The infamous ii V is everywhere in jazz chord progressions. In fact, the ii V defines a sense of tension and release that prevails throughout all western music…
An essential key to understanding how to give your lines a sense of harmonic motion, lies in knowing where to insert a ii V into a static progression.
Activating static measures in a blues using ii Vs
When most people go to blow over a blues, they improvise on changes that look something like the example below.
This is pretty basic and strictly playing these changes will limit your lines tremendously.
Most jazz charts notate a blues with some added chords that I’m sure you’re familiar with. The chords typically added to most blues charts give the progression much more forward motion. See how the inserted chords push harmonically forward, resolving to a target chord?
Yes, in most cases these changes are written in charts as I’m sure you’re aware of, however, understanding this concept is crucial to understanding how to insert ii Vs in specific places that are not written in charts, giving a sense of harmonic motion to rather stagnant progressions.
Before moving on, understand that:
- The added ii Vs aim for a target chord (E -7b5 A7 is headed for D- etc.)
- You can insert and play over these progressions regardless of whether the rhythm section plays these changes.
- You must play a line over these inserted changes that expresses their harmony. Keep it simple.
Ok, looking at the previous example of typical blues changes found in charts, there are still a couple inactive spots as shown below.
Finding these spots and inserting ii Vs that push forward to a target chord is what we’re trying to develop. So when the rhythm section is plucking away the IV chord in measure 2, you can instead choose to play a ii V (D- G7) moving to C. And again in measure 6, when the rhythm section again is playing the IV chord, you can insert your ii V back to C again as illustrated below.
As I said, keep your line simple. You’re trying to express harmony that may or may not be played by the rest of the band. Keeping your line simple will make the implied harmony clearly resolve to the target chord.
Here’s an example of a line inserted into these measures pushing us toward the target tonics. Try using this common line and then go transcribe your own from one of your heroes.
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