Advanced Guitar Theory

[Jazzguitar2516]

I am new to the forum and had a couple questions about creating a jazz standard.

I know they have 2 5 1 progressions.... and in theory that is jazz music...
My question is what the theory or technical term is called when writing chord progressions not only just using the 251 formulas but also having a 2 section after the 2 5 1 formula...

What exactly and how exactly do you use passing chords with sub dominant chords substitutions and so on and so on... when do you use tri tones or such as replacing the 2 chords with a flat 9?
Are there standard harmonies like any suggestions on using rhythm patterns and what they might use in the sense of jazz or does it defy someone's character ability to play that on their own such as maybe a sub dominant 4/4 or major 5th or a 1/16 as a tonic chord...

[Jimmy blue note]

I think you've got the cart in front of the horse. A II V I is a cadence that ends a musical sentence the way a period completes a grammatical sentence. Beatles tunes end that way, Bach preludes end that way. It's a harmonic segment that creates a resolution cadence.
It's not a formula for writing a song any more than a bone is the way to make a chicken.

Lots of parts make up a song. Jazz is not how to make a standard, it's how to take a whole songform and use your own creative resources to make it into something else.

What, if I might ask, are you trying to do?

[StringNavigator]

The 2m7 is merely a sonic tail on a V7, as a musical device to soften the approach to a V7, like a suspension. 251 by itself is no magic seed for song composition. If there is a magic key to music, it's "Chopsticks". Play it and find that there's really only the Tonic and the Dominant: IM7 - V7. All of Jazz is just a story about the 3 and 7b of V7 becoming the 1 and 3 of IM. Like in "Chopsticks". Key centered harmony is all about toggling between these two chords. Jazz, Classical, Punk...

However, there are four crotchet beats to a bar and IM - V7 is a Spartan way to use 8x4=32 beats. So locate the tonics and dominants, but then embellish the changes with substitute chords. Most other chords are actually substitutes and passing chords because their spellings are close to the Tonic or Dominant. The key to embellishing the changes is to know the cycle of thirds to be able to Chord-Spell [CEGBDFACEGBDF...] and find upper structure subs / chord synonyms.

Another way to embellish the changes are to locate a o7 on the fretboard and flatten any of its notes to uncover a dominant seventh grip with that note as it's root. If you sharpen any note of the o7 chord, you'll derive a m7-5 chord. That provides three qualities to embellish the harmony: 7, o7, and m7-5 of appropriate degree.

Try relative minor subs: 1m6=6m7-5, 1M6=6m7.
Try chord subs that differ little: 1M6=1M7 and 1m6=479nr and 57-5=2b7-5.
Use extensions: 2m7=2m79=2m711=2m7-5

Apply the symmetrical properties of a o7 chord to a V7-9: V7-9=iiio7=vo7=viibo7=iibo7
Then you can lower the root of the o7th to get a Dom7th that resolves to the Tonic, or sharpen it to get a m7-5. These are also called Tritone Subs or Half-Step Subs. Also, you can take ivo7=vio7=viio7=iio7 and the Dom7ths or m7-5's derived from those o7's.

Depending on your tolerance for Chromaticism, not all subs may work for you. It's not rocket science, but it does take a lot of memorisation that must be practiced into a skill to use it quickly.

Back-Cycle, extend, invert, and alter to keep changing grips on each beat, depending on the harmonic tempo desired. Four to the Bar. Prefer partial chords to Barre chords, even just the guide tones, for quick grip switching. Rather than four chords to the bar, you can use two, but imply two more with quick pinky licks using extension notes.

As a basis for this, it behooves a any guitarist to learn the triads on each three string set in all inversions. George Van Eps, Jimmy Smith and Eddie Lang all wrote large sections in their methods on how to practice the diatonic triads - 1M 2m 3m 4M 5M 6m 7o 8M on the Major Scale and also the Relative Minor Scale in every key. Play them on each three string set, or use two adjacent three string sets and cross strings at a different degree each time.

Practicing 251 may make one sound like 251. The Real Book popularised the use of the 251, made it a default and formularised Jazz. The sound can get stale and predictable if used as a crutch or habit. Many colleges produce 251 men.

There is help. Buy Jerry Coker's inexpensive little book, Improvising Jazz, to work through 100 charts categorised by start chords, similar changes and modulation schemes, 20 Blues variations by substitution. Play 'em and see how it's done! Also, his pricier book, Hearing the Changes shows and describes all possible chord progressions: Rhythm Changes 1625 and 2516, Sears-Roebuck Bridge 3625, Back-Door 5144m, Montgomery-Ward Bridge 1425, Ward-Montgomery Bridge 4125. I use 251 within 1625 and drop the 6 if desired.

For a wealth of chord grips AND choice changes with substitutions, buy the Johnny Rector Encyclopedia of Guitar Chord Progressions from Mel Bay. If cash is an issue, just get this book as it is a keeper. So is Improving Jazz.
::

[equenda]

First of all, I apologize for my English.

All Western music is based on tonal harmony.
For over a century, Jazz is based on a series of chords (harmonic progressions) or a single chord (modal Harmony).

99.99% of Jazz musicians consider chords to be “vertical stacks” of notes that follow one after the other.

On closer inspection, this is not the case and only a classical composer can understand what I'm talking about.

Every form of harmony starts from Gregorian chant and in particular from what is counterpoint.

I know very little about classical music but Bach and Beethoven did NOT think in "chords" but in a horizontal sequence of melodic lines which, at certain points, formed what we call chords.
I believe that in the thousands of classical compositions from the Middle Ages to the 1800s, you never see a chord symbol. It's always just counterpoint.

In the 1900s, tonal harmony had a great diffusion in ragtime, blues, folk, jazz, pop and rock music. In classical music the tonal harmony and chords common in jazz, were abandoned with the advent of twelve-tone, atonal and serial music.
In the 1900s and nowadays almost no classical composer uses chords and harmonic progressions as we jazz players do.

I think great arrangers like Ellington, Basie, Gil Evans, Quincy Jones, Ennio Morricone and many others know counterpoint very well and get the harmonic progressions very differently from us guitarists.

I believe that to FULLY UNDERSTAND harmony it is essential to study a good book on counterpoint and composition.

But now I'm 60y.o. and I enjoy reading chords in the Real Book more….

Ettore https://www.quenda.it/jazzguitar.html

[gcb]

I find the general question posed by the OP interesting.

Discovering the what-goes-where of a standard, as in finding a formula or formulae for composing jazz standards, doesn't seem an easy undertaking, if at all possible.

But one can approach the subject, and gain some basic understanding, through a lot of listening and the study of certain sources of jazz composition.

Because, we know, many composers -not only in jazz- use extant harmonic schemes in their work. That's what standards are made of.

In looking after this kind of knowledge, a good starting point is therefore to study different blues forms, and the changes to originals.

Beboppers used I Got Rhythm, All God’s Children Got Rhythm, ATTYA, Cherokee, Confirmation, Fine and Dandy, Honeysuckle Rose, Sweet Georgia Brown, Back Home Again in Indiana, What Is this Thing Called Love, Love me or Leave Me, Out of Nowhere, Lady Be Good, How High The Moon, Pennies from Heaven, etc.

So OP if you learn the melodies, observe the root movements, and note the chord qualities of standards, you hopefully might then start to find some answers to your interesting questions.

[AllanAllen]

You already asked this question in the songwriting thread and I'll give you the same reply.

How many standards do you already know?

[ragman1]

... does it defy someone's character ability to play that on their own such as maybe a sub dominant 4/4 or major 5th or a 1/16 as a tonic chord...

Guy's completely off with the fairies.

[mr. beaumont]

Maybe start with a melody?

[ragman1]

No point in having a melody unless you can back it up. Literally.

[ragman1]

Composition.

The first thing is you don't want to be writing any of those old fashioned romantic ballads any more. They're all out now.

What you need is modern modal stuff.

1) Find a nice rhythm pattern, something meaningful but not too fancy.

2) Choose an odd number of bars, like seven, nine or eleven. It's more interesting, catches the listeners' ear.

3) Put in some chords that are seriously unrelated. They ought to have lots of alterations and extensions, nothing dull. String them together to fill the bars.

4) Except the last chord should probably lead nicely back to the first one, they ought to have a connection.

5) Invent a tune, something fairly melodic that suits the chords. Keep it simple.

6) Then you need a little introduction, just a couple of bars and a riff will do it.

7) Play the tune twice at the beginning so it fixes it in the ear. And repeat it at the end, of course.

8) You'll need a title. Exotic place names or peoples' names are good. Like Slough or Harry Smith (joke).

9) Really at this point your job as the composer is done. Now you need to find a lot of really good musicians who can interpret your tune.

Of course, if you can play and improvise over it yourself, that's fine.

[JimmyDunlop]

Maybe start with a melody?

Yes exactly, this is the most logical thing

Composition.

The first thing is you don't want to be writing any of those old fashioned romantic ballads any more. They're all out now.

What you need is modern modal stuff.

1) Find a nice rhythm pattern, something meaningful but not too fancy.

2) Choose an odd number of bars, like seven, nine or eleven. It's more interesting, catches the listeners' ear.

3) Put in some chords that are seriously unrelated. They ought to have lots of alterations and extensions, nothing dull. String them together to fill the bars.

4) Except the last chord should probably lead nicely back to the first one, they ought to have a connection.

5) Invent a tune, something fairly melodic that suits the chords. Keep it simple.

6) Then you need a little introduction, just a couple of bars and a riff will do it.

7) Play the tune twice at the beginning so it fixes it in the ear. And repeat it at the end, of course.

8) You'll need a title. Exotic place names or peoples' names are good. Like Slough or Harry Smith (joke).

9) Really at this point your job as the composer is done. Now you need to find a lot of really good musicians who can interpret your tune.

Of course, if you can play and improvise over it yourself, that's fine.

ragman is obviously kidding, as the other guy said mr beaumont, start with a melody and develop it with a structure, then find the chords to back the melody and is done. Try some 32 bars song as most of the standards. You need to understand the structure of this 32 bars, if you dont, I can help you with this

[AllanAllen]

Guy's completely off with the fairies.

Created an account on the 10th posted the same question four places and then nothing else. Strange.

[Litterick]

One of us is a robot.

[jazzkritter]

Maybe he’s Quora trained.

[starjasmine]

To the OP: It seems like you might not be familiar enough with the basics of music to understand more advanced terminology and concepts. Find a good teacher and learn some basic musical skills before you try to write or play jazz. You must crawl before you walk, and walk before you run.

If your question is unclear because you are struggling with English, try posting your question in your native language. There are many non-English speakers on this board.

Good luck!

======
UPDATE:

My question is what the theory or technical term is called when writing chord progressions not only just using the 251 formulas but also having a 2 section after the 2 5 1 formula...

I think you are asking about "song form" or just "form". It's a way to describe the structure of a composition by assigning letters to each unique section, and then describing the overall structure of the composition by using just those letters. For example, let's say you have a song that has a verse and a chorus. Let's use A to represent the verse and B to represent the chorus. If the whole song is one verse followed by one chorus, then we could say that the song has an "AB" form. Now lets say that the whole song is one verse (A) followed by one chorus (B) followed by another verse (A) and another chorus. That song has the structure ABAB. Many pop tunes will have a third idea to break up the monotony of verse/chorus repeating too much - this third idea is often called the "bridge" and lets say that we are going to use the letter C to represent the bridge in our song. If we have verse-chorus twice, followed by the bridge we could say the song form is ABABC. If we then follow the bridge with one more verse and chorus pair, we have the form ABABCAB.

There are a variety of standard song forms used throughout Western music dating back to the pre-Classical era, such as "sonata-allegro form", "rondo form" and others. The idea of representing ideas with letters can also be used to describe the melodic ideas that compose a verse, a chorus, a bridge, a movement of a symphony, and so on.

When jazz musicians improvise a solo, they impose their own melodic and harmonic ideas on the form of the song; that is, the verse, chorus, bridge etc. generally appear in the same places they would if the musician were playing the melody... but the improviser makes up their own melody and harmony. Generally, the best improvisations use the idea of form to build musical phrases and ideas that relate to one another as the solo develops, rather than just playing a bunch of random stuff.

HTH

SJ

[ragman1]

ragman is obviously kidding

Well, not entirely, as it happens. I certainly wasn't trying to help the OP.

as the other guy said mr beaumont, start with a melody

Some people start with chords, some with a melody. Some wake up one morning and hear/see the whole thing in their head.

As a matter of fact, a good melody is a very hard thing to find. Anybody can string notes together but coming up with a memorable tune is difficult. I'm not even sure it can be done deliberately. As others have said, out of many attempts only a few survive. Very true.

[ragman1]

Created an account on the 10th posted the same question four places and then nothing else. Strange.

Absolutely. Posts nonsense and disappears.

There was another one the other day, someone called Stim. He did the same. It's very hard to know what's going on. It could be deliberately malevolent, it could just be the effects of dope/booze, whatever. It could just be simple ignorant naivety (but I doubt it).

I think, if you run a forum, that there's a way of checking IP addresses. If there are a spate of one-time posters that don't look right, it could be they're the same person using different names. But there are easy ways round that too.

The simplest way is just to read it, know it's stupid, and ignore it. But not everybody wants to do that, as you can see.

[JimmyDunlop]

Absolutely. Posts nonsense and disappears.

There was another one the other day, someone called Stim. He did the same. It's very hard to know what's going on. It could be deliberately malevolent, it could just be the effects of dope/booze, whatever. It could just be simple ignorant naivety (but I doubt it).

I think, if you run a forum, that there's a way of checking IP addresses. If there are a spate of one-time posters that don't look right, it could be they're the same person using different names. But there are easy ways round that too.

The simplest way is just to read it, know it's stupid, and ignore it. But not everybody wants to do that, as you can see.

Yes it is very strange, You are right. Do you think it is a kind of a bot? But why would they do this?

[ragman1]

why would they do this?

As Kris said, for fun. If you know anything about trolling on social media, which I'm sure you do, once people believe they're invisible the base elements of human nature come out. There's a lot of it about.

It may also be, because I don't want to be too damning or vindictive, that some people have no experience of jazz, want to get involved, but they're really only playing with the idea. Their questions in the post tend to be vague, inarticulate, and all that. And then, because they're not really interested, they drift away and vanish. I've seen a great many vanishers in my time here. One post, maybe a couple, and poof, they're never seen again.

[JimmyDunlop]

As Kris said, for fun. If you know anything about trolling on social media, which I'm sure you do, once people believe they're invisible the base elements of human nature come out. There's a lot of it about.

It may also be, because I don't want to be too damning or vindictive, that some people have no experience of jazz, want to get involved, but they're really only playing with the idea. Their questions in the post tend to be vague, inarticulate, and all that. And then, because they're not really interested, they drift away and vanish. I've seen a great many vanishers in my time here. One post, maybe a couple, and poof, they're never seen again.

That is interesting. I actually don't see nothing fun about it, to create an account to make one question, and then vanish its more like a sick attitude. So you are like a jazz teacher or music teacher in real life? I' ve seen you posting regularly about music theory.

[Litterick]

Maybe the OP left because of the mockery.

[ragman1]

Maybe the OP left because of the mockery.

On the contrary, the first replies were wholly positive and meant to help him. It didn't help that he posted the same initial request multiple times in various places including a duplication.

When I pointed out the best place to post (in Theory) he was there in an instant, showing he knew how to start a new thread and post there. Yet his posts in themselves were nonsense.

If he was at all serious he could easily have responded to any of the positive posts as instantly as he did to mine.

[Bobby Timmons]

OP, if you're still reading. The best way to learn about more in depth jazz harmony is to get a qualified teacher. Aside from a teacher, the best and most essential way is to study tunes. That is the rep you'll be using anyway so if you learn devices used in the tunes, you'll make progress. Beyond that, there is obviously more material, but I'm not going to go in depth if you're not going to chime back in. Even playing a basic jazz bluez has very in depth harmony that makes it sound good beyond what's just on the lead sheet.

[st.bede]

There is help. Buy Jerry Coker's inexpensive little book, Improvising Jazz, to work through 100 charts categorised by start chords, similar changes and modulation schemes, 20 Blues variations by substitution. Play 'em and see how it's done! Also, his pricier book, Hearing the Changes shows and describes all possible chord progressions: Rhythm Changes 1625 and 2516, Sears-Roebuck Bridge 3625, Back-Door 5144m, Montgomery-Ward Bridge 1425, Ward-Montgomery Bridge 4125. I use 251 within 1625 and drop the 6 if desired.

Are those official terms? … from songs? Of course, I heard 6251 as Rhythm Changes (I’ve Got Rhythm). I have not come across the others.

Also, those Coker books look good. I saw an example. One tune was named Estelle by Strabright. That title alone makes the book wroth owning.

Should I get both or just one?

[mr. beaumont]

Yeah, that's studio musician talk...there's "ice cream changes" too...but lots of (particularly old timers) use 'em.

First time I heard "sears and roebuck
changes" was on a country gig.