II - V - I How Do You See Things?

[HighSnows]

How do you respond to a 2-5-1 mentally? If you have: Gmi7 - C7 - Fmaj7, and you have time and want to create a "scalar" response do you:

1) Think 3 Scales, and hunt for the nearest pattern you know for that scale? For example:

G Dorian @ 6th string root 3rd fret
C Mixolydian @ 5th string root 3rd fret
F Major @ 5th string root 8th fret

or

2) You know all 3 chords come from F Ionian so you stay in your preferred F position, and because you know where the transition points are from 3rd to 7ths for each chord you can hit those color tones as you go along, but the "pattern" under your fingers, the mental image of the scale framework, is always F Ionian.

[vintagelove]

Tension,

Resolution.

[ragman1]

It depends on the tune. A ii-V-I, or just a ii-V, in one tune won't necessarily sound the same as another. You play what suits. You play what you hear. You certainly don't just apply the same formula every time.

So your answer is the ear, not the theoretical response.

[Marcel_A]

Maybe not on topic, but i'm new to jazz in the sense that i play guitar for a long time, but i'm just recently starting to take an interest in standards, improvising over them, scales, chords, etcetera.

One thing i stumbled across was arpeggios. You need to learn arpeggios some say. Oke so i learn arpeggios. One exercise i am doing is playing along with autumn leaves and play a suitable arpeggio on every chord.
+ if i play the right arpeggio it becomes interesting because i can hear a difference when i play over G-7 or G7. The minor third makes that phrase sound different and interesting.
- arpeggio's are boring. i can understand they can be buildingblocks for an interesting improv, but besides that: predictable and boring.

Not sure what my question is. How do i go from boring to interesting? I think there is a reason why people learn arpeggio's.

[Alter]

You can do the scales thing, but also the arpeggio thing, where you think of the chord arpeggios and connect them.

After that, you can start to work on various chord substitutions, where you change the original chords, and use the scales/arpeggio thing on what comes out.

In this process, the 2 5 1 becomes a movement of creating tension and release, a way to go from point A to point B in a tune, as you work on different ways to achieve that. It's one of my favorite things to practice.

It helps in keeping improvisations and chord progression fresh, as you can be playing over the same cycle, but actually using different chords and movements every time in your improvisation.

[ragman1]

Maybe not on topic, but i'm new to jazz in the sense that i play guitar for a long time, but i'm just recently starting to take an interest in standards, improvising over them, scales, chords, etcetera.

One thing i stumbled across was arpeggios. You need to learn arpeggios some say. Oke so i learn arpeggios. One exercise i am doing is playing along with autumn leaves and play a suitable arpeggio on every chord.
+ if i play the right arpeggio it becomes interesting because i can hear a difference when i play over G-7 or G7. The minor third makes that phrase sound different and interesting.
- arpeggio's are boring. i can understand they can be buildingblocks for an interesting improv, but besides that: predictable and boring.

Not sure what my question is. How do i go from boring to interesting? I think there is a reason why people learn arpeggio's.

Because, although we need to know things like arpeggios, just practising them by themselves is very boring, as you say. Same with anything else. These things are tools, like words are to language.

We can sit down and practice words. Ball, house, key, sun... Very nice but not very interesting by itself. We really want to write something good, a poem, a story, a song. So we need the words but we also need to be able to use the words to make something nice.

When you improvise, you're using everything you know to make it nice - chords, scales, arpeggios, licks, lines, harmonies, everything. It's difficult, takes a long time to understand it and get it right. But, above all, there's no end to learning, ever. A person who is satisfied, who thinks they've 'arrived', has gone to sleep.

So keep going but use what you're learning on tunes. Apply it, don't just do it in a vacuum, and you'll get better and better. It's largely an unconscious process too, it just sort of happens by itself the more you do it. And there's no end to it.

[Gabor]

I know, your approach is one of the "official". I mean in institutional learning, or guitar method books, they must came up something what can be described, can be structured into progressing lessons, etc. They can not say "just feel it" or "hear it", because it does not fill a book, or does not worth 4 semester.

To give you some concrete, the scales may help, but also can be a trap, which are actually holding you back in this "feel". Using scales your ear will learn the "artificial" which is not the real thing. It is "ok", but not real. Spending too much time on that, you may getting more further from the feel than closer.

Also not necessary good idea to play on each chord. The II V I is more like a 2 part thing than 3 part, as others wrote already, tension and resolution. So you need to focus on play something which "forecasts something will happen in the next bar(s)" (tension), and "now we are home, everybody calm down" (resolution). Only this two step, not three.

It is usual to mention the b9 as the tension note of the dominant, c# this case, which resolves to c in F but I would not stick on that.

The best way to learn the "feel" is listening and transcribing. I do not mean transcribe a whole solo, that is very hard, too big task, and all solos have parts what are hard to hear, or hard play or simply not usefull. I mean we can easily discouraged. So just listen your heroes, and when you are into in major ii v i then remember when you hear something you like, and learn that two bars. Then learn that in different positions, and strings and keys. Always determine conciusly what are the tension notes an what are the resolution. You must be capable to sing it by heart, at least in your mind, if your vocal capabilities are limited. It is the good idea to learn those fragments not with random fingering and strings, but instead always aligned into the appropriate scales so you can use you technique to execute them, and aldi instantly visualise what is your picked fragment is doind in the term of scale degrees.

[christianm77]

Ugh... it’s hard to respond specifically to this question?

Look the most important things is not the scales or arpeggios but the connections between them.

If you can successfully connect a G altered scale into a C major triad note that’s going to sound good. Think ahead- where do you want to end up?

Many beginners play a series of disconnected scale or chord tones. This sounds amateurish.

There a number of approaches. I wouldn’t really bother separating ii and V at all if it’s just the diatonic approach. Most experienced improvisers amalgamate them and practice moving them around and resolving them into certain chords. So you get backdoors, tritones, side step Ii Vs and so on as well as the vanilla ii V I.

You’ll hear a load of confusing stuff about ‘avoid notes’ but all that is really saying is that if you lean on the C on a G mixolydian it will sound like chord II while if you lean on the B it will sound like chord V. One scale is easier. There is no law saying you have to play the 3rd of the V7 (B) in a ii v I lick. In fact it’s often better if you ignore that note .

Most altered options arose from chromatic voice leading. The altered scale is kind of chromatic voice leading in a scale. Don’t think about it as having a relationship with the underlying chord and you’ll have more fun.

Lastly, no one gives a shit about I. Just play one note from it unless you have something interesting to say. We all know what it sounds like. Most beginning improvisers play too much boring stuff on I. It’s like over explaining something.

But I hate giving out this advice. The best thing is to listen to and learn lots of ii V I licks.

These days I tend to think:
static chord - voice leading - static chord

[rpjazzguitar]

Nowadays I sing a line in my mind and I play it.

But, to get to that point, I tried all the usual things first. Scales, arps, juxtapositions, licks, etc.

[Tal_175]

OP's title is misleading. I think what he means is not how you specifically approach ii V I's but how you mentally organize the fretboard in order to be able to play the changes.

My approach is to think of each chord as a family of chords. Then I use phrase building devices to work on coming up with lines that connect different families.

[Tal_175]

I think one gets more out of transcriptions and licks if one has already worked a lot on playing the changes using basic line building material. Chord tones, guide tones, leading notes, chromatic passing notes, enclosures, triads, triads as triplets with leading notes, arpeggio up scale down. These do exist in transcriptions and licks. No need to rediscover them. Once one has mastered them, they can dissect lines they like in order to find out new ideas or fresh applications of old ideas to work on.

Transcriptions are useful for ear training. But for learning ideas, well, if you can't get through a tune using guide tones or approaching 5ths or whatever, you'll be very confused when you look at Wes's lines.

[christianm77]

In terms of fretboard organisation my aim is to make chords and lines as integrated as possible. I don’t think it’s helpful to think of scale/position playing in one category and voicings in another. Merge them.

So chord shapes —> melodies
but also
scales —> voicings

[Tal_175]

The two options OP listed are commonly discussed approaches. But they each have their problems (as do every other approach):

The second listed approach is the parent scale approach. You learn 2-3 scales (Major, Melodic Minor and may be Harmonic minor) in some positional system and match them to each chord as their parent scale. The problem is that the parent scale often has nothing to do with the tonality and it may not align well with the chord.

Let's take the Bb blues. The parent scale in this approach for the I chord can be Eb Major or (in bar IV) B melodic minor. None of the scales represent the tonality and especially Eb Major does not not align well with the chord and leaves much work to be done in order to play the scale as a dominant chord.

The first listed approach appears to address the shortcomings of the previous one by centering each scale on the matching chord. Your reference for Bb7 chord now is Bb Mixo or Bb Altered hence getting the sound of the chord with your lines becomes more natural. The downside of course is now you have a lot more scales to shred. But that's not all.

There is another downside. Taking Bb Mixo (or Bb Altered) as your reference is not that helpful. You're not gonna play Bb Mixo up and down everytime you play that chord. You still have a lot of work to do. You might want to think D half diminished, Ab Major 7, F minor etc. Well now you're back to square one. Wait you say, since you already shredded all the chord-scales you can just think D locrian or F dorian over Bb7. True but if you gonna have to do this scale math after shredding a million scales I think there is a better approach.

You can think of Bb7 as a family of chords that share the same set of notes. You can still learn major scale positionally if you like. But now you think of each position as 7 related chords in an egalitarian system, not as one parent scale. So you shred positions not as say, Eb major scale, but as F minor, D half diminished, Bb7 etc. chords. Then you work on which of these to bring out in different contexts. Say over Bb7 you might choose Fminor, D half diminished, Ab major. Over Eb major, you might choose G minor or C minor or D minor (note D minor this takes you to a different family). But all come from the same set of notes/positions etc.

You got 12 keys. Getting good at accessing all diatonic chords (as triads and 4 note chords) in each position in each key is the big picture fretboard learning goal in this approach. This has been the most fruitful system for me but it's just one persons opinion.

[christianm77]

I think all that chord scale stuff is something that works better on piano.

Actually it was playing chord scales on a piano that helped me realise how it all fit together. Stuff that wouldn’t be obvious on guitar; because we tend to think in shapes not in sharp and flat notes in scales running left to right.

So that’s another idea. Just do stuff in C major.... and then generalise and apply to guitar.

Or write down in notation.

[Marcel_A]

I'm trying to 'escape' from that pattern stuff. i take the cmajor as a starting point and play other scales using the same pattern, but with the #'s and b's.
So i play c major starting on C in the third position. G major is the same pattern accept ofcourse the F becomes a F#.
That way i want to avoid being dependent on patterns.

i didn't know Gmajor. I knew a pattern for major and slided over the neck to play in a different key. i think one should be able to play g major starting on a random spot on the neck. that's what i'm aiming for anyway.

[John A.]

How do you respond to a 2-5-1 mentally? If you have: Gmi7 - C7 - Fmaj7, and you have time and want to create a "scalar" response do you:

1) Think 3 Scales, and hunt for the nearest pattern you know for that scale? For example:

G Dorian @ 6th string root 3rd fret
C Mixolydian @ 5th string root 3rd fret
F Major @ 5th string root 8th fret

or

2) You know all 3 chords come from F Ionian so you stay in your preferred F position, and because you know where the transition points are from 3rd to 7ths for each chord you can hit those color tones as you go along, but the "pattern" under your fingers, the mental image of the scale framework, is always F Ionian.

If I'm learning the tune or practicing with the specific intent of finding new sounds, I might consciously try playing a mode over each chord, but none of the above in actually blowing while playing for real. To the extent that I'm thinking at all about theory while improvising, it's more stuff like consciously developing a motif, or looking ahead in the form for modulations or cadences to emphasize, or picking spots for "outside" sounds, thinking about the overall shape of the line I'm playing (e.g., mixing up leaps and steps, changes in direction that sort of thing). But I can't think about more than a little bit of that stuff at a time; the changes blow by too quickly to formulate an analysis and execute it. Most of the time it's executing a sound I have in my head, without really knowing in real time what the "theory" underlying that idea is. Practicing and serves the purpose of adding more of those ideas to the stock of what comes up in real-time playing auto-pilot mode.

John

[mr. beaumont]

A bunch of different ways, depending on how the tune is organized, but probably never "Dorian mixolydian ionian."

[vsaumarez]

Ultimately, you can take a scalic or chordal approach. You can treat each chord individually, in a set of two, or three. You can play the major scale over all three. Many jazzers see the dominant as an opportunity to add tension, and since the II V I progression is so common many will have well-worn phrases that weave through the progression. The more approaches you use the wider your scope of interest. I sometimes use a melodic minor over the II, altered notes over the V, and a major sound over I chord. If I'm consistent it is with adding tension over the V chord. It sometimes helps to break away of thinking in terms of scales and more in terms of sound, or melodic (and rhythmical) content.