I IV V Blues

The I IV V blues chords should be familiar to those that have played traditional electric blues before
because this sequence forms the back bone of countless blues tunes such as ‘Sweet Home Chicago’,
‘Dust My Broom’, ‘Woke Up This Morning’ and countless other blues tunes from the repertoire.

As the title suggests there are only 3 chords in this progression, the I, IV, and V. Believe it or not this
progression would have actually been considered harmonically advanced in the 1920’s. Blues
musicians such as Charlie Patton often recorded blues tunes with only one or two chords!

The I IV V blues progression is sometimes used by jazz musicians such as Grant Green on slow blues
tunes, but hardly ever on medium – fast tunes. But is it still important to be aware of the movement
and aesthetic quality of this progression before looking at the more harmonically advanced jazz blues
chord substitutions.

Jazz Blues

Now that we have an understanding of the classic I IV V blues, let’s check out the commonly accepted
jazz blues form which uses some jazz blues chord substitutions. If you go to a jam session and call a
blues head, this is the chord sequence that the other musicians will most likely be using, or at least it
won’t be too far from this.

If you’re a blues player who is just getting into jazz this progression make seem a little daunting at
first. Diminished chords, ii-V-I’s, what happened to that nice simple 3 chord thing?
Don’t worry most of these other chords are just there to create harmonic interest and root movement
and I’ll be going through each of the changes so you don’t get lost.

There is now a ‘quick change’ in bar 2 which just means that the progression briefly visits the IV chord,
Eb7, for a bar to create more movement. Plenty of traditional blues players use this movement,
especially on slow blues tunes.

In bar 4 there is now a ii-V-I progression into Eb7 to add more harmonic and bass note movement. F-7
can also be seen as a Bb7sus chord, so the Bb7 tonality isn’t really changing which much which means
you can still use bluesy ideas or imply a V-I cadence into the Eb7 if you want to.

A diminished 7 chord has been added in bar 5, but don’t worry, you don’t have to start worrying about
using a bunch of diminished scales. It’s common jazz practice to add #I diminished chord in
progressions. Check out my article on I VI II V’s substitutions to learn more about this technique.

You can think of the Eo7 as also been an Eb7b9 which makes it very similar to an Eb7 arpeggio.

Notice that a minor ii-V-I has been added in bar 8. This article I published explains a few different
techniques on playing over minor ii-V’s, but again these two chords are really just hear to create
harmonic movement.

Aside from the B natural, the minor ii-V scales contain many of the same notes as the Bb Mixolydian
scale, so again not too much has changed.

What was the F7 in bar 9 has now been changed to a C-7 so that have a more conventional ii-V-I in
the key of Bb7. In the two bars, a full i-VI-II-V has been added. Jazz musicians don’t always outline this
harmony in their improvisation but, it’s a good idea to practice outling these changes in at least 1 or 2
choruses of your solo.
Check out my rhythm changes soloing guide for more info about soloing over I-VI-II-V progressions.

As mentioned earlier, most of the harmony in the jazz blues is added for movement and never strays
too far away from the original tonalities, so we essentially have the same blues progression as what we
started with. The advantage of been able to look at the blues progression with jazz blues chord
substitutions is that it gives us more harmonic potential if we want it.

Jazz Blues Chord Substitutions Using Trione Subs

Now that we have the standard jazz blues under our fingers, we can start to look at applying some jazz
substitutions and superimpositions. Jazz musicians frequently use substitutions to add more harmonic
content and colour to a progression and this next example uses tritone substitution.

Over the first four bars of the progression I have applied a great jazz blues chord substitutions called
tritone or b5 substitution in beat 4 of bar 1 and beat 3 of bar 4. I added a ii chord in bar 4 to fill out
the space, but decided to only use the dominant chord in bar 1 because it only lasts one measure.

Tritone substitution is applied again at the beginning of bar 8. The chord here was D-7b5 which has
now been replaced with Ab7. I also added an A7 in the beat before so that we have chromatically
descending dominant 7th chords.

There’s a bit of a tritone feast in the last couple of bars starting with the B7 in bar 9. In the last two
bars of the progression the last 3 chords have all been tritone substituted too.
 Using Chord III in a Jazz Blues

A common substitute in jazz is replacing the I chord (Bb in this case) with it’s iii (D-7). This is particular
effective in a blues situation. A great part of the blues progression to apply this technique to is bar 7.

Besides acting as a substitution for the I chord, the iii chord also belongs to a ii-V. In the below
example I have added the V chord which belongs to the iii chord to create cyclic movement.

To extend this harmony further I have added a ii-V a semi-tone below in bar 8 to create further cyclic
and chromatic crunch which resolves well to C-7 in bar 9.

Another place that the iii chord can be used in place of the I chord is in the last 2 bars of the
progression which provides us with a iii-VI-II-V substitution, a common i-VI-II-V substitution. I have
extended this further in the example by using tritone substitution before the iii-VI-II-V to again create
cyclic movement and greater harmonic potential.
 The Bebop Cycle

Bebop jazz guitarists love to create as much cyclic movement and ii-V’s as possible and this last
example shows the most harmonically adventerous version of how to apply jazz blues chord
substitutions in this lesson. Although it’s highly unlikely that jazz musicians will be using these chords
on the battlefield, they are fine to use in your single line improvisation because your lines will have
strong internal logic and a sense of tension and resolution.

Bebop is typically played at fast tempos too, and these changes will certainly sound more effective at
faster tempos than slower ones.

Standard bebop progressions such as the rhythm changes are based of such techniques which can
also be applied to the blues. The next example uses everything discussed so far in full form so it’s
important that you understand the techniques discussed before moving on.

In bars 5-8 of the jazz blues progression, the #1 diminished chord can be replaced with ii-V’s as shown
in the example below. To extend this I have added a ii chord (Bb-7) to the Eb7 in bar 5 so that we have
a prolonged turnaround.

In the first four bars of the progression I have added ii-V’s that desend in tones that eventually resolve
in bar 5. This type of chord movement can be heard in Charlie Parker’s famouns bebop blues
progression ‘Blues for Alice’. I have kept the Bb7 in bar the same so that for a very short time you feel
like you’re playing a usual jazz blues.
I hope this guide to jazz blues chord substitutions has been useful. These sequences should really be
practiced in a few different keys so that you can apply them to some of the different blues tunes that
you are working on. What are your favorite jazz blues substitutions? Share your thoughts in the
comment section below.