3 Essential Jazz Chord Progressions

if you've ever heard something like this or maybe like this and you want to learn how to play like that then this is a lesson for you what is up friends my name is Kevin Castro and today I'm going to show you how to play three of the most essential Jazz progressions that you have surely heard over and over again in your favorite jazz standards if you play the piano you need to learn these three essential Jazz progressions because it's going to make you so much more fluent in the language in the vocabulary and you're going to start to recognize these progressions when you hear them in actual Jazz standards make sure you stick around to the end of this video because I will be sharing my number one secret when it comes to playing jazz standards in every single key all right let's get into it progression number one this is called rhythm changes and if you're going to learn about any progression today and remember it and practice it I would recommend it being this one because this is from George gershwin's I got rhythm which is such an iconic piece of music in jazz history so much so that people have taken this chord progression and used it in countless other Jazz standards alright so Rhythm changes looks and sound like this foreign this one chord at a time so the first little bit goes like this C Major seven g b c and e am I playing a C note on my left hand then we're going to transition to a minor seven so just a really subtle change all I did was move from B to a with my right hand and these are inversions I'm playing so now I have g a c and e next up we have D minor seven f a c and d really nice chord which is going to lead us to our G7 f g b and d so those first four chords are very important C Major seven which we call the one chord a minor seven which we call the six chord D minor seven which is called the two chord in G7 which is called the V chord so this first progression is one six two and five so when you're playing this you want to try holding this for one two three four so for two beats one two three four so the next chord is very similar to C Major seven with just one difference we have g b d and e so instead of our C note now we have D and our left hand is going to play e in the left hand which makes E minor seven then we're gonna go up to our a but instead of playing a minor seven we're gonna play a dominant seven which sounds a little bit different this is called the secondary dominant it sounds like this g a c sharp and E so from E minor seven two two a seven and then we end off with our two five again which is D minor seven to G7 now that might have been a lot so let's take it four chords at a time so the first four go like this C Major seven a minor seven D minor seven g seven now the next four chords E minor seven a dominant seven minor seven G7 and this is such a popular progression because it can sound like this and all I was doing there was adding some comping Rhythm one and two and three and four I'm just playing a lot of those off beats which is really really popular in jazz but in order to learn this progression first you just want to learn how to play these chords and then you can start adding your own rhythms and making it fancy because Jazz is all about improvisation so the more you can add your own flavor your own musical signature to this progression the better alright so we have an amazing practice feature for you if you want to get even better at this progression and one of the great things about it is it has this Loop section where you can follow along with the sheet music that we have for you and you can Loop this progression over and over again because in regular jazz music this progression can you know repeat for a entire song and that's what Rhythm changes is so if you really want to get really solid at this progression make sure you check out our practice feature you can check it out by clicking the link below for a free seven day trial okay progression number two is actually a really beautiful descending minor chord progression we actually have a clip here from one of our piano coaches saying a new in a playing a little bit of that okay so one of the reasons why this sounds so beautiful is because of that descending bass line it's just moving down chromatically it's starting on this e note that moves down to E flat then D and then d flat and c and the majority of these chords are minor chords and in fact they're called minor nines and this is such a beautiful chord voicing chord voicing is just the way you play the notes in what order you play them in so the first chord is E minor nine e g b d and f sharp and this is a really stable part of one of the Jazz standards I like to play a lot called Autumn Leaves where there's this one progression that sounds like this foreign okay so one of the reasons why this sounds so pretty is because of this minor nine chord shape we're using minor nine chords and a dominant 13 chord which sounds very Jazzy but don't worry because it's a lot easier than it looks so here's how we here's what we need to do E minor nine sounds like this here's our E minor seven but I need to split it up between two hands to get this ninth so if I just show you the right hand first it's going to sound like this and so my right hand is going to play g b d and f sharp which you might say Kevin that's a G Major seven but if I play my e on the left hand now it unlocks a bigger chord by using both hands and this is called E minor nine and now here is the thing that is so simple all you have to do is move every single note down a semitone did you catch that one more time E minor nine now if I move everything down one semitone I have E flat minor nine so now the notes are E flat g flat B flat d flat and F and check it out same trick take this move everything down one semitone [Music] that's a such a simple trick E minor nine down a semitone down a semitone you just gotta get familiar with those shapes so one more time from the beginning E minor nine is e g b d f sharp E flat minor nine E flat G flat B flat d flat and F D Minor nine d f a c and e so those are three minor Nines in a row then we get to this crunchy chord d flat 13. and the thing that makes this chord sound so cool is it's got a little bit of a cluster in there these two notes it sounds really bad on its own but when you add a little bit of a couple of sticks on the outside and a d flat this creates a little bit of tension so that when you get to that C minor or C major nine it sounds very resolved so d flat 13 these are the notes d flat on the left hand F B flat B natural and E flat and then you're going to resolve to C major nine at the very end so c c octaves left hand e g b and d all white notes so let's try this really slowly so let's hold it for two beats each so it sounds like this one two three four one two a little bit of tension and then C major nine you can even sounds so nice okay progression number three is the two five one progression probably the most important progression in all of jazz because most of jazz is just made up of two five ones so if you can Master this exercise you're gonna be able to play pretty much any Jazz standard okay so two five one what is a two five one well there's three quarts we have to know I'm gonna start off in the key of C sounds like this D minor seven to G7 to C Major seven so there are three different types of chords we're learning we're learning our minor seven we're learning our dominant seven and we're learning our major seven where it resolves and really this is all just a pattern so let me show you the right hand first on what this looks like D minor seven if you can get your D minor seven chord it's a D Minor triad with that flatted seventh up here all you're going to do for this trick to get to our second inversion G7 is move this note right here your middle finger down one full tone so two semitones so like this and then your pinky is going to move down one semitone and that will always bring you to your G7 now the left hand or the left hand the left few left fingers here are going to do the same thing this finger goes down two semitones and this finger goes down one semitone the same exact pattern and that will bring you to your C Major seven now why am I telling you about the patterns well because once you do one cycle of this now you're going to take this C note your root play C minor seven now let's follow that same formula pattern we did so two semitones and then a semitone here now we have F7 and if I do the same thing with these two brings me to B flat major seven you just did another two five one leading to B flat and now if I keep that going B-flat minor seven two semitones one semitone E flat seven a flat major seven and the trick is to keep this cycle going all the way through all the keys because in jazz you really want to learn how to master all the keys and if you get good at this warm-up you're gonna be able to play pretty much any Jazz standard and once you get to D major seven you've pretty much done the whole cycle because if I do it again I'm at D minor seven G7 to C7 okay so if we put this hands together let's try this together right here D and C we're gonna be playing the root and the seventh here so D and C then we're gonna move to G and B in your left hand and then keep B here and just add C to one and seven again so we're going from one and seven one and three one and seven and when you're at C Major seven to start over the next cycle all you have to do is take your C note where you're at and turn it from a major seven to a minor seven chord and you do the same pattern again now if you want help with this I'm going to notate every single 251 in both Cycles because right now we're kind of skipping a few of the keys so there's F sharp here's B7 here's E Major seven here's E minor seven a seven and then D major seven and you've completed it because at the very end we start over where we started and our C Major seven right here now that takes a lot of practice and this is actually an excellent way to warm up before you start playing piano especially if you're going to start playing some jazz standards is to just try doing your cycle alright so that was our first cycle of two five one progressions if you want to get good at both cycles and be able to play them in every single key all you have to do is work on this using our practice future in the members area and that way you can slow it down you can speed it up take it at your own pace and learn every single two five one all right so there it is the three most essential Jazz progressions please let me know which one your favorite is in the comments below and we'll see you in the next lesson [Music]

Channel: Pianote

Views: 103,291

Keywords: pianote, lisa witt, how to play piano, beginner piano lesson, easy piano, piano tutorial, piano chords jazz, jazz progressions, essential jazz chord progressions, piano lessons, music lessons, jazz lessons, jazz lesson, jazz piano lesson, jazz piano, jazz lesson piano, learn jazz, learn jazz progressions, 2-5-1 progression, descending minor progression, jazz rhythm changes, piano rhythm changes

Id: bjqArFjaZLI

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2023