lesson with nino_rajacic

Ok. I must admit. I was confused with "Improvising on the paper" thing so I did lesson In 2 minutes without listening and trying to improve it.

Also I taught that if you said G7 I shouldn't use 7, 9 etc. I know that Dominant chord is played in jazz with 9b, that sounds great, bu as you said before I'm classically trained so I must start to think different.

Here is new one:

yes, i understand.. well, I said the b9 as an example... for now i want you to focus on tonality first, so, dont add any alterations outside the key.. but, give some color to the chords...

now you added a 2 and 6 for the last chord... it sounds good, but since we are dealing with quarter notes you might want to add a 3rd or 7th... i would suggest 7 to 6... or 6 to 7.. 3 to 2,, remember, it is jazz so dont be strict about rules.. there arent any... you did well in writing a 2-6 for G at the end... im just giving my opinions of what i would do, but that doesnt mean mine will sound any better.. so good job

lesson 4:

i was working on a couple of films, sorry for the delay..

first i will introduce you to the explanation, next, what to do...


now that you have the base or root of visualization for chord changes we will deal with "Melodic leading" and this is very similar to VOICE LEADING but instead of chordal movement of the voices of a chord (voice leading) we deal with melodic movement of the voices of a progression thru the chords...

in this exercise I want you to focus on extensions..... so, first we will do a little quiz and then the lesson...

in this quiz,, i will ask you to, for example, write a melody using only 9ths and 11ths...

does that mean all 9's and 11's have to be natural?.. NO..

you have to alter the 9ths in order to make them fit, not in the key but in the melody..

how do we know the melody will ask for a b9 or a #11 instead of a #9 or natural 11?... BY BEING AWARE OF WHAT WE ARE DOING,

what i mean by this is that you should know wether you are trying to make a flowing melody of tight intervals and close voicings or an open harmonic melody...

we will talk about that as we continue working..

so, for this exercise i want you to BE AWARE THE MELODY WITHIN THE FLOW OF THE CHANGES...

that means that if you played a D minor chord and added a 9th.. in this case lets say you added an E natural as the 9th of D.. then you see in the next measure a Emin7 chord... for the E minor chord you should see what chord comes before and what chord comes after...

that means that if the next chord is a Fmaj7... most likely you are in the key of C major because it was followed from Emin7, so the 9th of E would have to be a b9... (F is the b9 of E)

Lesson#4: (quiz and then later on i will give a longer version)

i will give you a progression and you should write a melody using eight notes.....

the melody could contain any note you want, but make sure you add 9ths and 11ths at least once on each measure or chord division...

have fun.

Here it is. I think this time I got it right. This was very useful although i didn't know what to do with Dm7/C7 measure. This sound very dissonant to my ear.

Anyway I tried to make melody sound good. I hope it's Ok.

hi, most of it is good...

I think you hear a dissonance with the Dm7 because of the change of registers... at the 3rd measure you had an F as the last note of the scale and you jump nicely with an E on top... that really works if you are doing something tonal... since the Dm7 is off the tonality here, you might want to play a more closed structure melody..

so instead of jumping up a 7th from F to E, jump down a minor 2nd to E...

it also sounds dissonant because there is a Bb that C7 is using...

Since you are using E natural for both the BbMaj7 (making it a #11) and the Dm7 (making it a 9th).. when you go to Dm7/C7 the ear needs to have that Bb because you went out with the Eb to E natural... why?, because Eb is almost everywhere in the exercise...

Eb and Bb are really close to each other in terms of tonality... and if you play an E natural without making the Bb clear is going to sound like as if you had modulated to a different key, and that is not the intension..

so try this...

for the Dm7/C7 measure leave the E natural but add also a Bb to the melody and as i said before..

dont go too high on the register...

once you fix that, post it here in the forum...

if it still sounds dissonant i will show you another way of fixing it...

i just listened to your example again and I think it sounds the way it should sound... if you dont want it too dissonant then try what I explained but i like that dissonance

Hi,

I saw your post last night but it was to late.
Just to make it clear, I think too that first post on this exercise sound pretty well. The Dm7/C7 measure sounded to me dissonant without melody.

After you explained to me what to do i think now is better.

(bad English, me Tarzan )

P.S.

Could you please install Finale Notepad (it's free) so I could post you Only *.mus file? this could make working easier, I think.
FINALE Notepad download page

excelent!

we will do the next lesson

next lesson is about harmonic analysis of a Song form:

for this we have to make sure we know how to deal with modulation and/or secondary dominants, parallel harmonization..

a quick overview:

Secondary Dominants:

Dominant chords (that means a major triad with a b7) usually resolve to the tonic key... for example G7 resolves to C major "most of the times"...

It is also very common that it could resolve to C minor (being a harmonic or melodic scale)...

how do we know if a G chord is major or minor in the key of C?

well... if it is G major that means it would have B natural... therefor.. in the key of C harmonic minor or melodic minor we have a B natural...

So.. G7 could resolve either way to C major or minor...

GREAT!

Secondary Dominants:

Secondary Dominants are Dominant chords (major triad with b7) that resolve either to major or minor chords.. BUT, they don't belong to the original key.. they are only a "transition" for leading into a chord function...

for example:

in the key of C major... we are hanging out in the key, playing a bunch of notes..

but lets say we play the second degree of the scale..

that would be D minor7.. right?..

D+F+A+C = D min7

So... lets "create" an auxiliary dominant chord...

Logically.. since G7 is the fifth degree of C major.. then guess what?.... We need to find the 5th degree of D minor....

A7 is the dominant chord (major triad b7 chord that happens to be the 5th chord starting from letter D)...

so... for that "measure or BAR" we can outline either the scale, arpeggio or chord comming from A7 just before we resolve to D minor...

why can't we resolve to D major?... well, F# is not in the key of C.. and as i said before, dominant chords can resolve either to major or minor... although D minor in the key of C does not have a leading tone.. it is still treated as a minor chord for that ammount of time..

so... we can have Dominant chords EVERYWHERE EXCEPT the 7th degree....

why??

because the seventh degree of a major scale has the b5 alteration, also happens to be an altered chord with a b9..

so a dominant chord resolving to a triad that is already meant to resolve up a step to C major doesnt sound too good...

although some people do it.. there are other theories that also make a lot of sense...

so.. lets take a progression:

C maj7, D min7, E min7, F maj7, G7, A min7, B min7b5, C maj7

it goes up the scale, but what if we add the secondary dominants on each of the chords??

it would sound like this:

C maj7, A7 Dm7, B7 Em7, C7 Fmaj7, D7 G7, E7 Am7, B min7b5, C Maj7

notice how B min7b5 already resolves to C major so no need for another resolution...

now... lets talk about the famous II-V7-I progression

II-V7-I progression

the name says it all... instead of G7 to Cmaj7 we do Dmin7 (second chord of C), to G7 (5th chord of C) to C maj

well.. same can be applied to all those chords

Em7 A7 to Dm7
F#m7 B7 to Em7

and you know the rest...

why the 2nd degree and not the 3rd or 6th?

theory 1:

since the second degree of a major scale happens to be the fifth degree of the Fifth chord (Dm7 is the 5th letter note of G7).. it gives that motion of "fifth to first" even tough it is not a major chord...

Theory 2

the second degree (in the key of C is D min) has all the chord tones that belong to the fifth degree (in the key of C is G)

so G7 = G, B, D, F
Dm7 = D, F, A, C

A happens to be the 9th or second note of G, which already wants to move up to B (third note of G) or G (first note)...

both notes B and G are extremely important in G7.. they outline the chord basically... and having an "A" is almost having a G7 chord because it moves to either chord tone in the chord... up to B, down to G..

C happens to be the 4th degree of G... it is also a strong chord tone that wants to resolve to B (the third of G) and D (the fifth of G)

so... Dmin7 has all the alterations and resolutions that G7 is expecting to have..

therefor... use it.

Modulation

Man, i would give a whole webpage about modulation.. but for now i will only talk about it..

it is mainly going to another key using a chord from the original key..

this is only "one" way of modulating but there are several and I will cover them later...

so.. in the key of C.. we have Emin7 lets talk about this chord... Emin7 also exists in the key of G... right? so this is a chord that can take us to a different key

example:

Cmaj7, Dmin7, G7, Cmaj7, Dmin, Emin, F#min7b5, Gmaj7

see?

so, sometimes in jazz pieces or songs we see all this chords that dont belong to a key..

they are either a secondary dominant chord (major b7 chord that only works for that measure to resolve to a chord degree in the key)

a modulation (a chord progression that does not belong to a key and colours a new tonal center)

or parallel chords...

Parallel Chords

they are a chord that exists on a different dimention with the same letter name

example C major is parallel to C minor... G7 is parallel to Gmin7

so if we play C minor and Gmin7 we are in the key of?: AbMaj

that means that there also exists parallel keys like AbMaj being parallel to C minor if we use only those 2 chords.. it depends on how you approach it.. but we are not getting into that yet..

i just want you to know about them..


So, that is it... lets get to work..

Assignment

I have attached a PDF file of a Jazz Standard song.. you will first write each chord on a separated Paper... below or on top of each chord write the function..

analyze!!! is the chord a secondary dominant.. did it modulate?,

if you find a weird case in which there is no modulation and no secondary dominant but a chord that just doesnt fit just name it PARALLEL

example :

C maj, Dm7, F#m, G7, Cmaj

that seems to be in the key of C major.. that F #min does not belong anywhere... so, we will call it a parallel chord.. not necessary parallel to F#maj because it is not in the key of C either.. but you will see later on why.. for now just do the 3 things covered today...

after you have done this, write a melodic phrase using eight notes, just as we did in the first assignments.. and be creative but also be aware of the key, secondary dominants, and modulation..

have fun..

Hi Rod,

thanks for the new lesson. I'm quite busy these days so I hope I'll do my homework next week.