Started a blog as a Jazz beginner...

[vernplum]

Sorry - didn't know quite where to put this (admins feel free to reclass) but I've started a new blog to document my guitar life at http://gitbuddy.wordpress.com/

I just started taking Jazz guitar lessons and hope to show what I learned and share my experiences and perhaps show some kind of progress.

Thanks

[jhumber]

Hey, interesting blog, I hope you get what you're looking for from the lessons.

One thing I thought I'd mention is secondary dominants. You wrote:
"There’s something called a secondary dominant, which I think is conversion of any minor chord to a dominant 7th, e.g. in key of G, conversion of Bm7 to B7 then moving to relative minor of Em."

To clear that up, a secondary dominant is the act of approaching any chord with a dominant chord a 5th higher than it.

For example, in the key of C we only get one dominant chord, the G. Take the diatonic progression C - Am - Dm - G. When we loop this progression we get the resolution from the dominant G chord back to the tonic C chord. However, we can slip in other dominant chords in front of all the other chords in the progression. A 5th above the note A is E, so before the Am chord we can approach it with an E7. In this case, E7 is a secondary dominant chord, not in the key of C, but used to create tension before resolving to the Am.

Likewise the note A is a 5th above D, so we can approach the Dm with an A7 (or any other dominant A chord). Finally the note D is a 5th above the G, so we can approach the G chord with a D7 chord.

Put it all together, and you could turn the C Am Dm G progression into C E7 Am A7 Dm D7 G. That might not sound great (I'm sat without a guitar here) due to the abundant use of minor to dominants on the same root (eg. Dm to D7), but that in principle is the use of secondary dominants. You're probably not likely to use one before every chord in a progression as shown above - that was purely for demonstration.

Hope some of that helps. Keep updating the blog :munch
Jordan.

[Sid]

awesome...always wanted to this...but then the blog would end in 3 pages!!...keep it up vern...

[vernplum]

Jordan - thanks very much for taking the effort to help clarify that for me. Sincerely appreciate it. I hope you don't mind, but I also copied your advice to my blog for other readers following along. :)

Cheers

BTW - Frank looks totally awesome.

[vernplum]

awesome...always wanted to this...but then the blog would end in 3 pages!!...keep it up vern...

Ha - know what you mean - you get an initial burst of enthusiasm and then it ends - this is about my 4th blog but none of the preceding ones were about guitars so this stands more chance of surviving. :)

[jhumber]

Jordan - thanks very much for taking the effort to help clarify that for me. Sincerely appreciate it. I hope you don't mind, but I also copied your advice to my blog for other readers following along. :)

Cheers

BTW - Frank looks totally awesome.

Hey - no problem - glad to be of use.....

And yeah, I'm pretty pleased with how Frank turned out! He's seen alot of use this year and is showing his first signs of wear ;-)

Good luck with your music
Jordan.

[JamesHealey]

The Beatles used Secondary Dominants a fair few times, infact they've used some really cool harmony in some of their stuff.

[Gasp100]

Jordan, thanks for the excellent explanation of what secondary dominants are and how they work. Now, I just need to find examples are start using them in my playing.
A few questions. If the "simple" chord progression stayed the same, could you actually use arps or chord tones from the secondary doms to play approach notes (over even play OVER) the regular changes?
Also, I got some cool advice from Tomo about integrating some nice approaches going from the i -> iv in a minor blues. So, the example was him playing over "The Thrill is Gone":
Bm -> Em and at the end of the 4th measure Bm he "hears" and plays a B7 arp? It sounds awesome, but I still don't see the relation harmonically? Is this a known practice to just replace a m7 with a dom7 in particular places? Just wondering...

[JonR]

Jordan, thanks for the excellent explanation of what secondary dominants are and how they work. Now, I just need to find examples are start using them in my playing.
A few questions. If the "simple" chord progression stayed the same, could you actually use arps or chord tones from the secondary doms to play approach notes (over even play OVER) the regular changes?
Also, I got some cool advice from Tomo about integrating some nice approaches going from the i -> iv in a minor blues. So, the example was him playing over "The Thrill is Gone":
Bm -> Em and at the end of the 4th measure Bm he "hears" and plays a B7 arp? It sounds awesome, but I still don't see the relation harmonically? Is this a known practice to just replace a m7 with a dom7 in particular places? Just wondering...The relation is that B7 is the natural V chord of the E minor key.
Raising the D (of Bm) to D# gives the "leading tone" that resolves up to the root (E).
So in the B minor key, B7 is a secondary dominant (V of iv).

It would be pretty common to add that raised 7th (3rd of the chord, 7th of the following key) in passing, even when not present in the chord. Of course, the root movement needs to be a 4th up (or 5th down).
IMO, it's more of a jazz thing than a blues thing. In blues, if the 7th is ever raised at all, it would probably be bent from the b7 (or even the 6). Blues is not too concerned about leading tones, or any kind of voice-leading in fact.

You're right that you can do this with any minor chord moving up a 4th to the next chord.
Eg, in key of C major, let's say you have this sequence:
C-Em-Am-Dm-G7-C
You could play a G# over the Em to lead to A on the Am;
C# over the Am to lead to D on the Dm;
and F# over the Dm to lead to G on the G7.
This would be implying the secondary dominant in each case.
(E7, A7, D7 would be secondary dominants in that key, V of the following chord in each case.)
If the minor chord is quite clear in the backing, the major 3rd should (probably) only be used quickly in passing, between the m3 and root of the following chord (half-step above).

But try it out and see how it sounds!

And also try using the secondary dominant chords, either in tandem with the diatonic chords::
C-Em-E7-Am-A7-Dm-D7-G7-C.
- or as replacements:
C-E7-A7-D7-G7-C

In jazz, they go one step further and introduce a "ii" ("secondary supertonic"!) before each V:
C---|Bm7-E7|Em7-A7|-Am7-D7|Dm7-G7-|C
So while Em7 is diatonic to C major, in that sequence it's acting as a ii chord to D. Just as Am7 is ii of G, and Bm7 is ii of A.
The sequence would also work with one of the pairs missing:
C---|Bm7-E7-|Am7-D7-|Dm7-G7-|C
Or:
C---|Bm7-E7-|Em7-A7-|Dm7-G7-|C

The other jazz convention is that if the target chord is minor, then the approaching ii-V will be a m7b5 (half-dim) to a V7b9.
Eg
C---|Bm7b5-E7b9-|Am---|Em7b5-A7b9-|Dm7-G7-|C

Again, while Bm7b5 is diatonic to C major (the natural vii chord), it's behaving there as the ii chord of Am. And Em7b5 is the ii of Dm - even tho the Dm, when it comes, is Dm7, the ii of C major.

C - - - |Bm7b5-E7b9-|Am---|Em7b5-A7b9-|Dm7-G7-|C
KEY: C major |A minor..........|D minor....|C major
I |ii V i |ii V |ii V I

IOW, what matters is the root movement: either it stays the same (and the chord may change from major to minor, or vice versa) or it goes up a 4th. (In the latter example, the root sequence "steps back" from Am to Em7b5, in order to step forward through A7 to Dm. You will need to play this to hear the sound.)

The different options give different kinds of voice-leading (if you want to understand this, look at what happens to the 3rds and 7ths of each chord as they progress).

[jhumber]

Jordan, thanks for the excellent explanation of what secondary dominants are and how they work. Now, I just need to find examples are start using them in my playing.

No problem. As for examples, I can't say I've ever really looked for any....once you have the basic principle in your head you can use them as you like. I just sat and played through the progression I described above, and to my surprise it actually sounded ok :-)

I treated each chord in the original progression as 4 beats, and replaced the final beat of each chord with the secondary dominant of the following chord.....eg. 3 beats of C, followed by a beat of E7, followed by 3 beats of Am etc......If anything, I'd say using them between every chord in a progression can lesson the effect....too much tension and resolution flying around!

If the "simple" chord progression stayed the same, could you actually use arps or chord tones from the secondary doms to play approach notes (over even play OVER) the regular changes?

There are some interesting possibilities here. For instance, if the secondary dominant happens to have the same root as the preceeding chord (eg. Am -> A7 resolving do Dm, and Dm -> D7 resolving to G in the above progression) then it could sound pretty effective. This would be especially true if you're just playing with a bassist who isn't implying too much harmony. If someone else, keys for instance, was outlining a strong Dmin chord and you played a D7 arpeggio over it, the major/minor 3rds might clash a little if played carelessly. However a bassist playing root+5th of Dmin isn't going to provide you with that clash, so you could insert the secondary dominant chord without the bassist being any the wiser (apart from looking at you and thinking 'woah, I must have just played something great cos that sounded pretty cool') :dude

As with everything though, the best advice is to try it out and let your ears tell you if it works or not :)


Also, I got some cool advice from Tomo about integrating some nice approaches going from the i -> iv in a minor blues. So, the example was him playing over "The Thrill is Gone":
Bm -> Em and at the end of the 4th measure Bm he "hears" and plays a B7 arp? It sounds awesome, but I still don't see the relation harmonically? Is this a known practice to just replace a m7 with a dom7 in particular places? Just wondering...

Hmm....pass on that one. Pretty much every chord substition (or what appears to be one) can be explained if you look hard enough. If this kinda stuff really interests you I'd highly recommend getting a copy of Ted Greene's Chord Chemistry book. There's enough info in there on these kind of topics to keep you going for many lifetimes, but its still very consumable as a book.

Cheers,
Jordan.

[vernplum]

Hi there - been a while, but I've been diligently updating my blog with my progress and documenting what my teacher's been showing me - here's some recent entries.

Cheers.

http://gitbuddy.wordpress.com/2007/11/26/lesson-2-on-secondary-dominants-and-walking-basslines/


http://gitbuddy.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/lesson-3-on-drop-2-chord-voicings-and-la-vie-en-rose/


http://gitbuddy.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/lesson-4-more-on-drop-2-arpeggios-bewitched/

[JohnM]

Great job Vern! THAT's the kind of stuff the internet is great for. If we had only had this kinda stuff 25 years ago...