When you’re starting out, it can seem like the secret to improvising boils down to what you play on each chord. It’s all about the notes, the scale options, and the licks you’ve figured out…
But the more you listen and learn, you begin to realize it’s the way you move between these chords that makes all the difference.
As the great Coleman Hawkins put it: “I don’t play chords, I play movements.”
One of the tricks to telling your musical story is not just knowing the chords of a song, it’s knowing how to get from point A to point B, connecting and resolving to the harmonic pillars of a tune.
The genius of Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and other iconic musicians that we listen to lies not only in the specific notes or complex lines they play, but in their deep connection to harmony and rhythm of the music.
And for any practicing musician, this process starts with the basic foundations of harmonic movement that the jazz repertoire is built upon.
In any key there are “pathways” to get to and from the musical arrival points in a progression, and the best players know these and have tools for them ingrained in their ear.
One of the harmonicframeworks that appears in the repertoire over and over again is the I chord moving to the IV chord and then back again to I:
This is the musical backbone of simple nursery rhymes, symphonic movements, and also a surprising number of the jazz standards that we play today.
The challenge as an improviser is not just hearing and understanding these big points in the progression, but developing various ways to connect them and move between them in your phrases.
It’s these spaces between the harmonic arrival points that we often skip over, that hold the possibility of harmonic motion and melodic momentum…
And this is what we’ll focus on in today’s lesson: how to travel from the IV chord back to the I chord. A primer for connecting and moving through an essential, but often glossed over part of the harmony.
A TranscribedPDF of Sonny Clark’s three chorus solo on Candy
and 8 solo phrases and tactics to know
Let’s get started…
Harmony: The IV to I pathway
Many of the standards that we listen to, study in the practice room, and perform feature harmony that travels to the IV chord at some point and eventually resolves back to the I chord…
Some tunes do this in a more direct fashion, while others return to the tonic over the space of multiple measures.
One of the keys to navigating this movement goes back to understanding the larger harmonic framework of a song, not just memorizing a sequence of individual chords.
To see what I mean, let’s look at a few examples of the bigger IV to I movement in some well-know song forms and standards…
Rhythm Changes
If you zoom out and look at the larger harmonic motion in the progression of I Got Rhythm, you’ll find movement from I to IV in the sixth bar, and a return to I in the following three bars:
This aerial view of the harmony can simplify your approach to the ‘A’ section. Rather than trying to keep up with chords that change every two beats, you can focus on the larger arrival points: I – I7 – IV – I – V – I.
Here are some more lessons on a harmonic and melodic approach to Rhythm Changes:
The progression of the basic blues form is also built around this movement to IV and a return to I…
In the fifth bar, the harmony shifts to the IV chord and works its way back to I over the remainder of the 12-bar form.
This section of the tune, as well as the larger form, is open to endless variation (see Charlie Parker’s variation Bird Blues). Check out these lessons for more on the Blues:
The final 8 bars of All the Things feature a descending sequence or “walk-down” from the IV chord all the way to the final resolution in Ab…
Single measures moving down over the space of four bars to the ii-V and ultimately a resolution to I. Go to these lessons for a closer look at All the Things You Are:
Finally, in the standard Just Friends, we find a progression begins on the IV chord and moves to the tonic in the fifth bar:
The transition here uses the “backdoor” dominant or ii-V to resolve to the tonic. Check out this lesson for more on this unique sound: Mastering Chords in Jazz: The Flat VII7 Chord
There are a host of other tunes that utilize this framework of IV to I, with many stopping at the II7 before the final ii-V: Cherokee, There Will Never Be Another You, Donna Lee, etc.
The more time you spend listening to and learning tunes, the more you’ll hear this movement popping up over and over again…
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