Chords for How to add II-V-I's the the Blues

[A] _ [G] _ _ [Bb] _ _ [C] _ _ _
_ [G] _ [B] _ [F] _ [Bb] _ [Dm] _ _ [G] _
_ [C] _ _ _ [Gm] _ [C] _ _ [Bb] _
_ [G] _ [B] _ [Bb] _ _ [G] _ _ [F] _
_ [D] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ _ [Dm] _ _ [E] _ [D] _
_ [G] _ [B] _ _ _ [E] _ _ [F] _
_ [Gm] _ [G] _ _ _ [Dm] _ _ [Gm] _
[G] _ [C] _ _ [Gm] _ _ [C] _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ _ [F] _ _ _ [C] _
[Dm] _ _ _ _ [Cm] _ [C] _ _ _
_ [G] _ [B] _ [C] _ [A] _ [D] _ _ [G] _
[E] _ _ [Cm] Today we're going to talk about the 2-5-1.
The 2-5-1 is probably the most common chord
progression found in jazz, but today I want to show you how you can add this chord progression
into a 12-bar blues to add some jazz flavor into your blues playing.
So first of all,
what is a 2-5-1?
Well, it all stems from the major scale.
So if we look at a C major scale,
[D] _ [E] _ [F] _ [A] _
[B] _ [Am] _ _ [C] we can build a chord from every note of that scale using just the notes in the scale,
and we get this cycle of chords called the diatonic chords of C major, which is C major 7,
_ [Dm] D minor 7, [Em] _ E minor 7, [F] _ F major [G] 7, G dominant [Am] 7, [Gb] A minor [B] 7, B half diminished, [C] and finally back to
C major 7.
So when we [Gbm] talk about the 2-5-1, we're taking the second chord from that series of chords,
[Dm] D minor, _ the fifth chord, [G] G7, and then back [C] to C major. _
So we can use this chord [Em] progression in
a blues in the key of G to get from the I chord to the IV chord.
If you look at the chart I've
got on the screen, you can see where that fits in in bar 4 of our blues.
We're going from G7 to C7,
and we're putting that D minor 7, G7 in there, and then resolving to C7.
So there's a lot of
things we can play over this progression.
The most obvious thing is to play chord tones,
and we can find all those chord tones by going through our arpeggio shapes.
_ So if we look at a
D minor 7th arpeggio, a G dominant 7th arpeggio, and a C7 arpeggio, we get something like [F] this.
[A] _ [Cm] _ [D] _ [F] _ _ [Dm] _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ [Dm] _ [G] _ _
[Dm] _ [Gm] _ _ _ [C] _ G7.
So [C] _
_ [Gm] now _ [B] we can weave those chord tones together to create lines.
So in this example, I'm just
playing straight out of the arpeggio shapes.
_ [Dm] So _ _
_ [G] _ _ [C] _ _ _ in that example, I went straight up a D minor _ _ [D] _
_ [F] _ _ [Cm] 7th
and flat 7th.
And then from there, I'm looking for [D] the chord tones from G7.
So I'm literally
seeing these chord [G] forms.
[D] And I can see right there [C] from this flat [Am] 7th of D minor, a [B] half step
away I have the third of my G7.
So then I can just come down [G] third, [F] root, flat [D] 7, fifth of G minor,
and then up [E] a whole step to the third of my C7.
_ So another approach we can take is to alter the
G7 chord.
One way I like to do this is to build a diminished arpeggio off the third of the chord.
So in the key of G, that would be [B] from B, the major third of the G7 chord, we can go up a series
of minor thirds, _ [Dm] D, _ [Abm] F, and then A flat.
And we get this [D] diminished arpeggio, _ [B] which if we look at those
notes as they relate to G7, we get the third, [Dm]
fifth, the [Abm] flat 7th, and the flat 9th.
So we're
introducing that flat 9 altered note to our V chord to build a little tension.
Now [N] if we tie
that in with the previous example, we can play up our D minor 7th arpeggio and then switch over to
that what would be like a B diminished arpeggio, and then resolve [G] to [C] G, which is the [Gm] fifth of our
C chord.
So that example sounds [B] like this.
_ [Dm] _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ [C] _ _ _
[Gm] _ Okay, so in this next example we're going to add another
arpeggio, [E] but this time over the D minor 7th chord.
So instead of playing [Gm] a D minor 7th arpeggio,
what we can do is play an arpeggio out of the relative major.
In this case it would be F major
7.
So an easy way to find the relative major or relative minor is to just go up or down three
frets.
So if we go up three frets from [D] D, [Eb] [E] we [F] _
have F, [G] and there's our relative major.
If we go down
three frets from F [E] major, [D]
we [E] have D and there's a relative minor.
So when we play the notes of an
F major 7th arpeggio, we get [F] E, F, A, and [Cm] C.
And that gives us the [D] sound of a D minor 9 chord,
[C] which is a really nice sound for our ii [G] chord, _ [C] G7, _ C7.
So in this example, instead of playing
D minor 7th arpeggio, I'm going to play an F major 7th arpeggio and then tie that into our
diminished line from the previous [B] example. _
_ [Dm] _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ [C] _
_ _ [Gm] _ Okay, so in this last example we're going to further
alter our G7 chord.
So the notes we can use to alter our G7 chord are the flat 5, the sharp 5,
the flat 9, or the sharp 9.
We can add those notes over the root, third, and flat 7th of our
dominant chord to create different altered dominant chords.
All these notes _ combined
together create what's called the altered scale, which in the key of G sounds like this.
[Ab] _ [Bb] _ [Gbm] _ [Eb] _ [D] _ [G] _ _
So there
we have the root, [Fm] the flat 9, [Bb] the sharp 9, [B] the third, [A] the flat [Ebm] 5th, the sharp [G] 5th, the flat 7th,
and then the root again.
So in this next example, I'm going to play our F major 7th arpeggio from
the previous example, and then I'm going to tie that into some notes of the altered scale.
_ [B] _ [Dm] _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ [C] _ _ _ So in
that example, I went up the F major [E] arpeggio, [F] _ [C] and then I just simply went down the [Ab] altered scale,
[Gm] and I played the sharp 9, [Ab] _ flat 9, [G] _ [F] and flat 7th, [E] and then resolved to the [C] third C major chord.
[E] So
there's a few basic examples of some lines you can play over a 2-5-1 and how you can start adding
those into your blues playing to go from the I chord to the IV chord.
At the beginning of the
video, I played a solo using a few of those examples.
I'll have the tab for that solo as well as a few
more 2-5-1 examples available on my Patreon, so if you feel like it, come join me over there
for some more lesson content.
But I really appreciate everybody taking the time to watch
this video, and let me know in the comments if this was helpful,
and I'm looking forward to making more of these.
So thank