How Jazz Works is a beginner-friendly introduction to the music that broke the rules — what jazz is, where it came from, and why it sounds the way it does. You will trace jazz back to the blues, learn how its rich chords and scales are built, and discover why improvising over John Coltrane's “Giant Steps” became a rite of passage for musicians.Across five short videos the course teaches the language of jazz step by step: the seventh chords, ii–V–I progressions and scales that give jazz its colour; the art of reharmonisation through seven escalating levels of jazz harmony; and the daring of improvisation, where a soloist invents melody in real time over those moving chords.You will also meet the blues roots that jazz shares with rock, soul and country, and close by asking why this music — built on freedom, tension and a handful of simple rules — still thrills some listeners and baffles others.By the end you will listen to jazz with new ears: hearing the harmony shift beneath a solo, recognising the difference between a plain standard and a Coltrane change, and understanding why jazz is so often called the sound of musical freedom.
- So in today's video, I'm going to attempt the unthinkable. That's right, I'm going to try to explain jazz theory in one video. So I've broken this lesson into three sections. First of all, chords, then chord progressions, and last of all, scales. So these are three of the main topics in jazz theory. These are the main topics which cause a lot of confusion. So by the end of this lesson, you're going to walk away with a deeper confidence in your understanding of jazz. Now, we've got a lot to cover, so we're gonna get straight in. Enjoy the video. (gentle jazz music) So first of all, let's talk about jazz chords. Now, chords in jazz go a lot higher than in other styles of music. So in most styles of music, you'll only encounter three-note chords. These are known as triads. So you'll play the root, (piano music) the third, and the fifth, and you can get different types of chord within just these three notes. So you can get a major chord, a minor chord, an augmented chord, and a diminished chord. However, in jazz, we build this stack of thirds higher, so instead of just stopping at the fifth... (piano music) We'll go up and add another third above the fifth, which gives us the seventh, and all of these numbers are numbered from the root of the chord, so if this is a C chord, then this is one. We call this the root. So, one, three, five, seven. And that's why all chord extensions are generally odd numbers, because they're built in thirds, which means we're skipping every other note. One, three, five, seven. Then we can go up to the ninth. We can even go up to the 11th, and we can even go up to the 13th. And 13 is pretty much the biggest number you'll see in a chord, because if you go up a third from 13, then you come back to the root, so there's never a 15 in jazz. It's always seventh chords, ninth chords, 11th chords, and 13th chords. (jazz music) So now let's get specific and look at the actual types of seventh chord. There's different types of seventh chord. They all are based on the same idea. They have a root, third, fifth and seventh, but we can create different types of seventh chord by making different combinations of the major third and the minor third. So, we're gonna go through the three main seventh chords to begin with. (piano music) First of all, we have a major seventh chord. This is C major seven, so if you just imagine the notes of C major scale. (piano music) And you just play the root, third, fifth and seventh, then you get a major seven chord. Next, let's look look at the minor seven chord. (piano music) This is C minor seven, and if you just imagine a minor scale, C minor scale, (piano music) and you just play the root, third, fifth and seventh of that scale, well, you end up playing a minor seven chord. (piano music) And next we have the dominant seven chord. Here is C dominant seven. (piano music) So it's basically a major triad, but with a minor seventh. (piano music) So those are the three most common types of seventh chord in jazz. I would say about 90% of jazz music is built of just these three seventh chords. (piano music) Again, the major seven chord, (piano music) the minor seven chord, (piano music) and the dominant seven chord, and they're all just different combinations of major thirds and minor thirds. (piano music) Now above any type of seventh chord, you can add what's known as chord extensions, and these are the ninth, the 11th and 13th, which we mentioned just a moment ago. So for the chord below, (piano music) the root third, fifth and seventh are known as chordal tones, chord tones, the root, third, fifth and seventh, whatever type of chord it is, minor seven, dominant seven, et cetera. But above these, you can add (piano music) a chord extension, like the ninth, the 11th or the 13th, or all three. (piano music) You get all sorts of big chords like this. So how do you find the ninth, the 11th and the 13th? Well, regardless of what type of chord it is, whether it's a major seven chord, minor seven chord or a dominant seven chord, the chord extensions are always built from the major scale. So you imagine a major scale from the root of the chord, so this is a C chord. Doesn't matter what chord type it is. We're just gonna imagine a major scale starting from the root. (piano music) And you're going to find the chord extensions based on that major scale. So the ninth, (piano music) is really the same note as the two of the scale, so they're one, two. The 11th is the same as the fourth, so three, four, that's our 11th. And the 13th is the same as the sixth, which is five, six. So even if it's a minor seven chord, let's take a C minor seven chord here. (piano music) If it tells you to add a ninth, 1th or 13th, you would still imagine C major scale to find those notes. (piano music) It's gonna be the same ninth, same 11th, and the same 13th, as if it was a major seven chord or a dominant seven chord. This is the natural ninth, the natural 11th, and the natural 13th, and they're all built from the major scale. (piano music) Now the extended harmony notes can also be altered. Which means they can be sharpened or flattened. So you won't always just see nine, 11, 13. Sometimes you'll see flat nine, sharp nine, you'll see sharp 11, and sometimes you'll see flat 13. So, how do you find an altered chord extension? Well, let's say the chord symbol says C dominant seven, flat nine. Well, we're gonna start by finding the natural extension first and we just imagine the major scale. So C major scale, is gonna be D natural, and then you flatten it. (piano music) And that's your chord extension, that's the flat nine. Or if it said sharp nine, again you find the natural nine first, and then sharpen it. (piano music) Or if it said C seven sharp 11, where you find the natural 11 first, so run up the major scale to the fourth, which is the 11th and then sharpen it. And the same if it were the 13th, C dominant seven, flat 13, let's say. Find the natural 13 first by running up the major scale. (piano music) And then flatten it. (piano music) That's where you get these nice... (piano music) chords with altered extensions. Things like the flat nine, sharp nine, sharp 11, and flat 13. (piano music) Now before we move onto the next topic, I've actually notated a chord symbol reference guide for you. You can download that for free at the link below. And you'll get my one page sheet where I've just notated all of the common types of seventh chord, ninth chord, 11th chord and 13th chord. (piano music) So now a quick word on chord voicings. So there's many different ways so that you can play any chord in jazz. So if we just take a look at the seventh chords (piano music) This C major seventh chord, which we've looked at. So if you imagine a group of singers were singing this, (piano music) while each note is a voice, a separate voice. We can redistribute these voices and turn them upside down and add a few notes in, and do all sorts of things to create different voicings. These are called chord voicings. So just to demonstrate, we can play this which is a literal voicing. You're playing literally what the chord symbol says. Then there's more sophisticated voicings like fourth voicings. (piano music) It's just a stack of fourths, (piano music) using notes from C major scale. (piano music) We also have fifth voicings. (piano music) Where we're using mostly fifths. (piano music) And this is still considered a voicing for C major seven. And really, the list goes on. There's all sorts of possibilities... (piano music) So now let's talk about chord progressions in jazz. So, every start of music has it's own characteristic chord progressions. So classical music has it's sort of one-four-five-one type progressions. We have pop music which has those sort of four pop chords you might have heard of. Well, jazz is the same. We have what what's known as the two-five-one chord progression. Now there's two types of two-five-one, there's a major two-five-one and a minor two-five-one. Let's start by looking at the major two-five-one because this is far more common. So let's demonstrate a major two-five-one in the scale of C major. (piano music) So this gonna be a set of three chords that are gonna be built from the notes of C major scale and the two, five and one refers to which scale degree we're building the chord from. So the two chord is going to be built from the second note of the scale. (piano music) That's going to be D. And we're just going to build a stack of thirds up to the seventh (piano music) using notes from C major scale, which is all the white notes. And this gives us what type of chord? This is a D chord, this is D minor seven. Next we're going to find the five chord, so we're gonna find the fifth scale degree. One, two, three, four, five, that's gonna be G. And we're going to do the same thing, let's build a stack of thirds up from G using notes of C major scale. (piano music) And this is a dominant seven chord, G dominant seven. And then let's find the one chord. It's gonna be built from the root. And we're gonna build a stack of thirds using notes of C major scale, so every other note. (piano music) Gives us this. And what type of chord is this? (piano music) That's right, that's a major seven chord. So three different types of chord, minor seven chord, dominant seven chord, and a major seven chord. And they're built from the two, the five and the one of the scale. So that's why it's called a two-five-one. Now a very distinctive part of this two-five one is the bass line, (piano music) which sounds like this. You hear this pattern all of the time in jazz. It's the two, going up a fourth to the five, which goes down a fifth to the root. (piano music) You hear this all the time. (piano music) So most of jazz is built off this major two-five-one chord progression. And that's why most of the chord types that you see in a real book or a lead sheet are going to be these three chord types. It's the minor seven chord, the dominant seven chord and a major seven chord. (gentle piano music) Now in jazz you don't always get the complete two-five-one. Sometimes you do, which is nice, you get all three chords. But sometimes the composer cuts the two-five-one short. So a good example would be "Satin Doll." (jazzy piano music) Here we have a D minor seven, going to a G dominant seven. (piano music) But you don't get (piano music) the one chord, which would be C major seven. You just get two-five-two-five and then he modulates to a different key. And we have an E minor seven chord. (piano music) Going to an A dominant seven. What's that? Well, that's another two-five, in which key? (piano music) If E minor seven is the two chord, and A dominant seven is the five chord, then we're gonna be in the key of D major. So this is another two-five. (piano music) And sometimes you get a five-one. So you don't always get the two chord, sometimes you just get the five-one. An example would be "Stompin' at the Savoy." (jazzy piano music) We have a C dominant seven chord going down a fifth to an F major seven chord. Well, what's that? That's a five-one progression in F major. But we don't have the two chord here, which would be G minor seven, 'cause that's the two chord, we don't get the two chord, we just have the five-one. (piano music) And to end the section let's talk about the minor two-five-one, which is much less common than the major two-five-one. I would say that only about 10% of two-five-ones are the minor two-five-one. But let's demonstrate in C minor. So the concept is the same. We're gonna have three chords built from the two, the five and the one. But instead of building from the major scale we're going to build from the harmonic minor scale. (piano music) Normal minor scale up to the fifth, you have a minor sixth, but then we have a major seventh. So really this is just a normal minor scale except it has a major seventh. (piano music) And let's see what three chords we get. So let's find the two chord. (piano music) Gonna build a stack of thirds upwards, using the notes of C harmonic minor scale here. We're gonna do an F, we're gonna do A flat, and C. (piano music) And this introduces a new type of seventh chord which we haven't look at yet. (piano music) And this is called the half-diminished chord, although it's sometimes also called a minor seventh chord flat five. (piano music) Now let's find the five chord. (piano music) This is the fifth, G. Let's build a stack of thirds using notes from C harmonic minor. Remember we have that major seventh of the scale. We have a D natural and an F. And what type of chord is this? Well this is the same dominant seventh chord that you get in the major two-five-one, so nothing's new here. And finally let's find the one chord, we're going to get a minor third, a natural fifth, and then we're going to get that major seventh, B natural. And here we get another type of seventh chord which we haven't looked at yet. (piano music) This is called C minor-major seven. C minor-major seven. (piano music) Now you've heard the minor two-five-one in songs like "Blue Bossa." (jazzy piano music) So that was a minor two-five-one in our key that we're already in of C minor. D half-diminished, G dominant seven, going to C minor-major seven. (piano music) And sometimes with the minor two-five-one, the one chord gets tweaked. It's not always played as a minor-major seven chord, sometimes the composer will write is as a minor seven chord. So he might do D half-diminished, going to G dominant seven, going to C minor seven. And this is done because it's just more of a casual sound. As a composer you don't always want this sort of intense sound of this minor-major seven chord. It's quite an intense chord and sometimes composers will tweak it and make it a minor seven chord. (piano music) And finally for today, let's talk about scales. So as a jazz musician it's essential that you know what scale to play from over any chord type. This is gonna be useful if you're ever improvising or if you're composing a melody. Well, you need to know what scale to play from when you're playing any chord. So the first key principle is to make sure that the scale you use agrees on the chordal tones of the chord. So if you have a C major seven chord... (piano music) That means that your scale has to have a C, an E, a G and a B natural. And it's not going to work if you play an E flat. (out of tune piano music) Or any notes that disagree with these four chordal tones. So if it's a major seven chord, root third, fifth and seventh. If it's a minor seven chord, same thing. But tweak them to this type of chord. And if it's a dominant seven chord, make sure you have your chordal tones. Now, when it comes to the remaining notes, the two, four and six. You actually have some freedom here. You can tweak them different ways and it will generally sound consonant over the chord. As long as there's no clash with the chordal tones. However, I'm gonna share with you a good principle that you can follow, certainly, as a beginner or an intermediate jazz pianist. And that is the chordal tone plus whole-step principle. This is just one method you can use to choose which scale to play over any chord type. So let's say we have C major seven. You're gonna start with the chordal tones. The root, the major third, the fifth and the major seventh. And then we're going to add a whole step to the root, third and fifth. So C, up a whole step, gives us D, E, up a whole step, gives us F sharp a sharp four, that's nice. And G, up a whole step, gives us A natural, a major sixth. (piano music) And we end up playing, what's called C Lydian scale. So over the major seven chords we can use this principle. (piano music) Whatever the chord is, this will always work well. If it's a minor seven chord, C minor seven, same thing. Chordal tones first... (piano music) then we'll add a whole step to the root, third and fifth. Gives us D natural, E flat up a whole step gives us F natural, and G up a whole step gives us A. (piano music) And that gives us C Dorian scale. (piano music) So we can play the Dorian scale over minor seven chords. And last of all, let's look at the dominant seven chord, chordal tones first... (piano music) We have to have these in place to sound consonant. Then let's add a whole step to the root, third and fifth. (piano music) Gives us D natural, E up a whole step gives us F sharp, the sharp four, and G up a whole step gives us A. (piano music) And we end up playing this very nice, sophisticated scale that's called the Lydian-Dominant scale. This is C Lydian-Dominant scale. (piano music) Now, one of the most confusing aspects of jazz piano is all of the different chord symbols that we get. We have seventh chords, ninth chords, 11th chords. So to help you with this, I've put together a chord symbol reference guide. You can download it for free at the link below. And I've just notated all of the common chord symbols which you encounter as a jazz pianist. And this is just gonna help you get clarity
so you ever listen to a song and think songs fine and all but you could really use some more jazz harmony this songs fine at all but you could really use some more jazz harmony don't worry we have all been there so in this video we're going to be counting down the seven levels of jazz harmony starting from the most basic going to the most extreme and the way we're going to do that is we're going to reharmonization D minor this is what the original sounds like it sounds pretty good to me but even with that nice a flat over F in the second measure that's not really jazz this is what the jazz version would sound like this is jazz harmony level one bell pepper so this is a fairly typical jazz chord progression we're not using the basic triads anymore but we're using richer for note seventh chords like the first chord a D minor 7 the next chords C minor 7 and f7 art in the key of D minor they are non diatonic but that's ok because they are the second chord in fifth chord of the key of b-flat and they resolve to a b-flat six chord these two five progressions are really the meat and potatoes of jazz harmony there are a vehicle for tension and release and create a sense of forward momentum that gets us from one chord to the next this sequence is rounded out by an E minor seven flat five and an a7 the two and five chords of the parent key of D minor if we take a look at how the roots in this progression move on the circle of fifths we see that even if we skip around a little bit things generally cycle stepwise to the left this is fairly typical of the patterns that are found in jazz harmony okay so now that we have the basics covered how do we get to level two jazz harmony level two poblano pepper okay so now we have a little bit more color in the way that we got that was through tritone substitution where we take a dominant seventh chord and replace it with another dominant seventh chord three whole steps away the tritone sub ends up having two of the same notes of the chord that its substituting for the important third and seventh degrees of the chord which happened to form a tritone these chords had a fair amount of tension because they're generally non diatonic they aren't from the key like for example this b7 chord these chords release that tension by resolving down by half step to a chord that is from the key like this B flat six chord a rich vocabulary of seventh chords that create the sense of tension and release is really what this level of jazz harmony is all about a lot of classic jazz from the 1950s can be said to exist primarily on this harmonic level like for example working with the Miles Davis quintet or moanin by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers these artists were deeply influenced by the melodic and harmonic choices of earlier bebop musicians like for example Charlie Parker a lot of the harmonic vocabulary of this music exists in this level it is the bread and butter of jazz musicians everywhere but to quote Miles Davis if we're going to level up we have to not play the butter notes jazz harmony level 3 jalapeno pepper [Music] all right so there is definitely some more spice happening here and the reason for that is jazz harmony often uses what are called extensions in western music we build different kinds of chords by stacking different kinds of thirds on top of one another this is called tertiary harmony we can extend cords through chord extensions by over stacking thirds up and up without changing the basic identity of the core at the core of it though these chord progressions are just colorful versions of the meat-and-potato 2/5 progressions they're just dressed up in fancy clothes like for example this a7 flat 9 sharp 11 flat 13 is just an a7 chord but like wearing a gaudy hat or something this level is perfect for big band where you have a lot of different musicians available to play a lot of different extensions artists like of course Duke Ellington and later Thad Jones created dense and rich layers of harmony with their orchestras now in order to reach the next level we kind of have to leave the to five progression behind we have to move away from the meat and potatoes of jazz harmony and get into something a little crunchy ER jazz harmony level for piri-piri pepper [Music] okay so this was something called a pedal point where you have the same note that occurs across all the chords in a progression usually in the bass this pedal point grounds us in the key of D and because of that the chords changing on top don't have to be functional in other words they don't have to point to anywhere in particular they don't have to have that same sense of tension and release instead you can pick and choose basically whatever so long as it doesn't clash with the melody a lot of modal jazz from the 1960s existed on this level especially with the piano playing of McCoy Tyner with John Coltrane on albums like my favorite things and a love supreme this sort of style paved the way for the next level of jazz harmony level five habanero pepper okay now we're getting spicy we've now entered the wonderful world of none functional harmony at this level chords don't need to point to any particular key or chord they just exist as islands rising up from the seabed of harmony unconnected from one another for example if we take a look at the second chord in the progression D flat major nine it's not in the key of DEMA nor does it point to any particular key one way to think about it is that this chord is not the result of any other chord it exists purely because the melody note C works well with the chord because it's the chords major seventh by the time we've reached level five musicians just aren't formalizing their harmonic choices as much instead they're pretty much relying purely on their experienced ears to guide them with their aesthetic decisions now by the late 1960s the jazz avant-garde largely abandoned harmony as a guiding principle in composition but you could still hear level five harmony and albums like mild smiles by Miles Davis these level five albums would greatly influence the harmonic choices of later fusion artists like Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea so now that we can basically use whatever weird chords we want and call it jazz where can we possibly go from here well Fermi level six ghost pepper [Music] this level is the spiciest of them all level six is the land of liberated dissonance poly quartz mirror twelve tone harmonizations basically anything and everything that arnold schoenberg and igor stravinsky used now we can use in jazz harmony so let's take a look at this b-flat minor major seven over F major seven over C sharp five we have three unrelated chords stacked on top of one another each conflicting in various ways for example the G sharp of the C sharp five creates a minor ninth with a of F major seven which in turn creates another minor ninth with the B flat of the B flat minor major seven these overtones are at war with one another it's a dramatic and intense moment and because of that it should be used quite sparingly as Ludmila you Leila would write in her book contemporary harmony this type of musical phrase is so related to the structure of a composition that cannot be used indiscriminately so just like ghost peppers level six jazz harmony should be used extremely rarely and in very small doses otherwise it might ruin a perfectly good dish examples of level six harmony might be Bob Breton Jers arrangements for the Stan Kenton orchestras album a city of glass or maybe anything by Dave Liebman he's a spicy boy so now we have jumped completely off the deep end how are we supposed to get to the final level Oh Myles Davis Prince of Darkness show us the way show us how to not play the butter notes show us the way to jazz level seven jazz harmony level [Music] all right so what is going on here well this is an example of in tonal ISM where the chords have been tuned to the melody so the melody has stayed in our normal twelve-tone equal tempered system that we all know and love but the chords have been tuned to just intonation ratios based on the harmonic functions of the melody notes that they're paired with for example the G here on this a minor seven is the minor seventh of the chord now there are different just intonation ratios that can be used for minor sevenths depending on the context but this one we used a 9 to 5 ratio this 9 to 5 ratio happens to be about 18 cents sharp from its equal-tempered counterpart so to compensate the court has to be detuned by 18 cents just to make sure that the G of the melody is still an equal temperament that's the basic idea behind the process we tune the just intonated chords to the equal-tempered melody but some interesting things can happen when we use different ratios for the same interval for example we could use 7 to 4 for G on this a7 sharp 9 7 2 4 is $0.33 flat from its equal-tempered counterpart so we have to tune the whole chord up 33 cents to keep the G of the melody in equal temperament we think of the roots for both of these chords as a but because the minor sevenths are defined differently and G stays the same in the melody the root notes are almost exactly a quarter tone apart you we could say that level seven jazz harmony is Zen harmonic it exists outside of the realm of our normal twelve-tone equal tempered system these tuning shenanigans are how Jakob Collier of course famously modulated to G Hoff sharp major and his arrangement of in the Bleak Midwinter but other artists like Steve layman have experimented with this sort of thing with his spectral compositions what's interesting is that this harmony can be very subtle as you heard in comparison with the bombast of level six to me though these chords feel like nothing else they feel like they're almost piercing through at me rather than laying on this bed impassive I'm not really quite sure if that makes any sense so I'll play with a twelve tone equal tempered version of these chords back-to-back with the in tonalist version so that you can hear for yourself [Music] so I might sound a little off a little out of tune but in a good way to me at least it almost feels like that cassette tape sort of vibe that lo-fi sort of vibe in fact if you slowed it down and just put an anime girl studying on top of it you'd have lo-fi hip-hop [Music] right and there we go just intonated cords of her Gila beads gives us the seventh level of jazz harmony if you enjoy this video check out my patreon because it's my patrons over at my patreon that make these videos possible thank you so much for watching [Music]