Turnarounds

This is a preview of the educational program A Jazz Improvisation Almanac which is under development for the Outside Shore Music Online School. Feel free to browse this preview and learn what you can from it. For a more completed product, though, check out the original freely browsable jazz textbook, A Jazz Improvisation Primer.

The techniques used in the previous section are often combined and extended to provide harmonic momentum from the end of one chorus to the beginning of the next. Consider the following chord progression:

[EXAMPLE]

Typical of many chord progressions, it begins and ends on a I chord. One simple way to enance this would be to replace the second half of the duration of the final I chord with a V chord, to lead back to the I chord at the beginning of the next chorus:

[EXAMPLE]

A more interesting variation would be to use the substitutions discussed in the previous section, adding a vi chord between the iii and ii chords to keep the resolutions moving upward by fourth:

[EXAMPLE]

This device is called a turnaround, because it finishes one chorus and turns it around to lead to the next. This turnaround is illustrated at top (do not be concerned with the durations of the notes shown). When you see a major seventh I chord ending a phrase, as in the first measure at top, and the same chord beginning the next phrase, you can replace the first chord with a iii-vi-ii-V progression, as in the second measure at top.

Further variations are possible by replacing any of the minor seventh chords with dominant seventh chords:

[EXAMPLE]

Any of the substitutions discussed in the next few sections can be used to further enrich the turnaround.

Copyright 2000 Outside Shore Music
Authored by Marc Sabatella

Turnarounds