it's so what, it's impressions. Right. You know, it's the Dorian.

The sound. But the voicing. Right, right. So that one, we're going to kind of, we're not going to skip over it, but we know what that is, right? The Dorian is, it's all the white keys if we start on D. You know, it's these kinds of shapes.

Exactly. We know that. But it's cousin just to the north. The Phrygian. Or Phrygian, as I call it. Yeah. What you know about that? Isn't that it?

Anything sound kind of bluesy. So the Phrygian can be used as a mode. So you see this sometimes written as like, you know, C-Frigian or something like that. Or E-Frigion. and it usually means that that sound, right? A little mystery. But it can also be used in a very diatonic way if we're playing changes.

Like a 3625. And you typically kind of move through it quickly then. For sure. Right? So that's my three chord, E minor 7. Like you can almost treat it like a C major 7. Yeah. To that A7.

And sometimes even almost like a C2-ish kind of more. Totally. I think about that all the time. Over E. Yeah, that sounds great. So you can do, and you hear this all the time with jazz musicians, Dorian on the three chord, right? If we're doing a 3625.

Nothing wrong with that. It sounds cool, actually. Nothing wrong with that, but it is incorrect. No, there's nothing correct or incorrect. But it's just one option. If you're only thinking Dorian, you might be missing out on these other sounds. I would just say one thing to note on that is things that you can play with.

If you do, say, play Dorian on the three, typically like what you did there you'll go flat 13 on the 6 but if you go you might do something more kind of diminished where you've got the a 13 because you're going to f right to f sharp or even g to that f sharp right you have the g on the e yeah and those are all options that are fun to have totally so don't sleep on that phrygian sound on a three chord yeah another thing even if you're not going to the a also don't sleep on a frigian column in athens i i have i have passed out one night and did that and got robbed, so don't do that. If you don't want to go to, if you want to kind of sub out that six and not play an A7 going to the two,

a really great sound is that flat three diminished from the Phrygium, right? Yep. So we're going to a two chord. We have our three chord. If we use the Phrygium, and why that sounds good is because is the same reason why, if we're on C, going to that C diminished sounds good. It's those same notes, really, just the different. Intervoice leader.

Yeah, exactly. Just different voice leading in the bass note. Sounds awesome. So don't sleep on the Frigian, include it in your three-cord practice. I'm starting to get this. You got it, man. You know what?

That's why ABL. Hashtag A-B-L always, because, you know, just because you can hear and play something doesn't mean that you don't have a little bit of a gap in your theoretical knowledge. All right. Now I'm going to go to you. I'm going to throw this to you

because we're on our three-cord. We know the Frigian. It's diatonic. It's the basic option. What are our first alterations to this? We know the Dorian is our first. really logical one, right? Like, for the reasons you mentioned.

But there are some others, too. We can alter, so instead of E minor 7, maybe we do E7 sharp 9. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. So there we go. And, you know, we've talked about before different ways of hearing and thinking about that. And I always like to come back to the half whole, half step, whole step, up until

you get to the third, and then whole tone. Ah, yeah, yeah. And I know it's the same thing as the altered. It's the ulcer scale, yeah. But functionally, especially in this instance, as the three-core, we're still three-core, right? Yeah, three-go-old. Yeah, so to me, and where it leads, it just makes a little bit more sense to me

from a scale standpoint. Because once you open it up into the second half, the upper part of that, which is really two-thirds of the scale, you get those triads that are part of an altered, I mean, a whole-tone triad that are great things to build melodic, you know, improv melodies off of. Love it.

Yeah. All right, so the Dorian, we've covered, the three chord, the Frigion we've covered, and it's some common alterations and substitutions. Now we get to the sixth chord. This is a relative minor. Look how different that sounds already. Right? It's like a relative that's a different look and everything, you know.

Maybe an adopted relative, we might even call it. This is another one that we love, jazz musicians, love to go ahead and just play Dorian. Yep. You know? And I think because we do use that, uh, That D7, right, sound a lot, that it can kind of work, but also don't sleep on the Aolian with that F natural in there, right? Especially like, think about like playing a ballad.

Let's see if my stain pedal works. Maybe mine's covering yours. Oh, yeah, it does. All right, let's see if we could do it. Three. Nice, one more time around. Oh, messed out. Check this out.

Hold on. We're coming back for some analysis of that. One more time. You'll do a little three, a little Phrygian. Aeolian. Ah. Right? Now, this is all diatonic, so it's not like super, super hip.

But thinking of it, not as Dorian, but as having that F natural in play, can really, really make this a melodic sound for you. You even going to aeolian tone to your voice that matches nice. Welcome to the Aoleon column corner. But you know what I'm saying? like this F over A sound, that's an Aoleon sound. Yeah, and I like the way you're shifting with that because you're taking the inner pinnings of a triad,

obviously F triad, not just the fact that the F is in there. Because we always, as jazz musicians, I think think about that as the big difference from our more used scale, possibly minor, in terms of the Dorian. But the listener know that always. It's more, that's a half step to the fifth, which is such an important part of the minor. Whereas that's more going,

the sixth, the natural six is more wanting to go up to the dominant seventh anyway, which is common in both of the scales. It's a relative minor for the tonic, right? So if you're playing a Lydian sound, relatively speaking. Then a Dorian makes sense, and it could make sense even just as a regular substitution. But if we're really, you know, that F natural can make a big difference in how grounded you sound with this.

The other thing that comes to mind with this, same scale, obviously same notes, and we're on Aeoli. is the kind, and functionally you have to tell me where you think this lies, but the kind that you hear more of like a D minor, 9, D minor, 11 over. For sure. You know, and so, like, it's very close to that, you know, like an F major 7. I mean, it actually is the notes, but I mean,

but oftentimes you shift from there to there in a similar way to we just doing, but it's very much D minor, the fourth above. That's right. Yeah. I love these episodes, man. I'm such a nerd. I think it's so cool to talk about it. about

just diets. Drop down a nerd out on some minor chords. I really could for a while. Anyway, don't just go Dorian, straight Dorian for every minor seven chord. It depends on the context. And you could also use these,

like if you're playing things like impressions. Like, you can do Dorian, for sure. But you could also do Phrygian, and you can also do Aeolian. And I think that those are good times when you're going outside, but not in the way we normally think of like chromaticism outside.

So this is a way to like do slight, things that you can shift and you're almost, it's almost like you're setting up some changes around movement that can inform, and it doesn't have to be in as obvious a ways, even as we're showing, like if you're a G-monic. Right, right. And that's what I like, that's what I was talking about, like, the fourth above. So now we're in D-minor, so I'm thinking kind of G-minor 11. Right, right, right, right.

I'm totally with you on that. Think about, like, and then for the, for the Dore, actually, you know what I start to think about is that C-minor over D. I mean, not the door, the fridge. Frigian. Frigian, right, exactly. Let's see try it. I think about a tune like Solar.

That's a very different, yeah. That aeolian sound over that. It's a very different thing. And it's like, it's not maybe the technically the right scale over that thing, but as a way to get outside, it's your first step there. So don't sleep on the different kind of minor scales

that go over the different kind of minor seven chords. That's right, that's right. And then later on, once you start to get some of these and incorporate or reincorperate them into your playing, they can be used in combination with the chromatic, you know, leaving the tonality kind of going outside and then coming back, it just gives you another option too. Oh, man, let's turn out again.

Let's do like half diminish next time. This is so much fun. I don't like that one. These are good, though. These are good. Cool. Well, until next time, you'll hear it.