So today we're going to see more 2-5-1 tips because, I mean, I think we're on a roll with that, so might as well keep going, right? And the second part of the podcast, I want to talk about jazz theory. Jazz theory—I have a hard time saying that—and I want to tell you to be careful with it, and in ways that you'll see as I explain it in the second part of this podcast.
Okay, 2-5-1 tips for all levels. How can we extend the cycle? How can we extend the chords in the 2-5-1 so it's not just 2-5-1? So I have two or three things to help you out in this manner.
First thing you want to do: What's the 2-5-1 in the key of C? It's D minor 7, G7, C major 7. We're cool. Instead of having one bar of D minor, one bar of G, and two bars of C, we're going to fill the fourth bar with a chord that we call the secondary dominant, or it could be just some sort of non-dominant, but I like to use dominant for now. Okay, so we're going to use the V chord of D minor—not a regular V chord in the key of C, it's III. So what we're going to do: D minor 7, G7, C major 7 is going to be transformed into D minor 7, G7, C major 7 to A7.
Once in time: a 1, 2, 3, 4... D minor 7, G7, C major, A7. Again, you can blow if you want. A7.
So what's nice about it is that you create some sort of motion in order to get back to the chord that's at the top, and the top is D minor. If you want to try something else, though, that's another way you can add variation to the exact same progression. Instead of starting on two, you could start on one. You could do 1-6-2-5, or other ways. Those are the main two ways: start on two or start on one. 1-6-2-5 or 2-5-1-6. Okay.
Another thing you might do to extend the cycle is that you may play every chord dominant: D7, G7, C7. And that sounds maybe a bit odd. You could use the C major just for resolution. So: D7, G7, C major, A7; D7, G7, C major, A7. Or you can start on the six also. You could start on the—I mean, you could start on the one, same way we talked about. So that's still just four bars.
More interesting now: to extend your 2-5-1, if you know your cycles a little bit, you'll know that this is part of the cycle of fourths. You know, cycle of fourths, you could do...
And if you know your theory just a little bit, you'll know that there's also diatonic cycles, which means that 2-5-1 is a series of three chords in the key of C, which means it's diatonic to the key of C. And they evolve in the circle of fourths because D—1, 2, 3, 4—it's G, and then G—1, 2, 3, 4—it's C. So it's evolving.
So here's my question to you: What if we did D minor 7, G7, C major 7, and from C major 7 we went a fourth above again instead of starting back at the beginning? What chord would that be? F, right? So we're trying to complete the circle of the diatonic chords. So that's my trick for today. I'll just pitch the rest of the information right at you right now.
D minor 7, G7, C major 7, F major 7. Next chord is B because we're going up a fourth. But the B chord in the key of C major is minor 7 flat 5. Here we're like this. Or, right? So: D, G, C, F, B. And if you hear it, the next one is E minor 7. Next one is A minor 7. And after A, we're right back at D.
So that's my trick to you. If you've been struggling or if you've been bored with the 2-5-1, now you have a great way to play the 2-5-1 and just keep going and bring it back and play the seven chords and keys. I'll play just your arpeggio so you hear it a little bit. A 1, 2, 3, 4... C, F, B, E.
So if some of you know Autumn Leaves, now you know exactly that this is the progression to Autumn Leaves. But you should emphasize to have a chord, instead of being E minor, it's going to be E7 because it wants to resolve to A minor. So it will sound something like this: One, two, three, four... D minor 7, G7, C major 7, F major 7, B minor flat 5, E7.
So the difference is that in that E7, there's a G# note. And the G# note is not present in C major. It's present in A harmonic minor, but we don't want to go there. So here's my tip to you. 2-5-1 tip continued: Just go online, learn Autumn Leaves. And even if it's not in the key of C, you will be practicing the cycle anyways because it's part of the tune. Even if you practice just the chords or the melody, you'll learn something from it.
And the beautiful part is that this type of cycle—a cycle can be found everywhere. If you take some time to analyze it for yourself, you realize it's a 2-5-1 in a major key followed by a 2-5-1 in a minor key, and it's the relative minor. Now you can do a Google search on relative minor, go on Wikipedia and check out what classical theory says about relative minor, right? So that's my tip for the 2-5-1. And let's move on.
So for part two of this podcast number 12, I want to talk about being careful with jazz theory. This is the part where I get more serious. Eyebrows! I'm just kidding.
I find there's a bit of a misconception going on around in the web, in books, in schools, in people that come and see me to take lessons. And there's the thing about jazz theory—about knowing stuff—and I have a beef with that. And I'm sorry to say that I'm trying to show you stuff and I have something against information, but not in the same way you may think.
What I think is most important for a player—for someone that learns the instrument, that wants to sing, that whatever you want to do, dance—is to do what you want to do. There's no need to take every parcel of information and examine it from every different angle as if you're a scientist, because we let scientists do that. And I will say, like my math teachers used to say, "Without loss of generality," as they say in French, I can sincerely affirm that this has become a problem of jazz learning, jazz education, jazz Aebersold jazz—whatever you may think of.
I think that, well, online, because you can find it in a snap, right? Online, there's a lot of people that I call "false prophets." And even though I'm building (or if it's not published yet, it will be soon) a jazz theory section on JazzGuitarLessons.net, the jazz theory is only to address jazz theory. You want to know why a chord is built like that and how it is, you go online, you check it out, and that's it, that's all.
My beef with how other websites or some teachers go about is that they show you only jazz theory all the time. You want to blow on Stella by Starlight? They show you a bunch of cool arpeggio things that you have to memorize and that in the end are just theory. You want to learn blues? Oh, learn these three scales, which in fact you're only learning theory. You're not spending time learning your instrument and making beautiful sounds and listening and interacting and expressing feelings.
You know, anything that comes up to your mind. The people that are—well, the people that I think are the culprit of this big machine of jazz theory things is that they always put forward the information before the sound, or they put forward the sense that you need the theory before you're able to execute this type of thing—which is not the case at all. If some of you are coming from another background, let's say you like blues and you've been improvising blues for a long time, or rock, whatever, you know that it's not the case. You don't need a huge backdrop of information to make good music. And that's my biggest point.
To further my advice and my warning on that is: Whenever you learn something, don't try to learn everything in the book or don't try to memorize everything. Just see how it sounds first. It may sound stupid or it may sound like sh—sorry—it may sound very bad to you. It may sound like you don't want to learn this thing. But if the teacher says so on the written page and the logical concept of it fits and you can really analyze it with your intellectual minds, "Oh, it must be good because it says it's true on sheet." But this is not calculus. This is not algebra. It's an art form and you have to be super careful.
And lastly, I want to talk about the four things that I've realized over the past little while, and I've discussed this with several very experienced musicians and with several students also, that I strongly believe are the four main problems of humankind—oh, I'm just kidding, it's not even funny. The four main problems of the learning jazz people—jazz guitarist, jazz trumpet, jazz drums, jazz whatever—are the following: Time, Creativity, Information, and Hearing.
And I'm going to explain that to you, and that might be part of a new method book I'm currently brainstorming and I may write, because it makes so much sense. Let me look at the four culprits.
First culprit is Time. You think you see on another website and the guy tells you to learn those arpeggios and minor seven flat five and flat nine, Picardy fifths and fermented stuff—I don't care. Can you play the stuff you're learning in time? Can you groove and tap your foot to it? That's more of an issue, and the problem has been building and building because it seems that most beginners now, they can't even play in time, or not in good time. And there's this assumption that you just know that it's 1, 2, 3, 4. And because you just know it intellectually, it's fine that it's just 1, 2, 3, 4. But time, even in the sense of playing with other people and getting lost, is one of the big areas that are problematic. In my mind, once again.
Second aspect: Creativity. I think it is also a big, big, big issue. Because the way we're taught and the way we read stuff in books and whatever is so contrived intellectually. Let me give you an example quickly: You take a Wes Montgomery lick, you learned it very well, you played it in 12 keys and you become—you master this lick. The problem with that is that Wes probably did not even know his own lick. The problem is that the lick he built and he played at that moment came from a background of connecting the dots. So instead of connecting the dots yourself, you take something that has been ready-made—you know, like a TV dinner microwave—and you just put it on and it's yours and that's it. That's all. Wes played it like this. But even if you do learn it well, all you're going to do is you're going to learn your instrument perhaps, but you're going to sound like a pale copy of Wes Montgomery. And I think it's more important in the creativity level to know where the thing is coming from.
And I'm not necessarily... I'm going into Information, the third point. What's the problem? Let me give you two descriptions of what I think the information problem is. First problem is what I've been describing since the beginning. You go into another website and you want to learn your flat nines and stuff, and all you learn is theory instead of learning your instrument. Instead of spending time playing and listening and hearing and connecting, you just do it all intellectually.
Second part of the problem, or another aspect, is—that's a really nice way to put it—the assumption of a huge backdrop of information before being able to improvise, and even to the extent of assuming that jazz legends needed that backdrop of information to be improvising like they did. Okay, that's one of my biggest beefs. I see guys on the web, they analyze something—say, a Miles Davis solo. "Oh, did you notice how he used that or that scale in doing...?" And my thought at that point is, man, Miles did not even know he was using this scale. Miles was probably too high to know. And I'm not kidding, I'm just saying this in a way that Miles practiced his things, Wes practiced his thing, Jamal did, and whoever did. But when they do improvise, it does not come from an informational standpoint. It comes from a connection, expression, hearing, heartfelt standpoint. And if you assume that everything that has been played comes from connecting your fingers, then there's a huge problem. So that's the third point: Information.
And lastly—and I know it's been a long ride, please stick with me—one last point: Hearing. Hearing is the last culprit, or not the last, but one of the four big ones. And basically, I think I've made my point so far. If you practice everything from a standpoint of learning it all in your fingers, learning it all intellectually, you're not going to hear it well. You're not going to hear your bandmates well. You're not going to hear yourself well.
Plus, here's a big thing: A lot of people don't know how they sound. Why? Recorder on and just go for it and do my thing. And I don't know why, but nowadays I realize the huge importance of this. If you—let's say you, I don't know who you are, I don't know where you are, what you do—but you take your guitar and you do a blues solo and you're really proud of it and you're like, "Yeah, sounded great, grooved, yeah!" And you put your guitar down and you go watch TV, okay? Or you pet your cat or whatever. At that point, the impression of what you played is the only memory you have of what you played. It's the impression of what you were doing when you were doing it.
If you had recorded yourself, you would have a totally different perspective on the same music you have done. You might have thought it would sound good, or you may think it was bad or whatever, but when you listen back, you hear a totally different world. And this is the perfect chance, the perfect opportunity for you to find the weaknesses and work on them and do your thing where you, you know, improve from your biggest weaknesses. And you cannot do that if you never record yourself.
So, so sorry guys if I've been a little bit overboard today, but this is really something I think is very important for anyone that aims to learn jazz. Be careful with jazz theory. Don't try to learn everything because jazz theory will not make you into a great player. And here's what I'm sure: I'm sure that if you do become a great player, you will pick up what you need of the jazz theory along the way. But even if you focus your 15 years on learning all the theory there is, you won't necessarily play better. It might be your aim to learn just theory, but I doubt it.
Anyways, I will see you next time as we talk about 2-5-1 using pentatonics for improvising, and I will finish—terminate? I cannot say that. I will finish podcast number 12. Thank you for listening, and this is Marc from JazzGuitarLessons.net. Improve your jazz guitar playing with a real teacher. Take care. See you next time.
