Hey guys. Welcome to this minor 251 primer. So this is good. If you have been addressing the 251 progression in the context of jazz standards, and you encounter what some people call minor two five ones, what's the minor 251 how do we build it and what's the best recipe for comping for improv? So let's get going. Welcome to Jazz Guitar Lessons, where we help guitarists to learn jazz faster, express themselves more fluently, and have fun along the way.
My name is Mark, and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits and especially if you enjoy French accent, make sure to subscribe! Okay, quick recap if you are in the key of C major, which we will do, which is called the people Sky, you have the notes C, d, e, f, g a, b, c, right.
And if you have a two chord in that key, you will have the D minor seven. And you've heard this, it sounds very plain and basic. And you have the G7 coming up next, followed by C major of sorts. Right. So these three chords are diatonic meaning they pertain to the C major. And they constitute what we call the 251 cadence.
Right. So the D minor is the second chord. And if you go up a fourth so DFG you go up for this G7 and you go again up a fourth you go g a b c and then you have the C major. So these two chords A, D minor, the G7 actually point or want to resolve towards the next chord up a fourth, up a fourth.
So cycle of four. It's extremely important now not to spend too much time on this is really to get your feet wet and go like, oh, I understand the minor 251. There's two main notes characteristics to get started again. You guys that love to breathe fire and you love jazz theory and stuff, you'll be allowed to play diminished and altered pickled fifths and whatever you want on that.
But the starting point is this if I encounter minor 251 in the key of now, C minor, which can be my destination, the first important note we have to modify or alter is the two note. The two chord needs a flat five, so the D minor chord that's a A regular D minor seven and a drop two. So the A, C, F right.
I will take the A and I will make it flat. Now the name for the score is D minor seven flat five again D minor 755. Good. And people will often puzzle over these voicings because there's not a lot of inversions and not a lot of them sound good, so whatever you have is good. This is a good one.
It's on the the frets and strings are five, six, five, six. Really easy to grab. that's the first note. And that that's considered to be a two minor seven flat five in the key of C minor. That's it. There are other names people will call this half diminished. I'm not going to get into the details of this, but basically it's a diminished triad with a flat seven.
So instead of having a diminished seven, it's half diminish. Or you'll see this with a circle with a dashed through it. So people will say, well, it's half. So we split the dash. Or even in Montreal, some of my colleagues call this D split instead of D minor. Some of five or d half or d have diminished. Hey guys, just a quick note.
If you're enjoying this content and you're eager to boost your own jazz guitar playing, then connect with us. We've transformed the jazz skills of thousands of guitarists. You can find the link in the description or head directly over to Jazz Guitar Lessons dot net to begin your journey. All right, let's dive back into the episode. We're not going to get into what scales or whatever, but note that if you have an arpeggio that works on D minor, D minor, seven, you can do flat five, and that's all you need to know for now, right?
There's more advanced stuff I'll get to later. Now, when you get to your G7, you can let the G7 along if you want. And bonus points if you know that that a note to flat five of D. If you keep that A-flat during your G chord, you go, oh well, that note is actually the flat nine. Cool. So that's why you'll often see D minor 755 to G7 flat nine, because it's part it's a continuum of using that note.
So the G can be a flat nine. And of course you land on a C minor. And here's the other note that comes into play. If you have a C major chord you'll have an E, right C, D. But if you have a E flat now you have a minor chord. So recapping from the D minor 755 we found out we needed an A-flat.
And from the C we needed an E-flat. You don't need to know theory to know all the stuff, but if you pick the C major scale and to it you do you have an E-flat instead of a natural, and you have an A-flat instead of a natural. You wind up with what is called commonly the C harmonic minor scale.
So C, d, E flat, f, g A, flat, B, c. This is now the cure all and all holy grail of soloing on A minor two for one. There's way more ramifications and things to think about and to do, but that's a really good place to start knowing oh wow, if I only change these two notes, I can reappropriate my minor two five as pertaining to the harmonic minor scale of where it's the destination is.
If you don't know your harmonic minor scales well now that's when when good place to get into because you know your major stuff probably fairly well, right? So simply do.
Sound a bit like Egyptian or Middle Eastern, right? Again, that's not the only way to go about it, but that could be a good shortcut if you want to find ways to address minor two five ones without too much of a headache, good bonus points if you do D minor some flat five to G7 flat nine, or even that's a sharp five or flat 13, you can do what you will to the G, because it's so tense that it will eventually resolve to your C, and if you want to keep it very simple, go to a C minor.
Yes. Not C, not C minor seven C minor pure your C minor triad it it removes the the problem of C minor sounding a bit like C minor. This sounds more like it sounds softer. It doesn't sound very sad. So a C minor triads really good. And bonus points if you want to do C minor six. So similar six would sound like this C minor six also sounds like a true one in a key of one minor.
And then people say yes, but mark that. Yeah, I know, I know that A-flat is not in there. I know. So for you guys that have been into the melodic minor scales gets it. Well, C minor is actually C melodic minor. And then the other chords, we have to think of other solutions. I won't get into that just now, but the D minus five actually you can look at it as the D bass is removed and then you're left with this and that's it.
That's an F minor triad with a D. So the D is a six of an F minor triad. So it's like D minor 755 is an F minor six in disguise basically. So that's that's one more advance where you can get into it, but I digress. If you get from a standard two, five, one and you need to do the legwork on making it work, you'd look at the two chord and you make it slash five.
You look at a five chord, you make it flat nine, and you look at the one chord and you leave it alone. You just make it a minor one and all that note. That's the minor two, five, one premiere. Er, please make sure you like and subscribe and let me know if you have any questions about this. Talk to you soon.
Take care. Bye.
