Archive for the ‘Jazz Music Theory’ Category
Here’s a beautiful audio/video demonstration of a simple acoustic principle which relates the perfect fifth harmonic interval to a 3:2 polyrhythm. [read more]
We all know how a standard ii-V-I progression works: a Dm7 chord followed by a G7 chord resolves to the key of C. We also hear a lot about the Tritone Substitution ii-V, in which the Dm7 and G7 resolve, instead, to the key of F#. Well, there is another very common resolution of the ii-V progression… much more common among standards than the tritone sub version… which gets surprisingly little discussion relative to the others. [read more]
I was humming Hendrix’s Hey Joe not too long ago and it occurred to me: the harmony song’s chords are a cycle of major chords moving downward in fourths. The world is filled with songs whose chords move around the cycle in the standard direction… down fifths… but I had never noticed one that moved backwards, like Hey Joe. I wondered: are there others there? … [read more]