The Most Important MINOR Progression In Jazz Standards

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]If you're trying to learn how to play jazz blues, most people just memorize random tunes. But, there are actually three types of blues heads that show up everywhere. If you learn one example of each type of these jazz blues heads, you'll start recognizing the same forms everywhere, and you'll be jam session ready today.

[00:00:21]>> [music] >> Hi there. Josiah Bradlee from learn jazz standards here. In this video, we're going to look at the three essential blues head types. Each one is going to teach us a different type of common blues form that you'll encounter over and over again. And for each example head that we choose, it's going to teach you some great jazz blues melodic vocabulary. Okay, so let's dive into type one. This is what I call a riff-based blues head. So, think about relatively simple jazz blues that are based off of repetitive motivic riffs or a theme that's repeated over and over and over again. Things like C-Jam Blues.

[00:01:03]Right? Maybe Now's the Time or Tenor Madness.

[00:01:11]Those kind of heads that, like I showed in the opening statements of the melody, have a repetitive theme. So, what can you learn from these types of blues heads? Number one is the power of repetition. Repetition's great. C-Jam Blues does the same thing over and over again.

[00:01:34]But, it's swinging, it's simple, it's rhythmic, and it's played over different chord changes. So, even though the melody stays the same, it's hip and it's effective. So, don't be afraid of using repetition in blues.

[00:01:46]Another thing we learn from these riff-based blues heads is the power of call and response. So, often the blues melody will set up its own sort of call and response with itself, where it will state a melodic idea and then kind of answer that melodic idea with a variation or something contrasting. For example, Tenor Madness starts with this.

[00:02:09]And then answers it with the same idea but just slightly modified.

[00:02:15]Then it answers the original phrase again by adding onto it.

[00:02:20]>> [music] >> At the very end of the tune, it gives a big answer to that when it goes So, the tune sets up melodic idea, little variation on it, and then return to the original melodic idea or another variation. Powerful tool, call and response. These simple riff-based blues heads also often teach us a lot of great blues language.

[00:02:45]So, going back to Tenor Madness, it uses the major third and the minor third alternating back and forth to create a really bluesy sound in the opening phrase.

[00:02:57]That mixing and matching of the major third and the minor third is a great bit of blues language that you can steal and incorporate into your own solos. Okay, in terms of the form, these riff-based blues heads, and we've got one up here on the chord chart. I'm looking at Billy's Bounce. It's a great example of some common jazz chord progressions that you're going to find in a jazz blues as opposed to a traditional blues, what I call a blues blues or a simple blues.

[00:03:25]So, in its in a simple blues or traditional blues, there's really only three chords, the one dominant, the four dominant, and the five dominant. So, they're all dominant seventh chords. So, 174757.

[00:03:37]But, as you can see in a jazz blues, we not only have the 17 and the 47, but we also have in the last four bars a 251.

[00:03:47]And so, by mastering and studying even these simple riff-based blues heads, it's going to help you to address how do I play over 251? And I'll go back to Tenor Madness as offering a great 251 lick in the last four bars. Last four bars Tenor Madness start goes like this.

[00:04:05]That's a great 251 lick that you can just steal. So, you're learning 251 vocabulary as well as learning a common jazz blues form. Okay, speaking of Billie's Bounce, let's talk about type two. I call this bebop and or modern blues heads. So, a little bit more complicated than our type one which are just the simple riff based blues heads, you're going to encounter bebop and modern blues heads. Billie's Bounce goes like this.

[00:04:34]>> [music] >> That's how that one starts. So, what do these tunes teach us? Billie's Bounce is a great example. Another one that we'll talk about today is Straight, No Chaser by Thelonious Monk. These tunes teach number one rhythmic displacement. As I just demonstrated with that little fragment of Billie's Bounce.

[00:04:54]>> [music] >> That little ba da da da ba da da. It's the same melodic idea and the same rhythmic idea, but he plays it in a different part of the bar. So, when you play the same rhythm, but you start it in a different part of the bar on beat one and then on beat three and then on beat two, for example, that is called rhythmic displacement. Straight, No Chaser does the same thing as well.

[00:05:16]Because the Straight, No Chaser goes So, it does that same idea.

[00:05:26]But, it picks up and ends it in different parts of the bar.

[00:05:30]So, very powerful rhythmic displacement, great bit of blues vocabulary you should be using. Take a short rhythmic idea and then play it in one part of the bar and then repeat it, but start it on a different part of the bar. Okay, so another thing that these bebop heads like Billie's Bounce and Straight, No Chaser can teach us is the power of chromaticism. Billy's Bounce starts with a chromatic neighbor tone, which is a fancy way of saying you start on a chord tone, you go a half step away, and you return to it.

[00:05:59]Like that. It's the fifth of the chord.

[00:06:02]>> [music] >> And it also uses a flat three going to a major third at the end of that melody.

[00:06:10]Like that.

[00:06:12]Straight No Chaser, too, also uses a lot of chromaticism.

[00:06:15]Uh Straight No Chaser You can hear the chromatic from the two up to the four.

[00:06:26]Using chromaticism to add more dissonance and more uh excitement and more melodic interest.

[00:06:33]So, as you're working on your blues, what you can do is you can pick a few target notes and practice incorporating a little bit of dissonance like these bebop heads do. Do a chromatic neighbor tone.

[00:06:44]Or And then if you have a if you have a target note like in Straight No Chaser, you can chromatically dance around and then land on your target note like Straight No Chaser does.

[00:06:58]That kind of idea to introduce some chromaticism into your blues lines. And by the way, if you want to go deeper on tunes like these and really learn how to master a jazz blues, we actually have full studies including PDFs, chord analyses, backing tracks, and in-depth tutorials inside our Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle. So, be sure to check out that in the description below.

[00:07:20]Okay, let's move on to our third type of tune. This is what I call a bird blues.

[00:07:25]Bird, of course, is Charlie Parker's nickname. So, a bird blues is a special type of jazz blues. So, let's look at the chord sheet for a bird blues.

[00:07:34]Let's think of tunes like Blues for Alice and Chi Chi. So, I've got Blues for Alice up here on the screen now. So, this is a completely different type of blues. It's still a blues, it's a 12 bar blues, but as you can see the chord changes are very different. So instead of starting on a one dominant and eventually going to a four dominant with a couple of simple chords in between, a bird blues starts on a one major seven and does these cycling two fives stacked on top of each other to get to the four chord. And then after the four chord, instead of going back to the one chord and the bird blues goes to a four minor and then does a chromatic cycle of descending two fives until lands on the two chord and then it ends kind of like a jazz blues, most of them do, with a two five one in the last four bars. So a bird blues is its own unique animal.

[00:08:26]What can we learn from from bird blues?

[00:08:28]Well, first of all, you can learn bebop vocabulary, like the opening phrase of blues for Alice.

[00:08:36]>> [music] >> Very very very bebop-y vocabulary. So you can take melodic ideas directly from the bebop heads and start playing them in all 12 keys and improvising variations on them to get some bebop vocabulary in there.

[00:08:52]These bird blues also teach us linear melodies. So the melodies are not so much riff based, they often have more long melodic eighth note lines that are what we call linear rather than vertical. So they're kind of snakey and they use more scalar material in addition to chord material, whereas more riff based melodies are often simpler and based just on chord tones.

[00:09:16]Another thing that bird blues teaches us is two five chains. So as I already mentioned, right after the first chord of the tune, it cycles in two fives down to the four chord. So it forces you to address the two five ones that are moving down in whole steps. So I might improvise a melody something like this.

[00:09:34]>> [music] >> And you can really hear the harmony moving as you go two fives down in whole steps.

[00:09:44]>> [music] >> And then after we get to the four chord like I already also mentioned, the next bar turns into a four minor and that becomes a two chord in a series of descending chromatic two five chains.

[00:09:55]And I might play something sequential like this.

[00:10:02]So you can hear again the chromaticism in the harmony as the chords go.

[00:10:07]>> [music] >> So two five chains going down both in whole steps and in half steps are something you learn as you study your Bird Blues. So if you want to get better at playing jazz and really internalize tunes like these, be sure to check out our Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle Membership linked in the description below. And if you like this video, I have another one linked on the screen right now that you're definitely going to want to check out. Also, don't forget to like this video, subscribe to the channel, and I'll see you in the next lesson.