Harmonizing Techniques in Jazz Guitar

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is John Armstrong with expertvillage.com. I'm a professional guitar instructor and today we will be discussing intermediate jazz guitar. Okay let's discuss harmonizing this harmonic minor scale. Now that raised 7th note does a few things for you. It doesn't really alter your one chord. Your one chord is still going to be your minor 7. Okay. Your two chord is still going to be a minor 7 flat 5 chord. Your 3 chord, even actually by raising that 7th it would make it an augmented 7th. We still traditionally stick to the major 7 chord as your three chord because it is a relative major to the minor key. So we got a 1 minor 7, a 2 half-diminished or minor 7 flat 5, a 3 major 7. Your 4 chord, it doesn't change the quality or your value of your 4 chord and it is still going to be a minor 7. But by raising that 7th note, you've also raised the 3rd of the 5 chord, so we now have an E7, which gives us much more harmonic pull or tension back to the 1 chord. I shouldn't say much more of a different flavor of harmonic pull. Back to the 1 chord, okay. So 1 minor 7, 2 half diminished, 3 major 7, 4 minor 7, 5, 7, does not change the quality of our 6 chord any. So we are still going to have a major 7 for our 6th chord, so an F major 7. But it does greatly change the quality of our 7th chord—before we had a G 7, but now we are going to have a G sharp diminished 7 as our 7th chord... a fully diminished 7 chord resolving back to 1. So the key of A minor, A minor 7, B minor 7 flat 5, C major 7, D minor 7, E 7, F major 7, G sharp diminished 7, back to 1. "