Bassline oriented harmony in standards

As a student of jazz you see a lot of information on ii-V-I's. While it's useful to learn to play over ii-V-I's as they are very common in standards repertoire, you are going to come across a lot of progressions that don't fit neatly into this category. Experienced jazz players with a lot of repertoire come to understand these progressions as a matter of course but the lack of terminology or discussion of them compared to ii-V-I's I find a bit puzzling.

In fact, many of the composers who wrote jazz repertoire had classical composition training. Here's the original version of Stella by Starlight (by Victor Young) - until we get into the dance band section around 1:40 with the harmonica and rhythm guitar, it sounds like Rachmaninoff to me!

ii-V-I's are baby stuff to trained composers: lots of attention in classical harmony classes is paid to the bassline - the 'second melody' as Arnold Schoenberg had it. As such there are many beautiful progressions in the jazz repertoire which resist the ii-V-I analysis. In fact, ii-V-I's and backcycling harmony lead to boring basslines. Here's a standard modern jazz version of Rhythm Changes. The bass leaps around without much structure:

Bb Gm | Cm F7 | Dm A7 | Cm G7 | Fm Bb7 | Eb G7 | Cm F7 |

A traditional bass-line oriented version might do this:

Bb Bo7 | Cm7 C#o7 | Dm7 D7 | Eb Ebm | Dm G7 | Cm F7 |

Notice how the bassline has a pleasing balance between movement in chromatic steps and larger intervals towards the end.

In fact, arpeggios of these changes form the basis of the bebop melody the Serpents Tooth as well as commonly played changes to quite a few tunes - Mean to Me, Ain't Misbehaving, Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered and many more.

I'm not going to talk about what to play over these progression - I'll just identify a few progressions of this type. Hopefully you'll start to see that there are recognisable patterns that can be factored into your practice, just like ii-V-I's.

Swing/blues progressions

Swing, trad jazz and blues have a number of basic progressions which are based on very strong, cliche basslines. Here are a couple of classic ones used as endings in blues music, and turnaround progressions in jazz:

Bb Bb7/D (or D7) | Eb Eo7 | Bb/F
Bb Bb/Ab | Eb/G Ebm/Gb | Bb/F

First thing to notice is that these chords are inverted - hence the busy looking notation of slash chords.They may be more familiar in root position:

Bb Bb7 | Eb Eo7 | Bb
Bb Bb7 | Eb Ebm | Bb

The progressions both do the same job - that is go to IV from I and get back again. Both basslines start on Bb and end up on F: in fact it's common in jazz to hear one progression played against the other.

These types of progression are commonly used as riffs in swing music. Christopher Columbus is an example of a Rhythm Changes tune where a blues turnaround is used instead of a ii-VI-ii-V type progression.

In the simplest analysis the progression is this:

Bb7 | Eb7 | Bb

Which is how Charlie Parker and Lester Young often used to play them.

Another progression which shares a very similar function (here going from I to ii, a close relative of IV, and back again)

Bb Bo7 | Cm Ebo7 |

And a sort of reversed version is also very common:

Bb/D Dbo7 | Cm7 F7 |

It might surprise you to notice that this progression features heavily in Tom Jobim's music. I used to find this progression from Corcovado very puzzling, until I realised it's just an old school swing turnaround in F stretched out to 4 bars:

Am | Abo7 | Gm | C7 etc

Cole Porter

Cole Porter has some great examples. Here's one of my favourites form Just One of Those Things. I've moved the key to Bb from the original, F.

Bb7/F | Em7b5 | Ebm | Dm7 | Db7 | Cm F7

There's quite a few chromatic chords here - try to appreciate the tight chromatic voice leading as you play through the example.

Django Reinhardt

Django loved progressions of this type. Djangology is largely similar to the Cole Porter example. I'll give it in Bb, although the song is normally played in G:

C7/E (or Em7b5) | Ebm | Dm7 | Dbo7 | Cm7 | F7 | Bb

Notice the difference between Dbo7 and Db7 in this and the Cole Porter example. In general the rule is when deciding to put a chord on the bass note ensure that the melody note is included in the chord.

A personal favourite is the progression from his gorgeous ballad Tears. This is sometimes given incorrectly. These are the right changes for bar 9 on:

Dbo7 | Fm/C | Bo7 | Cm/Bb | Ao7 | Ab7 G7 etc

Tom Jobim

Jobim wrote many beautiful chord progressions. Inutil Paisagem is rare jazz example of chromatic contrary motion between melody and bass:

C B13 Bbmaj7
(G-Ab-A in the melody against C-B-Bb in the bass)

The song Aguas De Marco (transposed here to Bb) is a lovely embellishment of a blues turnaround Bb | Bb7 | Eb | Ebm. Jobim uses the hypnotic continually descending bassline to help paint the landscape and mood of the song.

First progression
Bb | Bbmaj7/Ab | Emaj7/G | Emmaj7/Gb | Bb6/9/F | E7#11 | Ebmaj7 | Ab7sus4

Notice more complex chord qualities compared to the earlier examples - this generally creates richer voice leadning, though the basic principle remains the same. Jobim uses a tritone substitute of Bb7, E7#11 to keep the bass descending.

Second progression
Bbmaj7 | Bb9sus4 Bb9 | C/E | Ebm9 | 

The C/E chord is a close relation of the Em7b5 used by Cole Porter and Django.

Stella by Starlight

A classic example of how ii-V-I thinking has come to dominate the teaching jazz harmony to the point of actually mucking up the tunes comes from the Real Book version of the changes to this song. This site covers the harmonic butchery in depth.

Extended minor ii-V-I

Very common progression which includes both ii-V's and basslines:

Dm Dm/C | Bm7b5 E7 | Am

Basically dresses up this progression (bear in mind that you can think of the Bm7b5 as Dm/B or a third inversion minor 6th chord.)

Bm7b5 | E7 | Am

This crops up in many settings:

Gm Gm/F | Em7b5 A7 | Dm G7 | Gm | C7 |
(Days of Wine and Roses)
Which is really just (Gm | A7 | Dm G7 | C7)

Dm Dm/C | Bm7b5 E7 | Am Am/G | F#m7b5 B7 | Em7 A7 | Dm7 G7 | C
(Green Dolphin Street)
This progression is basically Bm7b5 | E7 | Am |  F#o7 | C A7 | Dm7 G7 - a twist on the swing turnaround above.

And so on...

Summary/Rant

None of this info will be any news to those who play a lot of standards gigs. The repertoire I have chosen is the most commonly played, and the changes I've given are pretty much the Real Book ones. All of them might pose a challenge to an improviser if they don't spend some time running these progressions.

In general, there seems a lack of info about any progressions aside from ii-V-I's. This is perplexing, as just studying ii-V-I's and ii-V won't prepare you for playing standards. In fact, the tendency to introduce them retroactively into standards actually results in some pretty ugly harmony! The real book and iRealB app is full of this sort of thing - Stella is merely the most egregious and best known example. Take an old swing tune - Coquette. This is how I understand the A section of Coquette (in fiddle key, D):

D | % | A7 | % | 
A7 | % | D | A7 | 

With any extra ii-V's, passing chords or turnarounds added to taste.

The (admittedly public sourced) iRealB forum gives these changes:

| D6/9 | % | Em7 | A13b9 |
| Em7 | A13b9 | F#-7 B13b9 | Em7 B13b9 |

Why??? Why????? Whyyyyyyyyyyyy???????

The A13b9 chord is especially odd. Perhaps the author meant A13/Bb, a common gypsy jazz style substitute for A7 - not that most gypsy jazz players would think of referring to it that way. However, call this song on a gig with musicians who don't know it, and that's the chart they will most likely be playing from these days. It's daft.

While there's nothing more boring than playing with a changes nazi (obsession with the 'right changes' seems to me to miss the point of what jazz is and how it functions), obscuring the underlying simplicity of song's harmony and worse, writing clunky, pedestrian and cluttered versions of straightforward progressions does nothing to help us understand the repertoire.

Good standards players learn lots of variations of a songs harmony for this very reason, and will make aesthetic choices and decisions based on their knowledge and taste.

In any case, I hope I've helpfully identified some areas that might trip up aspiring jazz players (as they did me).

Swing Rhythm Guitar Pointers

Swing rhythm guitar, or straight fours, is one of the most basic skills of a jazz guitar player - styles such as big band jazz, Gypsy jazz and swing/dixieland also have the guitar playing some variant of this rhythm.

In theory it's an easy task - play the chords of the song, strumming on every beat. However, getting it to authentically swing and 'sit' just right with the drums and bass is a real art form - and even here there's plenty of room for different styles.

Much of my professional life is spent playing this type of part, and I feel I've found out a lot over the years about what to do and what not do, often by trial and error, listening to recordings or myself, teaching, and getting useful feedback from fellow musicians.

So - on to the dos and don'ts. My bandmates will probably laugh when they see some of this, but at least I'm aware of the pitfalls even if I don't always manage to avoid them....

Don't overdo the 2 and 4

This is the number one error made by most of my students and even experienced players who are unused to the style. There is a misconception that the 2 and 4 beats in jazz are all important, to the point where musicians feel it will help them swing to tap their foot on 2 and 4. In fact, 1 and 3 are equally important.

The confusion comes from the fact that 2 and 4 have a different function to 1 and 3. In Hal Galper's words, 2 and 4 are 'tension beats' while 1 and 3 are 'rest beats.' James Chirillo, rhythm guitarist with the Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra says the same thing in a different way in this video:

We have a choice whether to make this distinction in our playing - we could just play even 4's without accents. This is my preferred style at medium and slow tempos these days.

If you want to differentiate the 2 and 4, as is common in music with a two feel, such as gypsy jazz or dixieland, you can do so by changing the speed of your pick stroke. A common gypsy jazz technique is to lift the hand slightly higher on 2 and 4 which means you have to move your hand faster to play the chord in time. Another way is to think 'rake slap rake slap' - which is the way Kevin Nolan describes it. Either way creates a subtle, appropriate accent which you can enhance by cutting the chord shorter on 2 and 4.

Another way, favoured by American style swing players is to accent the 2 and 4 by strumming nearer the bridge on these beats.

The result is that you have a different articulation on 2 and 4 but not a loud/soft accent - everything is at the same dynamic, it's just that 2 and 4 now sound tenser and snappier - just as they should. In situations where the band is playing in two this can make the guitar sound like it's only playing on 2 and 4 - don't be fooled! Big band rhythm is always straight fours unless you are playing stabs or stops - if a big band arranger indicates the guitar to play on 2 and 4, try cutting the 2 and 4 short and leave 1 and 3 long instead - this will create the desired effect in the correct way.

A more 'backbeaty' style has come into vogue with some gypsy jazz groups, probably under the inevitable influence of later forms of pop music such as rock, funk and hip hop - this is a contemporary feel, entirely different from the original 1930's Manouche swing, but you can't say it sounds bad! Gonzalo Bergara plays in this style here.

Don't play upbeats

Another common error is playing some sort of strum on the upstroke - like a the type of ghost strum you get in pop/rock acoustic playing. Sometimes it can go further and you have some sort of syncopated fill, often towards the end of the bar. Listening to my own playing, I can hear this unconsciously coming in embarrassingly often - it's a real nervous tick!

I'll leave aside the gypsy jazz 'la pompe' upstroke which is specific and hard to master (here's a good lesson). As a general rule play no upstrokes at all - focus on getting clean downstrokes on the beat without anything extra.

The reason is similar I think to the 2 and 4 problem. Many musicians associated swing with offbeats, because we are taught that it is the inequality of the length of the downbeats and offbeats that is swing. In fact it's perfectly possible to swing only on downbeats - Paul Chambers walking in 4 springs to mind. The same is true of drummers playing ride cymbal. While some drummers use a skip note and others don't, it should be obvious right away that the skip note (or up beat) is not the thing that makes the ride cymbal swing. If only it were that simple!

The swing comes more from the feeling and this will inform nuances like the length that you play the chords for, and what sort of attack you use on the chords. I don't want to intellectualise this - a good way to practice is to play with records.

Don't whack it too hard

Again this is a pitfall I've fallen into - and I know exactly why. The guitar is a quiet instrument, and even a loud box such as an acoustic archtop or a Selmer Maccaferri is easily buried by a drummer and a horn front line. However, if you get used to pounding the living bejeezus out of your guitar you will run into a couple of problems - your lead playing will not be able to match the rhythm playing in volume and you all also tend to play this way even on quiet gigs which tends to piss off other guitar players at the very least. Musically I don't think it works either - listening back to my old, loud, playing I notice a tense, forced quality to the playing.

Remember you are supporting the soloing players - you should be quieter than them, at around the same volume as the bass, perhaps a little quieter.

Unamplified acoustic guitar works great in a listening situation with a quiet drummer and acoustic bass, adding a crisp yet warm presence to the rhythm section. However the dynamic range of the guitar is tiny compared to that of drums, so when the drums pick up you will be lost, it doesn't matter what you do. It's actually fine - in the last chorus of a swing number, for example, no one is terribly interested in hearing you anyway. If you are asked to take a solo, the band should drop right down, as they would for bass.

In general when you use an amp, ask the other musicians to tell you how loud they want it, and when set the volume make sure you are never strumming at more than 60-70% full volume. This seems to work well.

Don't play fills

I often do this on gigs thinking 'hey, it's a bit bare here' and whenever I listen back to the gig, I hate myself. Fills come from the ego, and the ego has no place in rhythm guitar (or music.) Fills often detract from the time/feel as well unless they are absolutely 'locked in.'

Less is more

I've found that the smaller voicings - root, 3rd and 7th say - work best. No extensions (although +5's are a good idea where indicated.) Many prewar styles of music don't use a major 7th chord, so get used to playing major 6ths. Also a minor 7th chord is hardly ever used on degree vi - use a minor 6 here instead, or a minor triad.

Often simple triads, especially open voicings (such as 1 5 3 or 3 1 5), sound best.

See here for James Chirillo's explanation of Freddie Green's super minimalist 'one note chord' style (as well as some great advice generally.) You can really hear Freddie doing the one note thing here - also check out his BRUTAL guitar action in the film footage.

Play an acoustic guitar

Jazz rhythm guitar sounds best on an acoustic - the quick decay and lack of dominating bass is perfect for creating the feel. What you absolutely don't want is a mellow electric jazz guitar tone - you want a lot of percussiveness and midrange - very nasal mid range and treble for a drums, bass and horns type band (listen to the James Chirillo and Freddie Green examples) and maybe a bit warmer for a band without drums such as a gypsy jazz group.

However in the real world it is often necessary to play straight fours on an electric - say you have one swing tune in a set of rock and roll and blues tunes, for example. If you are playing an archtop, on a quiet gig you can turn the volume down a bit and use some of the acoustic sound. However this might not work so well on a louder gig. I have a bridge piezo pickup in one of my archtops which helps.

If you must play electric, your main enemies here are muddiness (because of the electric guitar's exaggerated bass) and sustain. You may need to clip the chords a bit shorter on electric. Avoid the 5th and 6th strings like the plague. I've found an EQ pedal, or an 'acoustic simulator' can help with this as well. 

Listen to the band

The best way to stop yourself from getting bored, and playing fills, looking at pretty girls or boys and thinking about what you are going to have for dinner is to focus your awareness on all the other musicians. This is key advice for playing music in general, but is particularly acute for rhythm guitar as you don't really have that much 'to do.' The pay back is that you can feel part of the overall picture, and will groove more to boot.

Furthermore, the 'pocket' of different bands will feel in different places - you will need to learn to feel this pocket and find out how to sit in it. This is the kind of thing that you can only develop 'on the gig.'

Listen to great rhythm players

Some of my favourites include: Freddie Green, Allan Reuss, Carmen Mastren, Eddie Condon, Joseph Reinhardt & Roger Chaput, Jim Hall, Bucky Pizzarelli, John Pizzarelli, Tal Farlow, Russell Mallone and James Chirillo. The continuing gypsy jazz tradition also has a fine tradition of rhythm guitar - check out these players too!

Amplification

Amplification is a fact of life for 75-100% of gigs, depending on what type of music you play. However, as most performing musicians learn early on, live sound is a minefield. The following is what I have found from playing various gigs over the years, for what it's worth.

Why Amplify at all?

People who work with me know that I'm a massive old fogey when it comes to volume. I like it to be as low as possible.

In a folk or jazz club or other listening environment, it's possible to pay very quiet, and is often the most powerful thing you can do. With a drummer it becomes trickier, but with a sensitive drummer it is perfectly possible to play very soft.

Amplification affects the sound of the instrument. for electric guitar this is desirable. For acoustic guitar it is only ever a necessary evil.

I often play at 30-40 seater venues used to acoustic styles of music and they usually provide a sound engineer. There is still a perceived need for amplification even here - my feeling is that it's perfectly possible to play these venues with a purely acoustic line up - if you play electric you could use a small amp. A lot depends on the drummer, but most of the drummers I work with have a great sense of dynamics. An acoustic guitar solo might struggle to be heard in this situation, but you can always add a touch of volume with a small amp - an AER say - if required, without changing the sound too much. In these situations my little AER alpha spends its time around '1' on the master volume.

Actual acoustic music sounds very 'small' and 'light' compared to amplified but it has many more shades of nuance and complexity. There is a magic to acoustic sound which is completely lost even in the most hi-fi of mics and PAs and it's shame people don't have more confidence in the audience to enjoy a purely acoustic performance in venues. There's a great intimacy there, and volume does not mean more energy....

Furthermore, a good sound engineer who understands acoustic music and jazz is worth their weight in gold.

Noisy punters

Playing quieter styles of music - folk, jazz etc - for a party crowd or a noisy audience obviously raises some real problems. There's no doubt in my mind that audience level is the biggest 'game-changer' when it comes to sound. You can sound check as much as you like, but when there's a crowd in the room, all bets are off.

One thing I've noticed is that many musicians are worried about projection and performance energy. A common way to try to inject more projection and energy into a performance is to simply turn up. Needless to say it doesn't work. If you need to do this, then the battle for the audience's attention is already lost.

It's a massive temptation and I think we all do it from time to time. Often, this is led by the drums. Drums are capable of a huge dynamic range and I think most drummers are trained to 'play the room' - that is, they will play to the level of the audience. Also, on most small gigs drummers are often the only instrument not amplified through the PA, so they often need to be louder so that they balance front of house.

However this also happens with drummer less groups as well. Often you get into an arms race, and for reasons given below, what happens is usually bad sound. The audience will always win....

When it comes to functions, I think unless you are booked as a party/dance band, most clients actually don't want the band to be heard - hence the classic request for the band to turn down. Best thing to do (I think) is play unamplified as much as possible. I work with several groups who play 1920s/30s type background music purely acoustically to often quite noisy punters, and it still works. You can actually hear what you play (depending on the room's acoustic) better than you think and punters always comment on how nice it was. What's going on here I think is that clients are interested in the overall sound and the effect it creates rather than being able to hear what you play. An acoustic group creates a certain ambience even if you can't really hear it, and if punters really want to hear it they can go closer to the band.

It's an ego-bruiser, but it's what the average function client really wants, I think, 9 times out of 10.

Leaving aside the specific problems of playing acoustic swing guitar in a group (let's not go there :-)) what kind of factors do we have to deal with when we do play with a fair bit of amplification?

Welcome to a world of mud

Amplification is an important part of the sound for louder bands and styles of music.

It's particularly hard to get right when using an acoustic guitar and amp. In fact, it's basically impossible to accurately amplify the sound of an acoustic guitar for all but the quietest gigs. Anything that increases the fidelity of the sound increases the instrument's susceptibility to feedback.

For this reason most people have got used to sparkly sound of a piezo pickup through a PA (or acoustic amp.) If you actually listen, it doesn't actually really sound like an acoustic guitar, but it is an attractive sound, acceptably close and easy for overworked, underpaid sound engineers to deal with. Some players, such as Lionel Loueke, have made this artificial not-really-acoustic sound into their own. From a personal point of view, a piezo under the bridge is uber practical, and as much as I'd like the sound of my acoustic, but louder, I'd take consistency and reliability over 'perfect tone' any day.

This realisation has resulted in a hilarious device called a Godin Multiac - a professional quality, electric-only guitar that imitates the sound of a piezo doing a not particularly good job of amplifying an acoustic guitar. It's very popular and widely used by guitarists. In a way, it's the guitar equivalent of those french fries that don't actually contain any potato.

Even when playing the most practical rig for a loud gig - electric guitar into a reasonable sized amp - some complicating factors come into play. One thing that I notice is that you get a lot of low range mud when you are louder. This is not actually because of the amp - but because of your hearing. Here's a graph, just what you've always wanted:

This is a plot of how loud a sound at a certain frequency (or pitch) needs to be to sound the same volume for the listener. So for a the low A on the guitar (110Hz) needs to be at around 40db to sound at the same volume as the A on the 1st string (440Hz) at 0 dB. For those who don't know the dB sale that's a HUGE difference. As we get louder the curve flattens out, so 100 dBs is about the same for everything (much louder than this and you will hit the threshold of pain, Slayer fans.)

For those not conversant with graphs or numbers, what it says is that when the sound is quiet, it's harder to hear bass, and as sound gets louder, the ears become more and more aware of it. So your amp could be totally flat in response, and you still hear a lot more low end coming in as you turn up. This will also tend to aggravate the bass player as well, BTW. So it's generally don't be inflexible about amp settings - what works for quiet recording or practise will be different to what works on a gig - room acoustics will also effect EQ. Most experienced guitarists I have met know this well. I believe some amp makes are factoring this into their designs, although this does not appear to be the case with, for example, a Fender Twin :-) It's also a good reason to do a Brian May and use a treble booster if you want to really crank it.

This graph raises all sorts of interesting issues regarding live sound generally.

A second issue is the way in which EQ'ing works within a band. While a sound with lots of bass and treble sounds great for solo guitar, in a band these frequencies are occupied by the bass and by the drummer's cymbals. It's often said by experienced players that what you need in most bands is more midrange.

Incidentally, one reason why macceferri and archtop guitars were developed in the 1920s and 30s was to increase midrange output in particular. As a result they can sound a bit much on their own, but in a band, they cut through much better than a flat-top acoustic. It also makes them a bit troublesome to amplify, unfortunately.

Obviously with smaller amps there are often issues with 'boxiness' and too much mid range. There's not a huge amount you can do about this, apart from get a bigger amp.... You can also use a bigger cab - the 6" speaker ZT lunchbox, for example, sounds absolutely gigantic through a 4 X 12 cab. (Though if you have to move a 4X12" to the gig, you might not want to use a ZT Lunchbox, it's true)

There's also issues regarding the direction of the speaker. Place an amp behind you and at your feet (standard practice for many guitarists playing with a combo) and you will hear the amp rather more quietly than it sounds from the front. You will also hear less treble - as high frequencies diffract (go around corners) less easily than low frequencies.

You could tilt the amp towards you (some amps are wedge shaped for this reason) or put it on a table or chair if it is small enough. However, this is an issue for acoustic instruments as it can raise the likelihood of feedback. Some acoustic amps, such as the AER Alpha, seem very directional, which helps feedback if not on stage sound....

Finally, distortion is a very interesting and difficult one. I find that the louder you are, the less is required. For me any sort of heavy distortion above a certain volume becomes almost impossible to hear with a band. I'm sure there are many who have spent years working out the perfect combination of pedals and amp to get a great live overdriven sound, but I have to say for my own uses, a bluesy, slightly driven sound is great for most situations I play in. Specialists playing heavy rock guitar and shred styles I'm sure would have a lot more to say in this area.

I have to say though, perhaps the best live sound I have ever heard in this context is actually Eric Clapton's. It's almost clean.