nice dominant sub

Kal-EL

Watching one of Denis's videos I saw a suggestion for rhythm changes/daphne A section.

play d major over first 4 beats, then A dominant over second 4 beats

He then suggest substituting the A dominant with Gminor/emin7b5 arp

I love this sound but cant work out why it works harmonically - any ideas??

AmundLauritzen

It's what I keep trying to get across: rhythm changes are very flexible. I and VI are pretty much the same sound.

I'll be working with the key of C here for simplicity. Just transpose everything up a whole step to be applied to "Daphne".

Am/C = C6. Also: Dm7/G = G7sus. This means you can contract the changes to be all I - V7 - I -V7 and so on.

You can also use A-minor vocabulary on the C6. Relative minor vocab can always be used for the tonic major chord.

IV-minor leads to I and can be superimposed over V7 for tension. Theoretically it can be explained like this Fm/G = G7susb9. Fm6 also gives you the note Db which is the b5 in relation to G7. In the case of Fm7 you have Eb which is the #5 of G7!

The IV minor to I sound is a lydian dominant kind of sound. Lydian dominant is from the "back door cadence", as substitution or alternative for II-V-I. It is often made into a II-V, which gives you Fm7 Bb7 to Cmaj7. Many times, there is a modulation to IV major first. The scale to outline the "back door cadence" perfectly is F melodic minor aka Bb lydian dominant!

F melodic minor and Bb lydian dominant are the same scale.
Here are the notes, in parenthesis are how they behave intervallically over G7:
F(b7), G(root), Ab(b9), Bb(#9), C(11th), D(5th), E(13th)

As you can see, this gives us some inside notes for G7, but also the b9 and #9 that both pull strongly toward Cmaj7 or C6.
As you can see, this can give an alternative to the full blown G7 altered scale.

In order of tension, lets put things into perspective in regards to how the different scales pull towards the tonic of C:

-G mixolydian, or playing around vanilla unaltered G7: Very light tension, but the chord tones of G7 include F and B which make up a tritone. This interval is what makes the dominant 7th chord pull towards the major up a fourth. F resolves to E(third of Cmaj7) and B resolves to C(root of Cmaj7).

-F melodic minor. All inside notes in regards to the parent scale, but the b9 and #9 create a pull that have a strong tendency to want to resolve either to the fifth of Cmaj7(G) or the third(E)

-G altered. This scale contains all possible alterations for G7(b9,#9 and b5,#5) plus the most essential chord tones of G: the tonic, third and seventh. You'll hear modern gypsy jazz players use this a lot: think Adrien Moignard, Bireli, Giniaux et al.

You can see how this quickly can over-compliate things. But since you wanted a theoretical explanation, I have now showed you from where the IV-minor sound is created and how it harmonically pulls towards the tonic chord. This is the nuts and bolts of the harmonic pull in these concepts. You can understand how thinking like this when you play can feel like mental gymnastics, which is why it's so much more convenient to simplify things.

But having this knowledge also gives you some options to simplify things for practice. Here are components of the IV-minor sound that you can use to resolve to the tonic in a rhythm changes in the key of C(like Swing 42)

-F minor triad
-Fm7 arpeggio
-Fm6 arpeggio
-F melodic minor
-F Dorian. The only difference between this and F melodic minor is that F dorian has a flat seventh instead of a raised one. The flat 7th of F is an Eb which will behave like a #5 on G7.

So if you wanted to, you could isolate all these concepts and work at them one at the time in the improv. But what's much more quicker and effective is learning the theory first. Then learn licks and analyze them. This will make you understand how the licks work! You'll be able to extract the theoretical concepts of the lick and understand how to make music with it!
IMO this is much more effective than taking the theory first and using that as a device to make music with.

The gist of all this is that instead of adhering to all the chords you can think as simple as this: tension - release - tension - release.
Phrasing over the barline is common in jazz, so you can play the V7 over the I if you want as long as you resolve strongly to the I

You'll find that the more vocabulary you get for rhythm changes, the more you will find yourself automatically playing like this. It is very liberating! I started experiencing this after having applied licks from rhythm changes tunes back and forth.

I hope this helps to answer your question.

AmundLauritzen

By the way that post covers the I-VI-II-V.

The progression after that is I-I7-IV-IVm.

You can superimpose the IV-minor directly over both the IV and IVm because the chords go by so quickly.

On the I to I7 a blues sound is often used because the I7 has an affinity for the blues scale.
This is an excellent opportunity to go nuts with all the bluesy licks you know.

Kal-EL

thanks,

I normally assume the IV chord is major. If you change it to minor the substitutions all make sense. Im still not sure theoretically how thats 'allowed' but I can go with it

thanks for your reply - really like the blues ideas on the other measures too!

Hemert

Kal-EL wrote:

I normally assume the IV chord is major. If you change it to minor the substitutions all make sense. Im still not sure theoretically how thats 'allowed' but I can go with it

That's an easy one. In classical analysis this is called Moll-Dur. You achieve this by flattening the 6th note of the major scale, so in C: C D E F G Ab B C.

If you now build chords with this scale you will get a half-dim chord on II, a minor chord on IV and a maj7#5 chord on VI. This scale is used to insert a minor feel in a major piece. So in C the chord Fm is IVmd (md= Moll Dur).

You can do the same thing in minor keys by raising the 6th degree so: C D Eb F G A B C and building chords with this scale (the Dur-Moll scale so dm). In folk music it is common to use both the IV and the IVdm in minor keys.

Jazzaferri

In a rather more simplistic way.

I iv ii V is a diatonic progression of I and its relative minor, IV using its relative minor and V resolving back to the I

Throughout this progression the only notewithon the key signature that has to be handled with care is the Tonic when one is playing the V7 chord. Any accidentals create tension and going back to scale non chord notes releases it a bit and landing on a chord tone eases it a bunch.

I don't recall Dennis's bit but I am assuming that he was referring to arpeggios not chords. Is that correct? What are the chord(s) at the G min Em7b5 part?