ii-V-I Chord Progressions - Which is more important, the ii-V or the V-I?

[christianm77]

Doesn't anyone advocate just playing the chords anymore?

Learning shortcuts, e.g. playing on the V and not the ii, is limiting. Learning to play the guide tones/scales of each chord allows the freedom to tackle most anything. Later the lines can be dumbed down, bluesed up, or follow imaginary substitute chords.

First learn to play vertically (chord tones and scales) before employing horizontal simplifications. Then one's lines are developed by intent, not lack of options.

Oh sure, it's a great exercise, of course. I would recommend my students play through a tune strictly in triads and seventh chords, in 1/2 notes, 1/4 notes and 1/8s. Can't knock it.

Same with scales. However - the Barry Harris system uses just V7 (no IIs) for this because in terms of the vanilla chords it's the same scale anyway. You run them 1-7 or 1-7-1 it's a great way to hear a tunes harmony and learn where the notes are so to speak, not dumbed down... (If you have too many changes you end up having to run 1-2-3-5 or arpeggios rather than scales anyway.) So Rhythm A section becomes:

Bb | F7 | Bb | F7 |
Bb7 | Eb7 | Bb | F7 |
For instance.

One point, how do you know what the correct chords are? There are so many subs and possibilities, and many charts have them taken as read. Take a tune like Embraceable You or Rhythm Changes with loads of versions of the changes knocking around. Answer - play as many variations as you can.

Players with a healthy standards repertoire (as opposed to people who know a limited number of standards just for jamming purposes) get the memo pretty quick that changes that are apparently different on the surface are related to simpler underlying progressions. Getting hung up on the surface detail of a tunes harmony can actual be detrimental to an improvisor's harmonic flow. This is really important. Players with a repertoire of only a few dozen tunes will never become good changes players, IMO. You need enough to spot the patterns. (That's not to say they might not be great modal improvisers.)

But yes, you do need to be able to articulate harmony before you can do that. Playing the vanilla chord tones through lots of tunes is an excellent way to develop that ability.

[Meggy]

A sincere thank you to everyone for all the further replies on this thread, some going into considerable depth, and I'm grateful that people would go to the trouble. Too many to acknowledge individually, but I promise that I, for one, read and think about all of them. Wonderful to have a place to talk with others about these things, one can feel a bit isolated as a jazz guitarist/enthusiast - at least where I am, it's not exactly a super-popular thing to be into.