Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. It's Marc here. Back with you. I want to talk about chord progressions. Today should be a short and sweet one. To give you some indication as far as which chord progressions or these chord sequences that are the most important and most relevant to tackle as a jazz guitarist. 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 Marc, and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits, and especially if you enjoy French accent, make sure to subscribe. Okay, so first off, we will do things today in the key of C because it's easier to remember the keys and progressions and to be able to relative I. So please build mental images in that mental mind's eye. In your mind's eye, the scope of this we will look at a four bar progression, a neat bar progression, and a 12 bar progression. And the key of C has of course the chord C major, but also it has all of the other chords that we will spell with degree. So we'll see them as numbers or saying one is C major or C major, seven C major nine or C it's C major, right. And they're typically written as Roman numbers. So the capital I would be the one. And then the two which was B Roman small caps, two would be D minor seven and etc.. So there's seven chords namely C major, seven, D minor, seven, E minor, seven, F major, seven, G seven, A minor, seven there, A minor sevens there Relative minor, B minor seven flat five on the seventh degree and back to C, so it's one two, three, four, five, six seven. And this is a consequence of what we would call harmonizing the C major scale, meaning that if we take C and we put thirds on top of it, we will see E, g, B is like oh this is a C major seventh structure. So these chords that I just labeled are occurring as a natural consequence of using only these seven pitches, these seven notes from the key. We could have built this in a different key like A-flat major and relative everything. We would still get the same structure. And this stems from the structure of half steps and whole steps. Notice there's 12 notes on the guitar or any instruments, and we use seven to build that scale. Now that said that's a quick introduction. Chords move in sequences.
There are a lot of typical sequences. You have heard of the cycle of fourths or circle of fifths. And here I want to tackle the most important, most use or, you know, the highest bang for your buck. If you tackle these progressions, they have lots of ramifications and they're easy to understand and to implement. First one will begin with eight bar progression, which is a one 6 to 5. I'll say this again. Write it on a piece of paper in Roman 16251625. So one is C major. We do it for two bars. Then we go to the six which is A minor or a minor seven and it last two bars also. Then we have the two. So D minor seven for two bars and G7. So the five, the Roman C in a two bars. So that's 16252 bars each. So with me perfect. So two bars C major, two bars A minor, two bars D minor, two bars two seven. And you're done. You wrap up. That's the length of what I call the conveyor belt for that progression. It is super important in that many, many, many, many songs have this progression or part of this progression within their chord sequences, right? Typically songs have, you know, melody and lyrics, and generally we sing those. But also on top of it you have the chord symbols like, oh, that's how we accompany the melody. And chords come in predictable sequences. So that's our top number one progression, the top three. That's number one for sure. For sure. 1625. Notice how all of these chords stem from the key of C major. So the word for this would be diatonic meaning all of the chords are found in that scale. There is no external external chords. Good. Let's look at the second progression. So I call this the 25161 bar each. You'll notice they're the same. They're the same chords. So instead of 162592516 we start on a two. So D minor seven one bar G7 one bar c7 one bar a sorry C major seven one bar. That's the one. And the last one is the six before this round. And you can find this on the Jazz Guitar Fellowship free link in the description that that second progression has an A7, so it sounds a bit more like a jazz turn around at this point. So D minor seven G7 c major seven A7. And you wrap up.
That's progression number two. It's a four bar sequence right. So we have an eight bar sequence. Yeah the four bar sequence has number two. And then the next one is going to be a 12 bar sequence. Not so surprisingly progression number three is a 12 bar blues because it's extremely foundational to everything jazz and pop and rock. And it's just, you know, blues. Good old 12 bar blues. Before we get to the 12 bar blues, I want to take a moment on that six chord from progression number two. So if you write those on a piece of paper, you'll have your eight bar progression one, six, two and five. And you look at the six, you go, oh, it's a minor. If you look at the second progression, go to 516 as an A7 or even even if you wanted A7 flat nine A7, altered A7 flat 13. This is the introduction to alter dominance, and the role of A7 here is of a secondary dominant. So you will find this as a turnaround in rhythm changes and standards of all sorts like balance and waltzes and whatever. 1625 sorry. 2516I see I'm mixing myself up again, but they're the same Roman numbers. So the six chord A7 is acting as a secondary dominant to D minor, meaning that if we were playing a song in the key of D, that five chord that that V Roman v E chord is that A7. So we use A7 instead of A minor, so we have some tension to resolve. So we go D minor a7 g7. All right. So we have a two and a five and we have our one. And then the six is actually five of D minor. Or in other words are you say five of two, 5/2 is how it would be notated in classical music. This is the first, place, the first iteration of looking at a secondary dominant, the most common one, the dominant dominant is the G7, is the true five is going G7, C major, but the secondary dominant. The first one to address is like well, well, if I want to go to two which is D D minor, how do I get there. Well I get there via its own dominant and that is A7. So A7 is not diatonic to the key of C major, but still. so works briefly in passing progression number three, the Blues progression to 12 bar blues but in the jazz style. So it's 12 bars. I'm not going to go too much in detail because I realize I wanted to make a short podcast and now it's turning into a medium podcast. Basically, you have a bar, C7, a bar of F and two bars of C7.
