Chord Subs & Reharmonisation

Playing the same chord changes over and over can become repetitive. Chord substitution & reharmonisation allows jazz musicians to add interesting variations to jazz standards and brings new life to common chord changes and progressions.

The first substitution you will come across as a jazz musician will likely be tritone substitution. This can be applied to any 251 progression and achieves a smooth, chromatically descending bass line.

Next we introduce suspended harmony and explore the use of sus chords resolving to altered dominants & upper structures. Understanding this principle will help you add movement to your 251 progressions and bring out interesting inner voices in your progressions.

A useful area of jazz to understand is Passing Chords. Passing Chords can be viewed as temporary stepping stones between the chords in a progression and they are a great tool to delay the sense of resolution, making your playing sound more interesting and dynamic.

The most common passing chord is a dominant chord a half step above the target chord. We explore some of the many different options available to you when for passing chords to common progressions.

In the jazz standard lessons in this course, we apply all of the theory topics in context of actual tunes. The arrangements have been carefully selected to demonstrate the principles covered earlier in the course.