Texas Swing in D chord progression
Both No Sweat & Gary's Blues use the same jam track, the Texas Swing in D from Ultimate Jam. But the sheet music for these songs show a different chord progression for the 3rd line. Gary's Blues denotes a V7-IV7-I7-V7 progression and No Sweat denotes a ii-V-I. Yet when I listen to the jam tracks downloaded from this site, the chord progressions sound identical, as indeed they should, since they use the same titled jam track. I also listened to the Texas Swing in D from the Ultimate Jam CD, and it too, sounds identical to the study song jam tracks, differing only in length. Which of the chord progrssions is the band actually playing on the jam track? Why do you show different chord progressions for the third line of the two study songs?
Thanks!
Thanks David, that clarifies things. In the instance of Gary’s Blues, you wanted phrasing to trump chord change. In No Sweat, however, you wanted a jazzier sound, so you chose to follow the chord line rather than a bluesier template.
BTW, in spite of your revelation above, I’d still buy a used car from you... ;-)
You've asked a very insightful question HarpKat, and the simple answer is that I lied. "Gary's Blues" is early on in a student's studies and I didn't want to muddy the waters (pun intended) on the understanding of how licks work in bars 9 through 11... what I call the V-IV-I Transition Lick. Even though the chord progression is ii-V-I, it's most common that a harp player (almost all harp players) play a lick that's technically a V-IV-I Lick, and that's what I wrote for "Gary's Blues." I use that song as material for students' improvising and again I didn't want to muddy the waters with off-the-topic discussions on why it's a ii-V-I and the fact that harp improvisors ignore it and still play it as if it's a ii-V-I.
So, the short answer is that 99.99% of soloists ignore the ii-V-I (or don't even realize that it's there) and play it as a V-IV-I. Now that YOU are studying chord changes, you can study what makes a ii Chord and a V Chord and experiment with notes and combinations of notes that can turn into a cool lick and see if you like it more than the V-IV-I lick substitution.
P.S., I rarely do this, so don't worry about me feeding you false information as habit :-) Always feel free to ask though if you question anything.