Chops: Intermediate

Theory: Intermediate

Lesson Overview:

• Learn how to tweak vanilla turnaround progressions to make them more intriguing.

• Create logical lines that weave through the harmony.

• Develop a chord tone-based approach to soloing. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation.

In past lessons we’ve spent a lot of time experimenting with the basic I-IV-V chord progression to see how we could expand on it and make things a little more jazz-inspired. As part of that process, we’ve explored quick changes, altered chords, 7#11 sounds, IIm-V cadences, and more. So now it makes sense that we put some time into the final part of the progression—the turnaround.

As its name suggests, a turnaround is designed to complete a progression and send it back to the start of the form. For example, in a standard 12-bar blues in the key of E, the turnaround often appears as B7 (the V) in measure 12. This creates a nice V-I movement when the progression starts again on E7 (I). And it works fine, but when you’re playing from a more jazz-oriented perspective, it’s nice to have more chords in the turnaround—an expanded harmonic bed to weave melodies over.

The starting point for our examples in this lesson will be a I-VI-II-V progression in the key of Bb. This translates to Bb-G-C-F. If we include diatonic extensions (other notes that fit in the key of Bb), we get Bb6-Gm7-Cm7-F7. Ex. 1 shows an easy Freddie Green-inspired way of approaching these chord changes.

You could experiment with that all day long and go further with diatonic extensions, maybe Bb6-Gm9-Cm11-F7sus, for example. That said, this progression sounds very vanilla—there’s nothing bluesy about it. But this is Beyond Blues, so we can’t just settle for bland! That’s why I borrowed a few chords from other keys to make Ex. 2 more interesting.

The two main differences happen in the first measure. I changed the Bb6 to Bb7, which is nice and bluesy, and swapped out the Gm7 for a G7. This creates a greater sense of resolution as we move towards Cm7. Try alternating between the two and describing the difference. It’s subtle, but important enough to be significant.

For our final progression (Ex. 3), we’ve gone all the way and made all four chords dominant. Again, this has a slightly different feel to it, with a constant sense of forward motion. G7 resolves to C, C resolves to F and then F brings us back to Bb. You may remember looking at ideas like this in our cycle of fourths lesson many moons ago [“12 Keys, Five Shapes, and the Blues”]. (LINK: http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/Beyond_Blues_12_Keys_Five_Shapes_and_the_Blues)

It’s important to revisit our arpeggio patterns while we prepare to solo over these progressions. For Ex. 4 I wrote out a quick fingering for each chord. With two chords per measure, you don’t have much time to reflect on the chord before the next one comes around. There really isn’t time to be thinking in terms of scales—we need to quickly boil things down to notes that sound like the chord. It doesn’t get better than arpeggios for that.

I’ve opted to use the Bb7-G7-Cm7-F7 variation here because there’s a better resolution leading into Cm7. It’s worth practicing with a C7 too. Once you go up and down each one a few times, try changing chords at the top and bottom of each fingering. Practice changing after eight, four, or even two notes. The more you do this, the faster you’ll be able to make music.

As a starting point, you may want to take notice of just how many of the notes are chord tones. There are a few other notes, but we can look at these in a lot more detail when we start to incorporate altered chords and substitutions into the turnaround.

Ex. 5 opens by approaching the 3 of Bb from a step below and moving down a Bb triad before shifting up to a G7 arpeggio. To cover the Cm7 to F7 section, I played a cliché IIm-V phrase that relies heavily on chord tones.