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Exercise
— switch — The Cycle Shells with Color Rootless Voicings Bud Powell Left Hand The Turnaround Tritone Substitution Reharm the V Diatonic Sevenths Secondary Turnaround Minor ii–V–i Minor ii-V-i with ♭9 Minor Turnaround Diatonic 7ths in Minor Backdoor Progression Twelve-Bar Blues Minor Blues Bird Blues Blues Stride LH Blues Walking Bass Rhythm Changes Boogie Blues Shuffle Rhythm Changes Bridge Blues Rootless (Evans) Coltrane Changes Blues Pedal Point Standard Intro Blues Block Chords Two-Handed Comping Blues Freddie Green Charleston Comping Bebop Blues Comp Freddie Green Comping Blues Guide Tones Walking Bass Charleston Blues Tritone-Sub Walking Bass Bud Powell Blues Drop Two Two-Handed Modern Blues Stride Bass Stride with Melody Quartal Voicings Upper Structure Triads Hybrid Voicings Kenny Barron Voicing Sus Chord Vamp The Mu Chord Maiden Voyage Chord 4-Way Close Pedal Point Lydian Vamp Phrygian Vamp Bossa Nova Guide Tones Bebop Scale Dominant Bebop Dorian Bebop Bebop Minor The Enclosure ii-V-I Lick Pentatonic Patterns Plain Locrian Melodic Minor Dorian ♭2 Lydian Augmented Lydian Dominant Mixolydian ♭6 Locrian ♮2 Altered Scale Harmonic Minor Phrygian Dominant Half-Whole Diminished Whole-Tone Scale Minor Blues Major Blues Aeolian (Natural Minor) Dorian Mode Ionian (Major) Lydian Mode Minor Pentatonic Mixolydian Mode Phrygian Mode Whole-Half Diminished
(MED. SWING ♩=80 )
16
Jazz Piano · The Minor 12-Bar Form
Minor Blues
im7 – ivm7 – ♭VI7 – V7 over twelve bars, all twelve keys
Play exercise
Three quality classes (im7, ivm7, V7) plus one tritone-sub
twist (♭VI7 instead of major blues' IV7 in bar 9): im7 – im7
– im7 – im7 – ivm7 – ivm7 – im7 – im7 – ♭VI7 – V7 – im7 – V7 .
The ♭VI7 → V7 motion is the form's defining sound — both voices
of the shell drop by half step from one to the other (in Cm: A♭7's
C and G♭ resolve down to G7's B and F), a tritone-substitution
voice-leading that doesn't appear in the major blues.
Unlike the major blues, the i and iv chords stay minor
(m7, not 7), which removes the "every chord is a dominant"
ambiguity of the major form. The V7 keeps its dom7 quality so
the half-step leading-tone resolution to the minor tonic still
works — that's the same dominant function the major key uses,
just resolving to a minor i instead of major I.
Form im im im im | ivm ivm im im | ♭VI7 V7 im V7
Key move ♭VI7 → V7 is a half-step tritone-sub resolution.
Jump to
Cm Fm B♭m E♭m A♭m D♭m F♯m Bm Em Am Dm Gm
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The Daily Drill
The dark twin
5 min Play the form slowly in one key with whole-note shells. Speak the changes out loud: "one minor — one minor — one minor — one minor — four minor — four minor — one minor — one minor — flat-six seven — five seven — one minor — five seven." 10 min Cycle three keys at a time. The ♭VI⁷ → V⁷ move at bars 9–10 is the form's signature gesture — make sure both shell voices drop a half step at that change. If they don't, the voicing is in the wrong inversion. 4 min Play Equinox or Footprints with these voicings. Equinox is C♯ minor blues (so cycle to key 7 area); Footprints is C minor (key 1) in 6/4. The form is identical; only the rhythm changes. 3 min Drop bar 12's V⁷ for a stay on im⁷ (no turnaround). That's the closing form, used in the last chorus of Mr. P.C. and other Coltrane minor blueses. Why ♭VI⁷, not IV7? In the major blues, bar 9 is V⁷ resolving to bar 11's I⁷ via bar 10's IV⁷ — a standard cadential motion. In the minor form, the analogous slot can be filled either by ii⁰7 (the diatonic choice — iiø₇ in Em blues = F♯m7♭5 ) or by ♭VI⁷ (the tritone-sub of the ii degree's secondary dominant, or equivalently a tritone-sub of V's V). ♭VI⁷ is the more common modern choice because it produces the dramatic half-step descent into V⁷ — both the 3 and ♭7 of ♭VI⁷ resolve down by half step to the 3 and ♭7 of V⁷ (in Cm: A♭7's C and G♭ → G7's B and F). That voice-leading move is the form's harmonic signature and the reason it sounds so much more cinematic than the diatonic ii⁰7 choice. Equinox , Footprints , and Mr. P.C. all use ♭VI⁷.
Twelve bars. Four chord qualities. The same form as the major blues — but darker, more cadential, and the half-step ♭VI → V is the entire point.