Robben Ford Discussion

[tboulette]

AlChuck: In a jazz (and to a lesser extent blues) context, you can conceptualize any group of chords as implying a particular key, even one that's outside the "home" key. Thus, as jconstant says [EDIT: I guess it's "Jim"], in my example, even though the overall key is G, you can view the movement from G7 to C7 in bars 4 - 5 as being a V - I motion in the key of C.

This sort of thing happens all the time in jazz and is the key to much of jazz's sound, especially in the bebop and post bop era. A classic example is the tune "Solar" popularized by Miles Davis among others. Here are (one version of) the changes:

|| CMaj7 | CMaj7 | Cm7 | Gm7 C7 |

| FMaj7 | FMaj7 | Fm7 | Fm7 Bb7 |

| EbMaj7 | Ebm7 Ab7 | DbMaj7 | Dm7b5 G7:||



The tune is in C major. However, you can find ii-V-I's (a very common chord sequence in jazz) in various keys throughout this piece; e.g., Gm7 - C7 - FMaj7 in F (at the end of line 1 into line 2), Fm7 - Bb7 - EbMaj7 in Eb (at the end of line 2 into line 3), Ebm7 - Ab7 - DbMaj7 in line 3); and you can there's even one minor ii-V at the end in C minor (Dm7b5 - G7) -- which kind of "cheats" by actually resolving back to the I = CMaj7 chord a the beginning. A jazz soloist would play all those V7 chords as if they were altered (and one way of doing that is using the H-W diminished scale built on the root of the V chord in question).

Is that at all helpful, or just more confusing?

[kirk95]

Here's a modal tune I wrote that is 100% in the H/W diminished mode. :-)

Diminished Returns
https://soundcloud.com/davidhenderson/diminished-returns
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[jconstant]

Wow, Dave. Very impressive!
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"Somebody's got to make some music around here." - Robben Ford