Master ii-V-I Chord Progressions In 5 Steps

two five one chord progressions are by far the most common chord progressions found in jazz standards and so we need to be able to play them forwards backwards and have a really good strong hold over improvising over them so in today's video I'm going to be going over my five step process for practicing two five one chord progressions and over time mastering them that's coming right up what's up Brent here from lurch and a nurse calm which is a blog a podcast and videos all geared towards helping you become a better jazz musician thanks for being here and if you've never subscribed to the channel before please do so at the button below so that you are not left out on anything that's going on here now two five one chord progressions being so popular being so commonly found in jazz standards it'd be a great idea to really study them hard because the more jazz standards you learn the more you're gonna realize that they are just absolutely everywhere so if you can really play and improvise over to 5-1 chord progressions I can pretty much guarantee you that improvising over jazz is going to be ten times easier so let's go over my five steps for mastering and practicing two five one chord progressions the first ones are going to be a little more fundamental so that we can really understand what they are and how they work and then after that we're going to move to more of the language stuff for our improvisation let's do this thing so the first step is to understand what a two five one actually is now it's important to know there are major two five ones and there are minor two five ones now for today's example we're really going to be focusing on a major two five ones but recognize that being able to play two five ones in a minor key is equally as important so we need to understand where they come from if you take a look at this major diatonic series of seventh chords we basically see a C major scale harmonized with seventh chords [Music] right and underneath each one of those you see Roman numerals and the lowercase Roman numerals represent minor chords and the uppercase Roman numerals represent major and dominant seventh chords so we take a look at this we realize that a two five one in the key of concert C is d minor seven g seven and then C major seven so it's important that you know where this comes from and how harmony works in general because if you don't understand that all this is just gonna sound like rocket science to you so okay but now that we got that out of the way let's move on to step number two step number two is to connect chord tones together with voice leading now I always start with chord tones whenever I talk about improvisation because the core tones are really what I consider the springboard the starting place for all improvisation not scales not any chord scale theory but chord tones if we can understand the quality of those chords and how they can connect together we are gonna be in good shape so if we take a look at this two five one chord progression in the key of concert C major we realize that the core tones for D minor are D F a and C and then for g7 it would be G B D and F and it's for C major seven it's C G and B but the next step is to voice leave them together because ultimately we need to be able to connect these together so you could do a little exercise like this [Music] now all I did there was I simply use this concept called voice leading which means connecting to the nearest chord tone from one chord to the other in order to connect them together so so that was the D minor seven ascending but we landed on the flat seven now the nearest court tone to the g7 is going to be the third of the g7 just a half step down from where we're at now now we're gonna go down the G seven arpeggio the chord tones okay we just landed on the fifth of g7 and the closest chord tone to the C major seven that I'm gonna pick in this case is going to be the root so that's now of course you want to be able to maybe play that and other octaves and you could do other things where you start on the third of the chord or you start on the fifth of the chord you start on the flat seven whatever you want to do you can still a voice lead and connect these chord tones together so what I would do is work those chord tones using voice leading connecting you together forwards backwards so that you can play it anywhere on your instrument and of course of course of course always I would definitely be able to play this in all twelve keys all right step number three is to identify the guide tones now I did an entire video on guide tones I'll link that up in the cards above so you can check that out later but guy tones are essentially the thirds in sevenths of each chord and why our guide tones important will they help us identify what the important notes in each court are the ones that we want to target in our improvisation so I always go here for the next step because I think it's important for our brains to really map these out on our instruments no matter what instrument you play so if we take this same major two five one in C major we can go ahead and identify the guide tones so of D minor seven we have the third and the seventh and now let's voice lead that together with the third in the seventh of g7 and then the third and the seventh of C major seven so I'm using the guide tones and I'm connecting them together and again we could take that through all 12 keys but the main thing we want to do here is finish mapping this out by identifying the important core tones because once we do that then we can understand that we can start are targeting those thirds those 7s with a line kind of just as simple as what I did which is used a little chromatic approach tones and all these fancy things you don't have to worry about right now but if you can know what the thirds and the 7s are it's gonna set you up for success in understanding them so so far all three of these have been more foundational helping us understand how two five ones work and exactly what they are but now we need to take things to the next level and start learning some language so go ahead hit that like button on the video below and let's move on to number four number four is to learn a ton of language over to five one chord progressions now this is the real big one because all the other ones before we're just making sure we understand things but at the end of the day if you want to be able to master two five ones really understand how to navigate them you just got to learn by example and take a look at what other great jazz musicians before us have done and learn the language that they're playing so this is where transcribing licks off of recordings and I don't necessarily mean writing it down but just learning it by ear is super super important I would go straight to the recordings I would learn something by ear and then figure it out on my instrument and then you have a new piece of vocabulary under your belt four to five one chord progressions for example I stole this Jim Hall lick off of a two five one chord progression now this is a fantastic lick because it really outlines all the chord changes it's really beautiful and even though it's isolated it's not necessarily in context it really helps give me some ideas for stuff I can start playing so the idea is to learn as many different pieces of language as you can over this but it really doesn't stop there in my opinion we need to be taking these into all 12 keys now the reason we take licks into all 12 keys is because it's gonna not only help us understand how to navigate our instrument better we need to be able to play to 5-1 progressions in all keys because they are gonna come up in a multitude of different keys in jazz standards and not only that just like learning any language the more that we repeat something over and over and over again the more it gets stuck up here and the more that it will come out our subconscious mind will become second nature to us and it's not to say that we want to be able to play these licks verbatim as we go through a live playing situation but we'll have those sounds in our ears and you'll be surprised how you'll be able to latch onto things and create your own jazz language for yourself alright so my last step number five is to learn jazz standards and identify two five ones in them this is incredibly important because my belief is the more jazz standards we learn the more we're gonna understand about jazz harmony and if we know to look for the two five ones it's gonna really break down the mystery of jazz standards because they're so common in all of them I mean just take a look at there will never be another you for example the first eight to nine bars is really just hanging out on the one chord for a little bit then it goes to a minor two-five one into the relative minor or the sixth chord and then after that it does a two five one two a flat major which is the four chords so essentially we start with a one chord so that's not very hard and then we just have two two five one chord progressions one in a minor key one in a major key and both in different keys C minor and a flat major and once we understand that I mean hey it's so much easier so the more of those you learn the more the more of those you understand the easier all of this gets so applying two five ones to actual tunes is hugely important and by the way if you kind of want to really study jazz standards get inside of them you know analyze them apply improv lessons over them you check out my chewy books called the jazz standards playbook volume 1 and volume 2 they're just great books that go over 20 different jazz standards that really dig into the harmony you really hope you understand them there'll never be another use in volume 2 so you can check that out the jazz standards playbook to.com or the jazz standards playbook dot-com for the first one alright now hope this was helpful for you today I hope that you take some action on this and you actually go through with some of the steps that I mentioned today and hey by the way if you have any opinions of how to practice two five ones or would like to share how you practice two five ones go ahead and leave that in the comments below I want to fill up the comments with as many different ideas for learning jazz language over to five ones as we can possibly get so feel free to go down and do that below that's all for this video thanks for hanging out with me today hit that like button make sure you share this with someone if you think it's gonna be helpful and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Learn Jazz Standards

Views: 86,771

Keywords: jazz improvisation, jazz solos, play better jazz solos, jazz lesson, jazz advice, learn to play jazz, jazz education, jazz harmony, ii-v-I chord progressions, mastering ii-V-I chord progressions, improvise over ii-V-I chord progressions, play over ii-V-I chord progressions, solo over ii-V-I chord progressions, ii-V-I explained, 2-5-1 chord progressions, common jazz chord progressions

Id: eUeD723bhhU

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2019