Minor-Key Jazz-Piano Chords and Progressions (intermediate)

Name: Minor-Key Jazz-Piano Chords and Progressions (intermediate)
Rating: 4.7 (6 reviews)

Using Chords from both Major and Minor scales, Working with Relative Keys, Parallel Minor and Modal Interchange

Created byDuncan Millar

Last updated 4/2020

English

What you'll learn

Playing and creating Jazz Piano chords and progressions using Minor Keys
About the Basic Natural minor scale, how it’s constructed and what are the minor chords built on its notes.
About Harmonic and Melodic Minor scales, their structure and the chords they form, and in particular the important Dominant 7th chord.
How chords can be “borrowed” from one version of the minor scale to another.
How chords are either Dominant, Sub-Dominant or Tonic and behave in different ways , enabling you to create effective Minor chord progressions
What are Relative Minor and Relative Major, how are they related, and how can they extend your chord progression by moving from one to other
What is a Parallel Minor scale, and how can it be used along with Modal Interchange to mix Minor-key chords with major-key chords.

Course content

1 section • 7 lectures • 1h 0m total length

Introduction to Minor-Key Chords and Progressions2:00
This is a brief overview of the course, listing the topics we'll cover and other matters.
Lesson 1, Minor Keys and their Chords11:04
Minor keys and their Chords. How the basic Natural Minor Scale is constructed, which notes give it its minor-key character, and what chords are built on its notes. Get familiar with these, and you’ll be well on the road to creating a simple minor-key Chord progression. Briefly, we also touch on how the natural Minor scale is related to the major scale, (same chords, different starting note) and on how it is also related to a Parallel Minor Scale (same starting note, different chords), used in a Technique called Modal Interchange (we come back to this in the last lesson and it's hoped this will provide interesting chord-changes in your own chord-progressions!
Lesson 2, Other Minor Scales and their Chords12:11
Other Minor Scales and their Chords. Why we need Harmonic and Melodic Minor scales, and the different chords built on these. Also, what are "Line Clichés", and non-Diatonic chords that may be used in Minor Progressions. All this will give you more important resources to use in your progressions. You’ll understand how it’s possible to mix together chords from different scales, in particular, dominant chords.
Lesson 3, Practical Use of Minor-Key Chords7:50
Practical use of Minor-Key chords. In this lesson we’ll bring together much of what we’ve studied about Minor Harmony by analysing the chords of a well-known Minor Key standard (Blue Bossa). In particular how the Dominant V7 chord is used. This should give you more understanding of the same aspects of other well-known minor-key songs.
lesson 4, Understanding Subdominant-minor chords8:58
Understanding Subdominant-minor chords. In this lesson we'll study examples of Subdominant chords in both Minor and Major keys, to see clarify ones which are Subdominant-minor and which Subdominant major, and what behaviours they have in common. Also, which scale-degree occurs in all subdominant-minor chords. We'll also return to Blue Bossa to look specifically at the use of Sub-dominant chords in that song. Hopefully, in doing this, you'll get a strong feeling of the strong musical flavour that Subdominant-chords have.
Lesson 5, More on ways to use Relative Minor10:00
More on ways to use Relative Minor. In this lesson, we'll see how there is a special relationship between Minor keys and what is called their Related Major key, (and the reverse), which enables composers, including jazz and pop to change key from one section to another, without actually really doing so. We look at My Funny Valentine, a classic jazz standard that does just this, using a device called a Pivot Chord, to smooth the change-over. After this, you should have a good grasp of related minor and major keys, and how to feature them in your compositions.
Lesson 6, Parallel minor and Modal interchange8:22
Parallel minor and Modal interchange. In this last lesson we looked at Modal Interchange, a technique by which chords from a Parallel minor scale (discussed in first lesson) of a Major scale, replaces some of the Major Scale chords, to give unexpected or perhaps colourful-sounding chord-changes. We look at an example of this in a Jazz Standard called Night and Day. You should now be a stage where you are able to go beyond the Natural Minor Scale and start to use more sophisticated resources such as Parallel Minor and techniques such as Modal Interchange, in combination with your own musical creativity.

Requirements

No need to read music, but should not be a Beginner in understanding and playing Jazz Chords and pieces; also have some Music Theory knowledge
Must have a Keyboard, either an acoustic piano or electronic keyboard

Description

Hi, and welcome to this six-lesson course about “Minor key Jazz piano chords and Progressions”. It’s at an Intermediate level, which means that it follows on from what was studied earlier in my other lessons previously published here, at Beginner and Intermediate level, under the title Pop and Jazz Piano Keyboards and Harmony ; however there's no definite requirement for that, of course.

Introduction: In these previous courses, all the chords we’ve explored have been based on the major scale. But it’s perfectly possible to base chords on minor scales. In fact, if you’re not aware and knowledgeable of minor-key Harmony and the things it can do, both by itself and mixed-in with Major-key Harmony, you’re missing a lot! In my opinion, some of the richest and evocative chord-progressions are created with minor-scales and chords. With this knowledge, you could perhaps discover new musical dimension in your playing and composing.

Where this course will take you :You will definitely expand your jazz-chord playing and your knowledge of chord-progression composition, whether you're dealing just with the chords in a minor-key or mixing them together with major keys, as you'll study in the course. You'll also have the knowledge to analyse such techniques and chords as played in examples of classic standards.

What You'll Learn :

How a Natural Minor Scale is constructed, and how this affects the chord-types built on each scale-note.

How Minor-Key chords each have definite functions, Tonic, Dominant and Subdominant, within chord-progressions.

How two other Minor Scales, Harmonic and Melodic, are used to supply other, harmonically important chords to Natural minor chord progressions.

How Natural Minor Scales and Major Scales are related and how shifting from a minor verse to a major-key chorus can be done easily, to provide contrast and a change of mood.

How Parallel Minor is another type of minor scale whose chords can be used within a Major scale to provide richness and colour, a technique called Modal Interchange.

All of these features and qualities are pointed out within a range of classic and modern songs, played on piano.

It’s important to know that written music-notation is not used in the course, as not being in the spirit of Jazz. Chords are shown by note-names and Roman Numerals etc., to be interpreted in improvisatory way by the student, rather than simply read from conventional notation, arranged elsewhere.

Who this course is for:

Those who have studied Jazz Chords at least at Basic level and possibly Intermediate with one teacher (such as myself) or another.