5 Levels of Reharmonization in Jazz (feat. Luther Allison)

[00:00:21][music] >> What's up, everybody? My name is Luther Allison here with jazz lesson videos.

[00:00:27]Today we're going to be talking about jazz piano reharmonization. One of my favorite things about jazz is that we're not stuck playing the harmony exactly as it's written. We can take a tune that we already know and find new colors, new movement, and new ways to tell the story. When I first started exploring reharmonization, I was mostly focused on memorizing substitutions. But over time I realized it's really about understanding voice leading, harmonic function, and how the harmony supports the melody. So today I want to share five reharmonization concepts that have had a huge impact on the way that I play, arrange, and hear harmony. All of the examples that you'll hear come directly from my course, 30-Day Jazz Reharm Chops. Inside the course, we cover everything from foundational voice leading concepts to dominant substitutions, diminished harmony, modal interchange, chromatic reharmonization, and complete tune reharmonizations. If you'd like to explore these ideas in much greater depth, you can download the course using the link in the description below. Don't forget to use code Luther 25 for $25 off.

[00:01:31]Today we're going to dig into some of those 2-5-1 concepts that we talked about in lesson three in the context of a tune. So in the last lesson, we spoke about 2-5-1 chord progressions. We're going to use some of these same voicings and some of these same movements over Autumn Leaves.

[00:01:48]Now we're in the key of G minor.

[00:02:04]>> Now, the interesting thing about this song is it's filled with 2 5 1s.

[00:02:15]>> [music] [music] [music] >> With this song, since we're sitting on our top note, every time we kind of reach a climax in the melody, this melody is very much so like a mountain range. And I kind of see whenever you reach the apex, it's kind of like anybody. I mean, the journey to the top of the mountain always takes a while.

[00:02:49]But you think about when you reach that apex and you sit there and you look out and you take everything in. And I feel like we can kind of represent this harmonically by having a little bit more color. Like I think of being at the climax of this mountain and you can see so much from a this beautiful vantage point. And so we're kind of going to mimic this harmonically by saying we're going to do a a 2 5, a half step up, and then come back down a half step.

[00:03:17]We're seeing all the color with this one melody note right at this at this apex.

[00:03:32]>> [music] [music] [music] >> That's just over the A section. So, to go back through it a little slower, since we're sitting on this E flat, the top of the melody, the first the first phrase, that works over a C sharp minor [music] 7. That's just my 9, right?

[00:04:10]It becomes a 13 of my [music] F sharp 7.

[00:04:12]And as you can see, I can even add that [music] flat 9 in there.

[00:04:23]And basically what it ends up be becoming are descending 2 5 1s chromatically.

[00:04:33]Now, our next progression [music] will be a 2 5 1 to B flat major, but we're going to go up a half step, right?

[00:04:43]Or actually better yet, it's not even a 2 5 1 to B flat major because the first melody is a 2 5 1 to B flat major.

[00:04:50]Afterwards, instead of doing B flat major to E flat 7, E flat major 7, >> [music] >> we're going to do B E B flat E flat.

[00:05:01]>> [music] >> Same thing, instead of 2 5 to G minor, we're going to go up a half step [music] first.

[00:05:10]B flat minor 9, E flat [music] 7, I threw the flat 9 in there.

[00:05:20]>> [music] >> And a little motion in the middle of the chords here.

[00:05:28]5 sharp [music] 5 6 back down to the flat 6.

[00:05:39]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Now let's get into the second topic, tritone substitutions, which is in the second portion of my course.

[00:06:06]In this lesson, we're going to talk specifically about tritone substitutions.

[00:06:09]This is something that we discussed a little bit in the previous lesson, and now we're just going to kind of focus on this. So, as you can see, there are a couple of points where I mentioned some side slips. Like if I was starting on F7, and then we do an F altered into our Bb7 chord, which is giving a 5 to 1 relationship.

[00:06:29]Right?

[00:06:31]Now, I can just use that same voicing.

[00:06:34]>> [music] >> And if I have a B in the bottom, which is a tritone away from F, that's still going to lead me perfectly into Bb. Why does this work? This works because your guide tones are actually the exact [music] same from an F7 chord and a B7 chord. Only if we're just doing the dominant seven. If you do a F-7, that's completely different from a B-7. Getting later into it, you can do other sorts of tritone away, and I'm going to alter this in some certain type of way. But if we're just talking about typical tritone substitutions off of dominant seventh chords, your guide tones are going to be the same in both of those chords. So, you have >> [music] >> instead of it being A as the third, Eb as the seventh, now A is our seventh and Eb is our third [music] for a B7 chord.

[00:07:20]We'd probably call it D# instead of Eb.

[00:07:23]That goes down a [music] half step to our Bb7 chord. Now, we can do the same thing. If I want to add in a tritone sub going to F7, it would be 5 to 1, which is C to F7. But instead of C a tritone away, [music] which is go up a fifth, down a half step. It's always a tritone away.

[00:07:40]Or if you go down [music] down a fourth and then down another half step, it's going to be my tritone.

[00:07:47]Same notes [music] work, right?

[00:07:52]>> [music] >> I'll do that one more time. F7 tritone sub [music] B flat.

[00:07:59]Tritone sub into F7, right? This is something that you can spam over the blues if you like to. So, you can just use a lot of these tritone subs to get in to almost any chord.

[00:08:12]>> [music] [music] >> All I'm doing is just adding an G flat 7.

[00:08:26]I can alter it however I want to.

[00:08:29]There's certain ways I kind of tend to alter it.

[00:08:32]I might [music] not do too many sharp five sharp nines cuz I feel like it takes me a little further outside of the tonality of F7. So, to kind of keep it close to it, I like to keep a lot of tones [music] that are still within the sound of the F blues. So, kind of that F major >> [music] >> I like to keep I played a lot of extra stuff there, but I like to keep a lot of stuff within >> [music] >> within that mixolydian sound or even within the F blues sort of sound as well. So, this [music] works a lot. It It works very well because I have my C, I have my B flat, I have my A flat, >> [music] >> which can lead me easily to my F7, right?

[00:09:21]That >> [music] >> B7, I'm playing the B13 now. I can add my sharp 11 in there, which I did here as well.

[00:09:30]As you can see for me personally, that is kind of a tendency that I I tend to lean on with tritone substitutions. If I want to build out the sound, you don't always have to have extensions in it. It could just be a very simple which sounds fancy. Sometimes it fits way better than doing any other extension [music] to the chord as well, right?

[00:10:01]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Right there before the C7, I added in a quick D flat to my C, which just gives you a brief points of a different a different timbre, a different sound, a different taste, different flavor to the music, right? So, that's something that you can practice doing before each of the chords. You can anticipate it with the tritone substitution, right? You can practice just comping this. That's how I would actually recommend starting to practice this material. It's just comping through it. And then eventually you can start to practice playing some lines over it. Now, another thing that you can do is you can add the two before the tritone sub. I played that briefly in the previous lesson. So, if I want to do that before every chord, maybe I'm on F7 for four bars.

[00:11:14]I did it rootless that time.

[00:11:19]F#m7 [music] B7 Bb7 Same thing going to F.

[00:11:27]>> [music] >> Sounds really natural.

[00:11:31]>> [music] >> All right. Now, let's get into concept number three in the course and that's diminished passing harmony, which is in section three of the course.

[00:11:44]So, one of the first things I think of is something I played briefly earlier and that was the beginning of Misty.

[00:11:50]And how at the beginning of Misty >> [music] >> we go to a D where the melody note is and then the chord is E flat.

[00:12:02]Which would be >> [music] >> perfect opportunity for an E flat major seven.

[00:12:07]Another thing that you could do here [music] is play an altered diminished chord or a diminished chord with some extensions on it. So, here I have my diminished [music] with my major seven, which is the melody.

[00:12:22]And then I have my nine my flat five and my seven again. I have a little bit of doubling at the top.

[00:12:33]>> [music] >> I want to be even fancier, I can I can add my flat 13 >> [music] >> along with my flat five.

[00:12:43]But, the main thing to remember is melody is always king. So, you want to make sure that whenever you're adding these chords in that it's aligning with the melody. So, if my melody is We'll [music] meet again.

[00:13:00]>> [singing] >> Sunday, [music] maybe I would stay there and make it a major seven.

[00:13:06]Sunday, video. [music] Or I could say Sunday, >> [singing] >> video.

[00:13:20]I'm using the diminished as a reharmonization.

[00:13:24]And the really [music] pretty thing about this diminished reharm if I want to split it up a little bit more evenly so there's not as much doubling, I might do one [music] flat five major seven flat three flat 13 major seven.

[00:13:38]This is on a G major seven voicing, right? If I were to just typically voice it maybe like maybe like this.

[00:13:47]Or if I wanted to >> [music] >> do this.

[00:13:52]A really nice trick is if you have a G major seven and your melody is on the nine, I really love doing it there.

[00:13:59]>> [music] >> There's something about a diminished chord that lands on your one, but it should be a typically going to be a major seven or major nine.

[00:14:09]And the diminished has a little twinkle to it. And it can also resolve pretty well to your one chord or one major seven.

[00:14:18]>> [music] >> Now that was a very interesting voicing that uh I also [music] learned from one of my teachers, Donald Brown. Uh and I would kind of start to experiment with this shape. Often times I would see him use these mirrored chords. You kind of see this with Chick Corea as well, where he might have one sound and it's mirrored in the other hand. So by that I might mean you'll have a minor major seven and then you'll have kind of the opposite [music] voicing of that up here.

[00:14:51]So I have [music] I have this D octave and I have this augmented chord within this within the whole chord.

[00:15:01]>> [music] >> But then I have this minor third on the outside, >> [music] >> right?

[00:15:08]Now I might do the same thing and I might say whoa for this diminished voicing.

[00:15:17]>> [music] >> So you see how I have minor third, perfect fourth, minor third.

[00:15:22]Mirrored minor third, perfect fourth, minor third.

[00:15:29]>> [music] >> All right, now let's dive into concept number four, which is going to tackle modal interchange. This is in section four of the course.

[00:15:47]Today we're going to talk about some superimposition, which is kind of another form of reharmonization. This is one thing that works really well over a one chord vamp, or typically a tune that doesn't have many chords. Maybe it only has a couple of chords, like maybe you're dealing with a minor blues, and you're sitting on each chord for a little while.

[00:16:19]>> [music] [music] [music] >> So, that was just a little bit of a C minor blues. There's times where you can imply other tonalities on top of each of these chord progressions. So, maybe over the C minor, sometimes I might do a thing where I'll take the sound [music] and I'll move it through the diminished bracket. So, maybe you can take what we refer to as the so [music] what voicings, which is primarily built out of fourths, and then you have this third on the top.

[00:17:05]And one thing I like to do is I'll move this up the diminished bracket.

[00:17:12]>> [music] >> That moved me down to my, you know, when I when I got to my final chord so C >> [music] >> E flat G flat A >> [music] >> and then when I get to C C 7 going to my [music] F minor. So, one more time.

[00:17:50]>> [music] >> So, rhythm can be used to your advantage when playing with some of these superimpositions using something called a hemiola, which is kind of implying another rhythm consistently to the point where it sounds like you're implying another meter over whatever the existing meter is. So, if we're here in 4/4 you can pat both of them.

[00:18:24]Getting used to both of those rhythms operating simultaneously and being able to do it smoothly to the point where you don't really have to think too much about it, but you can feel it is going to be something that you can use to your advantage. That and that's when you know you've really internalized that rhythm.

[00:18:39]So, I start maybe with an open fifth in the left hand then I'll play through this sequence.

[00:18:49]>> [music] [music] [music] >> All right, y'all. Now, let's dive into concept number five, which is modal reharmonization concepts, which is in section five of the course.

[00:19:12]Here we're going to talk about upper structure triads. This is something that can be useful This is actually useful with basically any chord structure.

[00:19:20]Often times you see this with dominant chords. So if we take a C7 If I use a D major triad in the right hand on top of this >> [music] >> That's a quick way to get me a C7 with a sharp 11 with the nine and the 13 in there as well.

[00:19:44]Now if I were to do an A flat major triad, so basically the first chord was our C7 C13 sharp 11 by using a triad a whole step above the root. The next time we're using a triad built off of the flat six, A flat.

[00:20:00]This is giving us a sharp nine sharp five sound. [music] Now you can do the same thing off of a triad built on the flat five.

[00:20:15]This gives us a flat five flat nine sound.

[00:20:21]>> [music] >> Right? Now you can do the same thing over a minor seven chord. Maybe if I have a C minor seven but I play a B flat major triad.

[00:20:37]And as you can see even in this setting I'm I'm I'm using this little pattern which gives you [music] a lot of beautiful colors of that triad over the set minor seven chord.

[00:20:47]Which gives me a a C minor 11 sound.

[00:20:49][music] I'm just playing the C minor seven here but I add that B flat major triad. Now I have my nine and my 11.

[00:20:56]>> [music] [music] >> I could do the same over a half diminished chord. If I do an F major triad on top of a G half diminished, that's going to give me the seven, the nine, and the 11.

[00:21:20]Now, that time I I did two together.

[00:21:27]>> [music] >> I did the F major triad over the G half.

[00:21:32]And I did both the A flat and the G flat triads over the C.

[00:21:43]Now, D, I played a A flat triad, triad based [music] off of my flat six or my flat five, rather, which gives me the flat five flat nine sound.

[00:21:55]It's even a nice sound to just play when you're accompanying somebody. Maybe if the note is held on a C on that D7 chord, Lucky to be me.

[00:22:18]So, at the beginning of Lucky to be me, >> [music] >> Sweeter >> [singing] >> than all Imposing [music] that triad on top of that is giving us so many colors within that sound.

[00:22:39]>> [snorts] >> the moon >> [music] >> Here goes the D major triad over my E half diminished.

[00:22:45]>> [music] >> E flat triad over my A7.

[00:22:50]>> [music] >> So much of what we're playing, especially as pianists in the right hand, are upper structure triads in the voicing. So, these are things I would definitely recommend as you're getting more comfortable playing through voicings, you're getting away from some of those 2-5-1 progressions that we were talking about, or you feel more comfortable with those 2-5-1 progressions we discussed early on, you can start moving to some of these voicings to start to widen your harmonic palette in comping. All right, everybody, that wraps up today's video.

[00:23:23]The big takeaway is that reharmonization is not about memorizing hundreds of substitutions, but rather about understanding how harmony moves, how chords connect, and how to create colors that support the melody. Today, we explored voice leading, tritone substitutions, diminished harmony, modal interchange, and modern reharmonization concepts. All ideas that can completely transform the way that you approach playing standards. If you'd like to go much deeper into these concepts, you can find the link to jazz piano reharmonization techniques in the description below. Don't forget to use the code Luther 25 for $25 off. Thank you so much for watching, and if you enjoyed the video, please like and subscribe for more lessons and breakdowns. Happy practicing.