3 Sweet Chord Progressions for Jazz Piano

In this lesson I’ll show you 3 Jazz piano chord progressions in a Jazz piano style.

Each chord progression uses only major 7 chords and minor 7 chords.

Chord Progression #1.

So here is the first of my favorite chord progressions. So let’s take a look at this. C minor 7, and I’m choosing to voice these in this sort of open voicing root fifth, third and seventh.

And then we just slide the left hand down a half step, C and G goes to B and F sharp, while the right hand stays the same, and that gives you B major 7.

So, C minor 7, B major 7, and then we bring both hands down B flat and F, the root and the fifth, the third, and the seventh, and the right hand, D flat and A flat, and do the same pattern, right hand stays the same, left hand slides down a half step. And that gives you an A major 7 chord. So, B flat minor 7, to A major 7.

These are called glide progressions, where you record changes to a new chord just by moving a couple of the notes or half of the notes roughly, just sliding them, while the other two notes stay the same.

There’s all sorts of possibilities. C minor 7, C major 7, C sharp minor 7, lots of fun things you can do with that.

When I get to this A major 7 chord, I go up a major third, and I play a C sharp minor nine chord in this case. But just basically a C sharp minor 7 chord, and I like to either add the ninth or that as a minor 11th chord, and a C sharp minor chord, and a B major chord, which is a simple way to think of a minor 11 chord, just these two triads. Here’s the whole chord progression again.

And this is a chord progression that I composed when I was about 18. I remember stumbling across these chords on the piano. And I just fell in love with them.

Now in preparing for this video, I actually tried changing these chords slightly. But instead of A major, you could play this as an A dominant 7 chord, except I was voicing it like this: seventh, ninth, major third, major sixth, and this just sounds a bit more grown up. It’s up to you which one you prefer. It sounds a bit more gospely. I like both, as a younger player, I would have definitely preferred the A major 7 chord, so, it’s a bit more of a pop music kind of sound, going from the A major chord up to the C sharp minor chord. But if you want more of a gospely sound, I think this one is a bit more perhaps interesting.

Chord Progression #2.

Now, the second chord progression I’m gonna show you I’m gonna demonstrate in C minor. Now I’m playing these open chord voicings which are root, fifth, third, and seventh. You can play that to any type of seventh chord. Sounds great every time, very clean.

So if we’re in C minor, starts on F minor seven, the minor 4 chord goes up to A flat major 7 root fifth, third seventh, resolves to C minor 7, the one chord.

Here’s the interesting part. B flat major, and I’ve added a major 7, which isn’t actually in the key of C minor scale. You know, a second ago, you had a A flat major chord. Now I’m playing at A natural above this B flat major 7 chord. So that’s why it creates this nice interesting sound, it’s basically modulating in a very subtle way. We’re in C minor, now we’re not in C minor ‘cause we’ve got a B flat major 7 chord, and then we’re back in C minor with an A flat major 7 chord.

I got this chord progression from a dance track that I used to really be into as a teenager, it’s called, Need To Feel Loved by Reflekt, which play these chords:

But in the original song, these strings only play triads, they don’t play seventh chords. So what I like to do is I make these all into seventh chords, and then I get this nice modulation.

And I play the B flat major chord as a major 7, that’s what makes this chord progression so nice.

I use this chord progression in my piece, Falling In Love For The First Time. So there’s a few extra chords at the end. The original’s actually in a different key, B minor. But I’m demonstrating it in a C minor key here.

So I turned these into minor 11th chords and major 11th chords, and I use this Kenny Barron voicing. Here’s the B flat major 7. Even put a sharp 11 here. But that is just this chord progression embellished into a sort of arpeggiated 11th chord pattern, but it’s the same nice chord progression, which you can play as simply as this.

Chord Progression #3.

And now we come to the final chord progression. In the key of C minor, you could actually play this pattern forever. And it will take you through all 12 keys and I finally got back to C minor again, so let me explain this.

Really, you can just do this once or you can keep doing it two or three times, or you can keep doing it all 12 times. This is beautiful modulation. You’re in the key of C minor, I’ll play it simply as a triad here, here’s a C minor chord. But then, you modulate to the key of F minor, and the way you do that is you play this D flat major chord, which is not in the scale of C minor. You play a D flat major chord, going up to an F minor chord, and I happen to know that these two chords are in F minor because both these chords are found in F minor, and using my ear, I can hear it, this F minor chord, is the resolution chord, which in ear training is basically the one chord of the scale.

Free Resource: Download my '23 Sweet Chord Progressions' sheet music.

So I can use my ear to tell me that the piece has modulated to F minor. And of course, we can get more interesting with the chord voicings.

Play that F minor as a F minor 9. And then once I’m on F minor, if you want to carry on, you can just repeat the same pattern. We’re now in the key of F minor, so now we just go up a half step, play a major chord, this case it’s G flat major. This resolves up a major third to B flat minor. Now in B flat minor, we can do the same pattern again. Go up a half step, build a major chord, B major, up a major third, build a minor chord. Then we can play all these as seventh chords.

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So now let me test you on this chord progression. Let’s say we’re on a D minor 7 chord, which two chords would I play next to play this chord progression? Well, I’d go up a half step, to E flat, and I build an E flat major 7 chord: root, fifth, third, seventh if I use this voicing. And then I’d go up a major third, which is two whole steps, and I build a minor 7 chord, which would be G minor 7. Now that I’m in the key of G minor, which two chords would I play next? If I wanted to continue the pattern, I’d go up a half step build a major 7 chord, A flat major 7, and then up a major third to C, and I’ll build a minor 7 chord, which would be C minor 7.

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You can do this forever. When you get too high, you can just bring your chord voicings down an octave.

Key Takeaways

In this lesson I showed you 3 Jazz piano chord progressions.

Progression #1: C minor 7 - B major 7 - Bb minor 7 - A major 7 - C# minor 7.
Progression #2: F minor 7 - Ab major 7 - C minor 7 - Bb major 7 - Ab major 7.
Progression #3: C minor 7 - Db major 7 - F minor 7 - Gb major 7 - Bb minor 7 - B major 7 (repeats through all 12 keys).

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