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Can you, or how can you take almost any song/simple melody and make it have a jazz feel?

--DR LO

"Can you, or how can you take almost any song/simple melody and make it have a jazz feel?"

....DR Lo'e earnest query, which I have left visible due to (well deserved) guilt feelings.


My first disrespectful reply:
Sit on a banana daiquiri and mix a gin fix in your left shirt pocket.

And after (a bit) more thought..
But seriously, folks...
Rhythm and chord choice and chord voicing have to be involved somehow.

Can't say much about the rhythm, perhaps others could add.
Chord choices ... use some of the more complex chords. 11ths (=4th), b9, b10, b5th, 13ths(=6th)

Voicing are pretty much up to your choice.
I left out as a category, different chord progressions, but if you'd like an extensive list of chord changes, vista this link.

http://www.ralphpatt.com/Tonal.html


Bob

b10?

The quick answer is yes, you can reharmonize ANY tune to give it a jazz feel. The catch is that you have to learn jazz keyboard harmony in order to know how to reharmonize the tune you're working with.

It's not really something you can get an answer to in a single post, though. People have spent literally years of their lives learning jazz and the heck of it is, you can study for ther rest of your life and not finish.

I saw a book the other day, "Learn piano in 10 easy lessons." I was laughing so hard, tears came to my eyes...

I know a bit about how jazz works. I took a class at school, and the teacher really could have done a lot better job of it. I know my blues scales, and I know about the different types of chords to an extent. What I'm asking is i guess, how do I reharmonize?

Bob: I also looked at that page and don't understand it. Can you try to explain how it works?

--DR LO

Dr Lo wrote:
"What I'm asking is i guess, how do I reharmonize..."

You're asking a really tough question. It's sort of like asking someone how to paint a picture. Well, maybe not quite that mysterious, but you get my drift...

So let's try this. You post a tune you want to reharmonize into a jazz tune and maybe if we work together, we can figure something out.

Sort of like an online jazz theory lesson.

BTW, pick something kinda basic, songwise.

-----

What I do is write make a leadsheet of whatever song I want to jazzify. Then I just play it like it was a jazz standard.

As Spin Doctor said, post a tune you want to turn into jazz. I could probably help with the jazzification process, too.

Ok, lets do something like when the saits go marching in. That will be prety easy. Is that how you wanted me to do it, or do you want an actual file of it? I'll have to write it if you do.

--DR LO

OK, that's fine. I don't have that music, but I was noodling with the melody and came up with this.

I'll assume the first three notes (the intro) have no associated chord. (going on memory here)

My first idea for this is to use dotted eights in the intro so that it goes,

doo - dit, do, do dooo.. (keeping it simple)

Then, instead of just holding that next chord for four beats, we'll divide it into two chords to get some movement going.

So doing this in the Key of D, the melody goes:

D, F#, G, A

Now, when you hit the A, simultaneously play the D an octave below the D in the melody. Got that? That's your root note.

Now,
1) Hold the melody note - A and the bass note - D along with it for two counts and then put in these inner voicings. This is a plain vanilla D7 Chord:

The notes are:
D-A-C in the left hand and D-F#-A in the right.

We may change the voicing later, but for now, leave those two roots and the two 5ths. Hold this chord for two counts.

Now, we introduce the movement.
2) While holding the melody note and the bass note (still) with your pinkies, shift the other fingers to play this chord:

D-G-B in the left hand and C-E-A in the right.

Does that make sense? Play around with it to get the rhythm right, but I'm mainly concerned with how it sounds to you.

I think this is called a "so what" chord progression because it was used by Miles Davis when he played the tune "So What", but I'm not sure if this is "Exactly" that progression. I just happened to come up with it at the time. By holding the D in the bass, it becomes what's called a "pedal point" meaning there is no root movement.

Try it out and tell me what you think. If you like it, we can analyze it and figure out with the chords are and why they work.

Also, Greg, feel free to throw in ideas.

I don't want to nit pick -- especially because you're trying to help people understand harmony (which is a good thing)....
But, this is not the "so what" progression. "So What" is a modal tune. It only has two chords. Dmi7 and Ebmi7.

Yes, as I mentioned earlier, it may not have been exactly the So What progression, but it has the same "flavor" because of the intervals of a fourth that are in Davis' version and also present in the second chord of the version I presented. Since I didn't have any music in front of me at the time, I just knocked together some simple harmony to use for "Saints". I wasn't really ready to start analyzing the progression, but that's fine. I generally use my ears first and fine tune with theory later.

While we're checking out So What, the Dmi7 and Ebmi7 you spoke of are not the chords of the progression, they are Dorian modes of the key centers.

The actual key centers are Cmaj and Dbmaj, making their Dorian modes Dmi7 and and Ebmi7 respectively.

The chords are: Emin moving to Dmin in the A section, then it modulates to Fmin moving to Ebmin in the B section. So there are four chords in the song, following an A A B A form in the improvisation section.

Anyway, if you have some helpful advice for the "class" here, please share. From your impressive disclaimer you should have some great and interesting ideas. Music is just my hobby but I'm sure your help will be welcome.

Chords and key centers are not the same thing. The chords for "So What" are Dmi7 and Ebmi7. Also, there is a difference between "chords" and "voicings". The Emi and Dmi you reference in the "A" section of the tune are simply voicings of the Dmi chord. The Emi shape represents the 9th, 11th and 13th of the Dmi chord. It's really only two chords...

OK thanks.

A lot of times people will refer to them as separate chords (i.e. polychords) as an aid for voicing chords. For example, some teachers will note that a Cm11 chord is basically a Cmin triad and a Bbmaj triad put together.

I can see where that'd help some players (such as bassists or horn players), but personally I never used that polychord shortcut.

I still don't believe I understand, nor find it pleasing to the ear.

--DR LO

Here's a quick piano doodle I just played. In the beginning I use a lot of minor 11 chords and stuff like that. I also attempt to play a jazzified version of Solfeggio in C minor. (please don't kill me)

http://herculeaneffort.adventuredevelopers.com/pianodoodle.mid

Try this:

Next time you are about to play a V chord (in the Key of c, this would be a G major with an F for flavor, also known as a G7), play the same exact voicing a 1/2 step above and resolve down.

For example: Ab7 - G7

If you are playing a II-V-I progression (in C, this is D min7, G7, C maj), try the same thing with the D min chord (start with Eb min7, resolving to D min7).

When playing a II-V progression, this is known as a tri-tone substituion (I think that is the term). The most common application for this would be the following:

When a chord progression does a II-V-I, in C the chords would be D min(7), G(7), C maj(7) - the 7 gives a standard jazzy feel.

The tri tone substitution occurs when you do the following:
D min7, (Ab7, G7), C maj7 - the Ab7 falls before the downbeat of the G7 as a chordal embellishment, so you play the G7 on the downbeat as normal, and can syncopate it a little for effect.