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Practicing Dominant Cycles to Become a Better Jazz Guitarist
In today’s installment of the Play Better Jazz Guitar in 30 Days series, we’re going to practice Dominant Cycles.
When I was a student at McGill University, we had to complete three major juries in order to graduate with our degrees in jazz performance. All of these juries had the usual tunes, scales, transcriptions and studies, but they also had one section that at the time I hated, but later was glad that I practiced, Dominant Cycles.
Dominant Cycles are when we take Dominant 7th chords and practice them through the Cycle of 5ths. This helps us learn our 7th chords and their related scales and arpeggios, a very common and important sound in jazz, but it also introduces us to the Cycle, which is also found in many standard jazz chord progressions.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Cycle of 5ths, here is how it would like starting on C with each note in the cycle being a 7th chord.
C7 – F7 – Bb7 – Eb7 – Ab7 – Db7 – Gb7 – B7 – E7 – A7 – D7 – G7 – C7
So, each new chord is a 4th higher, or 5th lower (hence the name), than the previous chord, allowing us to practice any concept in all 12 keys and forcing us to jump around the neck of the guitar rather than just move our hands up chromatically to the next key.
We can use this cycle to practice anything, but today we will use it to work on Dominant 7th chords. We’ll do this in two ways, using Dominant 7th Arpeggios and improvising.
When practicing arpeggios in the Cycle of 5ths, we have several options to approach each chord, here are some of my favorites, each is done with one, two and/or three-octave arpeggios.
- All Ascending
- All Descending
- One Ascending the next Descending
- One Descending the next Ascending
Not a lot of variety, but enough to get you seeing the arpeggios for the bottom up and the top down.
For today, pick one of these and then play through each chord in the Dominant Cycle. Start slowing and then increase the tempo until it is too fast.
If you have time, run two or more of these approaches through the cycle. It is a great way to build technique, get Dominant 7th chords in our ears and learn the cycle at the same time.
You can also use improvisation to work on Dominant Cycles. Instead of running up and down arpeggios for each chord, you can solo over them using one or more techniques.
For today, since we’re focusing on arpeggios, try soloing over each chord using only its related arpeggios.
But, for future practice you could use Bebop Scales, licks, Mixolydian Scales, Altered Scales etc. Anything that you can think of that can be used over a 7th chord, you can run through Dominant Cycles.
Here are the different chord lengths that I had to demonstrate, and hence practiced, at McGill.
Check them out, each offers a different challenge and each brings out a different approach from your playing.
- 8 Bars Per Chord
- 4 Bars Per Chord
- 2 Bars Per Chord
- 1 Bar Per Chord
- 2 Beats Per Chord
Practicing Dominant Cycles is a great way to learn the neck, becoming familiar with an important chord progression found in many tunes such as Rhythm Changes and “Jordu,” and get the sound of 7th chords in our ears.
After you’ve working through these in our 30 Day Series, come back to these once in a while for a refresher. This is a great addition to any jazz guitarist’s practice routine.
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Do you have a favorite way to practice Dominant Cycles? Share it in the comment section.
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11 Responses to "Practicing Dominant Cycles to Become a Better Jazz Guitarist"
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Yes, this is the way I was taught to practice scales and diatonic arpeggi, always cycle through and always vary the direction (all forward, all backward, one forward, one backward, etc). Some people think that internalizing all these patterns (e.g., 1st three notes of a scale and back, CDE, DEF, EFG, etc) will only enable one to play patterns, but I disagree insofar it gets the important SOUNDS in one’s EARS and enables these sounds to be recombined as we HEAR them without concern for technical limitations. Again, Matt, well written. Thanks.
Absolutely! Getting these sounds in our ears is extremely important, and can go a long way to developing our solos and comping ideas down the road.
As well, the dominant cycle is found in tons of jazz songs, from the turnaround to a blues I-Vi-ii-V, to the bridge to Rhythm Changes and tons of other songs, it’s everywhere.
Navigating the cycle of 5ths, with dominant chords or anything else, is a must know skill for any jazz guitarist.
Matt, another great lesson to practice.
Position wise what do you recomend…
I can see chasing it down the neck using roots on two adjacent strings (e.g. the 6th & 5th strings) or
Keeping all the chords in the same position (e.g. staying right around the 7th fret).
What did you have in mind?
Cheers
Hey Frank,
I like to do the cycle up from the 6th, to the 5th, to the 4th, to the 3rd string roots and then jumping to the 5th root for the next chord and so on to stay in position. Here’s what I mean, the numbers are strings for the roots
C – 6
F – 6
Bb – 4
Eb – 3
Ab – 5
Db – 4
Gb – 3
B – 4
E – 3
A – 5
D – 4
G – 3
So you keep it all around the 8th to 12 fret area, the “honey spot” of the guitar where everything fits nicely under your hands.
Sorry F should be on the 5th string, not the 6th
FWIW I noticed that the 4ths (or at least the root notes) form a pattern on the lower 4 strings.
So to get to the ‘next 4th’ in the cycle i could do one of three things: go to the next string up, same fret, go to the next string down, 2 frets down, or go 2 strings down and 3 frets up. Of course there has to be the string/fret combo available, and it only works on the bottom 4 strings.
It sounds more complicated than it really is. After a couple of goes I found it easy to remember. And I found that could use it to either stay in one area of the neck, or move up or down.
However, I did encounter a bit of a problem – and that was by only using a formula like this to locate the 4ths I would quickly lose track of their names.
cheers
charlie
Yeah there are all sorts of patterns with these cycles, the key is to find a few patterns you like, but also to remember and think of the root names for each one so you aren’t just relying on the patterns to get your through the exercise. A good combination of both is best in the long run.
When you said they asked for you to play each for 8 bars, 4 bars, etc., should they all be practised with 8th notes? Or should they be whole notes for 4 bars, half notes for 2 bars, quarter notes for 1 bar, 8th notes for 2 beats?
Hey Josh
I would be improvising with those different bar lengths, so you can use any rythm you like. If you are just running up and down arpeggios, i would stick to two bars, but ith improv go for it as far as the rhythm is concerned.
How about practising starting on different notes? What are the most common notes lines start on?
Hey Josh,
Guys like to start on all the different notes dependong on the situation. One of the things a lot of guys like to do is start om the third and work up to the nine of any chord. Check out this article for examples of this approach.