How to use this course

The Big Course of Jazz Chords and Harmony for Accordion Preliminary Ideas How to use this course

Use as a method book and a reference book

Use this course as you would a method book for jazz chords on the accordion. The course moves linearly from prerequisites, to basic to intermediate to advanced information. And the information in a section relies on and references information from previous sections. I am including tons of information so that you can see forward to many cool things, and also backward for those situations when you realize you need to do some work on easier exercises before you can start work on the approach you want.

Use this course as a reference book when you have new chordal and harmonic problems to solve. For example: “I came across this song that has this Em7(b5) chord. That’s a new one for me, I wonder what it is and how I should play it.” It is my intention that you’ll be able to consult this course for explanation and understanding along your process of jazz chords.

And there are many other places on this website and internet where I give help and information on jazz repertoire and aspects to playing jazz: melodies, ornamentation, accompaniment, improvisation, rhythm, ear training, etc.

Pedagogy

Also check out the ‘How to learn jazz’ lesson for a practical primer on

I feel very confidently that I can help you get a method and approach for understanding and doing jazz chords. And I also feel that what you’ll learn from this approach to jazz, will affect the rest of your musical life – and the way you approach all music will change radically as a result of these exercises for jazz.

To use learning a language as an example: I want to have you practice and understand how to conjugate verbs for different tenses, then I want you to practice speaking some phrases with those verbs – to work on your style and your memory recall, and then I want you to practice being creative by saying new phrases made from a mixture of what you have already learned and the new thing you’re learning.

The skill that will hold all of your jazz chords together, and change the way you approach music, is to get you to approach harmony as roman numerals and not as chord names.

For example:
- Instead of thinking of the chord changes to “Take the A Train” as | C | C | D7 | D7 | Dm7 | G7 | C Am7 | Dm7 G7|
- You think (and hear) it as | I | I | V/V | V/V | ii | V | I vi | ii V |

This course will work on the micro (individual chords, and tiny chord progressions) and it will put those together into the macro (8 measure sections of songs, and entire songs and song forms.)

Chord Shapes
Chord Progressions
Sections of Songs
Entire Songs

Post questions and comments, community, and live classes

Questions and Comments: You can and should, post questions and comments below to any and all of the course materials here. Please ask questions when you don’t understand or want clarification – I will monitor the site for comments and do my best to answer them as soon as I can.

Community: I have a small but cool community on this website where you can post and share cool things you find related to jazz and jazz accordion. That’s a great way to get some energy and inspiration from others, share cool things you find, and also ask and answer questions.

Share your playing with us: Post recordings of yourself doing the exercises, playing jazz tunes, whatever. You’ll get a ton out of the process of ‘showing your work’, the other people in the course will get inspiration (no matter how much better you think you can be), and I’ll get clarity and inspiration for how my materials are working.

Live classes with me: This course is an excellent compliment for one on one accordion lessons with me, where I can answer, coach and help you with your unique experience and interests.

I also run online group classes on different subjects throughout the year. This jazz chords course is one of my flagship courses and I expect to run a group class using parts of this course at least once per year. Keep checking the website for dates and sign up.

Use the getting started and practice path guides

I have created guides to suggest where you should start with this material and how you should expect to work and grow.

Pedagogic and Organizing Concepts

Also check out the ‘How to learn jazz’ lesson for a practical primer on

The skill that will hold all of your jazz chords together, and change the way you approach music, is to get you to approach harmony as roman numerals and not as chord names.

For example:
- Instead of thinking of the chord changes to “Take the A Train” as | C | C | D7 | D7 | Dm7 | G7 | C Am7 | Dm7 G7|
- You think (and hear) it as | I | I | V/V | V/V | ii | V | I vi | ii V |

This course will work on the micro (individual chords, and tiny chord progressions) and it will put those together into the macro (8 measure sections of songs, and entire songs and song forms.)

Your

Learning to think and hear chords in roman numerals

Learning great chord shapes

Learning how to use those

The ‘common practice period’ of Jazz is Bebop

A useful way to

The musical tradition of Jazz music is at least 100 years old, and references musical conventions which are older still. This course aims to give you a

applying common jazz approaches to the accordion
the way I have put together this jazz information based on my experience
applied to genres that Dallas likes and has experience in

Things that compliment this course

Finding people in your area to play with

Leaving your practice room and seeing real people playing jazz – and playing with them – is an indispensable step that you must do to progress. You will eventually do it, so you may as well take a step toward it this week.

The only reason not to do it immediately is uncertainity and fear. Which are real feelings that I feel too, we all do. However, my job is to help you move forward – and I’m reminding you that you can find those situations, and you should start as soon as you can.

Jam sessions. Your best first step might be to just show up a few times and listen. You’ll hear the commonly played repertoire in your area, you’ll hear a variety of experience levels, and you’ll meet people who will be your local community. Jazz has over 100 years of repertoire and musicians, so it’s easy to learn a bunch of songs on your own that nobody else knows. Ask around you for the names of the songs being played at the jam, and put those commonly played tunes at the top of your list to work on.

Small meet ups. Who are you musician friends that you can ask to try some jazz with you? Hit them up and set up a little informal jam. Or ask friends, music stores, meetup.com, community postings, and put together your own hang out with one or more interested musicians.

It is quite likely that within an hour or less drive of you, you can find some people to play jazz with at your experience level or willing to play with you at your experience level.

Listening to lots of jazz

If this were a French class, we’d expect you to be watching French language movies and television and listening to French language music and dreaming of a trip to Paris (or Montreal.)

The same is true for new idioms of music. You want to compliment your music pursuits with as much listening as you can. Passive listening is great: while you commute to work, do the dishes, walk the dog, clean the house.

You need to find the musicians, styles, songs, time periods that really move you. It’s quite possible they are different than the ones that move me – and that’s okay and good. And the ones that move you and feel important today are probably going to shift over time.

YouTube is a fantastic free resource. I have stuck with Spotify as my music streaming service for the sole reason that they have user created playlists, which I usually find to be super helpful for me when I am trying to find cool stuff in new idioms and genres.

Force yourself to go see a jazz show at least once a month. All of these skills that I’m showing you will be on display by the musicians you see performing. You’ll get that human patterning learning which is impossible to recreate through the medium of a screen.

Other people’s books and YouTube teachers

You’re never going to learn everything from one source. I think this course is amazing – but you absolutely need to learn from a ton of different sources. Just don’t forget to commit to a method for a while and dig deep and get consistent and committed.

I regularly use Scribd for user uploaded PDFs and Everand for professionally published eBooks (on all subjects.) You pay a single monthly subscription price for access to both platforms. And there’s more music learning materials on there than you could possibly study in a lifetime.

A few books that have helped me over the years:

“The Jazz Piano Book” Mark Levine
- covers tons of material, right hand stuff is applicable for accordion, and general chord substitutions are also applicable
“The Jazz Musician’s Guide to Creative Practicing” by David Berkman
- written by a pianist, but most of the book is about single line stuff, has neat ways to approach many common problems – for intermediate or advanced players
“Jazz Theory and Improvisation Studies for Accordion, 2nd Edition” by Ralph Stricker
- similar to the Mark Levine book above, but from an accordionists’ perspective

Open Studio Jazz is a fantastic source for jazz piano courses, and the material and approaches for jazz piano overlap a ton with jazz accordion. I cover many of the same core concepts that they talk about but modified and specialized for jazz accordion.

YouTube, of course. Some of my current favorites channels and searches for solving my problems are: (updated on Sep 24, 2024.)