One of the most important harmonic concepts in jazz is the turnaround.A turnaround is
technically a harmonic sequence that takes us back to an earlier section of the song though the basic concepts can be applied anywhere within a tune.
For example, a song may begin and end on a C ma7 chord. Let's say
the last two bars of the song are Cma7.
In total that would have us playing 3 bars of Cma7 at the end of the song.
Thus we have:
Cma7 | Cma7 || Cma 7 |
The double bar signifies where the tune ended. In practice
it turns out that all these same principles can apply to anywhere in a tune where such a situation occurs.
There is nothing truly wrong with this but the harmony is somewhat stagnant there. However just to make a note
here, different players have different opinions of what is stagnant and what is harmonically too dense. It's a matter of personal taste. Also, some players are more, or less, sophisticated than others.
One way to add some variety here is to insert a turnaround into that last bar.
The simplest turnaround is to put a V7 chord in front of the chord you are going to. In this case we insert a G7 chord. Of course the
ability to use turnarounds effectively will depend on the particular song, what the soloist is playing, etc.
Now our chord progression is :
C maj7 | G7 | Cmaj 7 .
So this is a great chord progression to work on.
You can use a program like band in the box (or just your left hand if you are a keyboard player) and practice improvising over this progression.
Remember that there are many possibilities for approaching this. See
earlier tips for ways to play over dominant seventh chords. You can use notes from the key of C, embellish those with chromatic approach notes and also consider all the various dominant seventh tensions, i.e. 9, b9, #9,
#11, #5, 13.
It is helpful to compose little fragments that fit that progression.
For practicing purposes you can just play the loop of |C maj7 | G7 |repeated over and over again. When you can do this in C,
try Db, then D,.. going up in half steps to B. This is something that any player, no matter how beginning or advanced, can benefit from.
Copyright © 1999 Reed Kotler
