The flat-V m7b5 thing, a swing tune and a solo.

There’s a common chord substitution that jazz players like to make, especially when the melody sits on the tonic note for a bit (say, a C note in the key of C), over the I-chord. There are a couple of variants, but they all start with a m7b5 chord on the flat-V of the scale, F#m7b5 in the key of C. From there, the chord roots move down chromatically to the tonic.

For example, here are two versions the final four bars of the jazz standard “My Romance,” in C. The first example has the “stock” changes, and the second replaces the final C chord with a chromatic sequence starting on F#m7b5. Notice that every chord has C in the melody.  

Stevie Wonder’s “You Are The Sunshine of My Life” sometimes gets this treatment in the first chord. Compare these two versions of the first phrase in the key of C.

In one band I played with for years, we’d call it “the flat five thing,” which eventually got shortened to “fluhfluh.” You’d be coming to the end of a tune and someone would shout out “Fluhfluh!!” and we’d know what to do, unless one of us vetoed it on grounds of it being “Gratuitous Fluhfluh.” Yes, we were a very silly crew.

This progression sometimes is part of the tune. Here’s one from a series of "counterfeit Gypsy jazz" tunes I wrote once. The recording can be found on my website, www.theotherjocko.com, click on the "Sounds Like..." tab and you'll find it there.  Here's the head.

You could play the chord changes of the "fluhfluhs" in the first part using these voicings.

or:

It's best to break them up though, to add a little textural, rhythmic, and melodic interest:

Here’s a solo I played over it. On the first four chords I never left the tonal center of Ab. Don’t forget, this sequence is a substitution for the tonic chord, so it’s a good idea to think of it aas a thing that happens in the tonic key. That being the case, Dm7b5 in this position is, to me, “Ab-something-with-D-natural-in-it.” I also tend to play the written Dbm7’s as m6 or m(M7), i.e., the I-chord of Db melodic minor, which is also the key of Ab with a b6 and 7 (see "Getting into major scales, pt 3: the Honorary Notes" on this blog, posted 2/16/16).  I guess I should’ve just written the chord as Dbm6, but either one works..

Again, just know the key of Ab well enough that you can alter scale tones at will, and you don’t have to waste a lot of time learning “chord scales,” the “jazz red herring.”

Lester Young on "Pennies From Heaven," 1950

http://youtu.be/9vDW0ANRim8 This is the link to a gorgeous solo that Lester Young (aka "Prez") played in 1950 over the chord changes to "Pennies From Heaven." Believe it or not, the recording is pitched in B major. Knowing of most musicians' aversion to the key of B-major and looking at the different players' hands (even though they're trying to "lip-synch" to a pre-recorded track done the day before), I'm guessing it was really in Bb, though I've rendered it in C, which seems to be the "stock" key these days, and makes the lowest note in this transcription our open low D. All the articulations in the notation staff are conjectural; the ones I'm suggesting for the banjo are in the TAB staff.  Here 'tis: I'm hesitant to get too analytical with Lester Young. Not that there isn't a lot here to pick apart, it's just that it's so much more fun to ponder the mysteries: the way he can make three notes do the work of two bars, how two bars can be all about one note, or how he'll seemingly "toss off" a simple fragment - say, CDEFG in eighth-notes - and it sounds like the lost Eleventh Commandment. The casual-sounding way he can make musical statements that are, upon inspection, breathtaking in their organization and balance - there's nothing "casual" about them! Listen for how he scoops up to some notes, and how he hits some right on the money, also how he changes his relationship to the beat. The received wisdom is that he tended to play his solos "behind the beat," but then you hear at measure 27 for example, the way he stabs the D on beat one a little bit in front.   As you play through this, keep in mind that accents in jazz usually occur on the peaks in the melodic contour, and on the last note in phrases ending on the "and." Listen in this solo for the interplay between downbeat and upbeat accents. Above all, listen to the way that it all seems to be wrapped in a calm assurance that this note, this one right here, is precisely the one that needs to be played at precisely this instant.  One of my favorite moments is at measure 63 and 64; I've notated it as a B, and theoretically speaking B or Bb would work just fine here, but he plays basically a B half-flat, which he smears up a tiny bit (but not up to B), then down towards the following A. My suggestion is to play it as a Bb, bent up slightly. It's a fascinating moment! I like the idea that, having made prominent use of Bb in bars 56 and 57, and knowing a B-natural is imminent (it's in three of the solo's last four bars), he split the difference in bar 63, neither repeating the Bb nor reaching the B-natural too soon.  Prez once said that it bugged him to be at jam sessions and have the piano player calling out chord changes because "that's not what I hear." He knew what the changes were, but he seems rather to have gone to the DNA of the tune (perhaps this accounts for the illusion of simplicity), and is showing us how to really hear it.  Can you tell I love Lester Young?

Bluesette: chord solo

OK, no analysis, just the tune. 

Generally it's played like this: at the beginning you play the head twice without taking the coda, which only happens the very last time through. Here's the original:https://youtu.be/Oi4G6UmYK9U  And check out a few of my old Twin Cities friends and colleagues from about 10 years ago https://youtu.be/NJe4MKhHtbs. There's a variation that singers like to do; the part that starts with "Pretty little Bluesette/ Have you heard the news yet..." at about 1:50 in the second version.