Sven's Guitar Site
Turnarounds
Turnarounds
If you are not familiar to jazz comping, here is a simple recipe to achive a swing feeling...
Most jazz tunes are written in a 4/4 beat, like...
one - two - three – four - one - two - three – four
To swing means just to emphazise every 2nd note. That isn`t the "one" and the "tree" like in classic music, but the "two" and the "four", just like this.
one - TWO - three - FOUR - one - TWO - three - FOUR - ...
Best is not to play the chords with a pick, but with the thumb or finger picking style...
First we should try out the most common jazz figure, the II-7/V7 or the II-7/V7/Imaj7 respectively. This is called a "turnaround"
Q: What the heck means II or V?A: These roman numbers mean how the chords are related to the key you are in. E.g. you take the C major scale as a basic:
C - D - E-F - G - A - B-C - D - E-F - G - A - B-C.
The 'Imaj7' means the Cmaj7 chord, 'II-7' means D-7 (D minor 7) and so on
BTW: You can create chords on every step of a scale (that works with most scales!) and will get a certain sequence of chords that (kinda) belong together like a family of chords.
Notes |
Chords found in the C major scale |
In general |
C - E - G – B |
= Cmaj7 |
Imaj7 |
D - F - A – C |
= D-7 |
II-7 |
E - G - B – D |
= E-7 |
III-7 |
F - A - C – E |
= Fmaj7 |
IVmaj7 |
G - B - D – F |
= G7 |
V7 |
A - C - E - G |
= A-7 |
VI-7 |
B - D - F – A |
= B-7/b5 |
VII-7/b5 |
Note: you can use the notes of the Cmajor scale for improvising over all of these chords.
You can create such a table for nearly every scale (like the harmonic minor scale) that cannot be derived from the major scale and figure out, what kind of chords the particular scale is good for – that means what chords you can use the scale to improvise on.Well, let's play a C-major II-7/V7/Imaj7...
(expressed in 'propper' chords: D-7/G7/Cmaj7)
|: D-7 | G7 | Cmaj7 | Cmaj7:|
Chord chart:
D-7
X-|---|---|---|---|---|--
--|---|---|---|-4-|---|--
--|---|---|-3-|---|---|--
--|-1-|---|---|---|---|--
--|---|---|-2-|---|---|--
X-|---|---|---|---|---|--
____________^--5th fret |
G7
X-|---|---|---|---|---|--
--|---|-3-|---|---|---|--
--|---|---|-4-|---|---|--
--|---|-2-|---|---|---|--
X-|---|---|---|---|---|--
--|---|-1-|---|---|---|--
________^--3rd fret |
Cmaj7
X-|---|---|---|---|---|--
--|---|---|---|-4-|---|--
--|---|---|-2-|---|---|--
--|---|---|---|-3-|---|--
--|---|-1-|---|---|---|--
X-|---|---|---|---|---|--
________^--3rd fret |