The Greatest Theory Lesson of All Time 

Have a suggestion for a tune you'd like me to break down? Let me know - Adam

"Everything we need is already right here in front of us. It always has been. It was left to us by the masters. All we have to do is investigate". Hats off to u bro'. Investigation: 9/10ths of creativity...♨️

Psst.. Don't tell anyone, the secret dominant scale is just the major bepop scale starting from the third degree. So if you play C maior/diminished, everthing is already embedded: C6 vs G7b9, Am7 vs E7b9. But please don't tell anyone🤫

Been working on Donna Lee for years. It’s become my life’s work because I’m a slow learner. Still love it.

I’ve been playing Donna Lee since the late ‘80s and can say that this is a very generous lesson. A really great player gave me a similar tip back then and I took it to heart. Actually, all of Bird’s tunes are goldmines - not just Donna Lee - but it is one of the bestest! Cheers

While Donna Lee is great for bebop and swing styles, there are many great pieces that teach us so much. The key, as you said, is internalizing the music. Memorize it, try and understand it, break it down into pieces, sing it, play it in different styles, tempos, and instruments. Also, intangibles like mood and emotion.. Think of yourself as an actor... What story, stories, is the piece trying to tell. Sometimes it takes years, even after learning the notes perfectly. Rhythm and what is idiomatic to your instrument. Personally I am a big fan of classical pieces. (Bach) for what they can teach us, although they are a bit difficult to decipher. Just learning a few of Bach's composition has been very helpful over the years.

This is truly one of the songs of all time.

I've been playing Donna Lee, and trying to master it, for years now. Similar to Giant steps, or the Bach cello suites, Donna Lee is like a cut precious gem, revealing new and beautiful reflections of the world around it every time one touches it. Thanks for this wonderful video, Adam. And I also thought that was an A-flat instead of an A-natural. (Timestamp 20:50)

Superb pedagogic style. I’ve taken so much from this.

I'm so glad you said Donna Lee. I'm learning it bit by bit on piano right now, the intervals, tritones, dissonants et al are all there. I think it is a be bop masterpiece, and hard to believe this comes from about 70+ years ago.

Thanks, man…just….thanks! Put the piano aside for a while, for a few obvious reasons, and I’m just getting back into a daily practice routine. Your vibe and motivation and encouragement are very much appreciated. Peace.

from Japan What a great lesson！I didn't think I could play Donna Lee,but now I can fairly well . Thanks.This is the best RU-vid lesson in the history😎

Hi Adam - just want to give you a big shout out for these lessons - recent find on my part and I play guitar and can still consume these and they are great! and the enthusiasm is equally enjoyable - keep on! and Thank you.

Always used to say that the head to DL was like a three year jazz theory course. Still incorporating ideas from DL. Thanks for exploring this.

GREAT BREAKDOWN!! you are right. The masters left it ALL. It is such a wonderful gift to have you break it all down slowly. Also - you might want to point out that a tune like Donna Lee has a 'fundamental Inner Tune" --- at least this is how I hear it. When you hear the inner tune - which is actually not a complicated tune, then you can hear how the 'twists and turns' that Charlie articulates - Miuch like Shakespeare, explaining in poetry what he just said in prose, act as a 'super articulation of the inner melody. Yet essentially the inner melody is the fundamental key to the whole song. So BIRD, writes a tune while simultaneously taking us all around the block into a deeper understanding of the tune -- a BEBOP musical journey. (all this before he even solos !!!) Do you have a class that talks about this inner tune thing?

Although your lessons are way above my level of ability at present, the content and the way you explain it helps to strengthen my musical understanding and inspires me to push on. Thank you!

Thinking all those modes and different exotic scales.. can be terrifying at fast tempos .. do the simple minor conversion of a dom 7th chord up a 5th or 1/2 step F# Mel min. (for #9 b9 ) . : F7 = C Melodic Min. / Bb7 = F Melodic Min. ..you still get the character of the chord plus up 1/2 step gives altered notes.Pat Martino has perfected this technique and he is super melodic. ....you are right ! practically everything you need to know about be-bop is in that tune!

Love it - thanks for the lesson and PDF! Learned the head and most of the solos on this recording for my May Parker study. Having this tutorial to pick out a couple of the major concepts at play is going to help immensely with building my own improvisations next.

Cool I was waiting for you guys to post this session I've been looking for it

I love that this happens to sit in a pretty good place for my singing voice, scatting it is a lot of fun. It's a great sight reading exercise as well.

Dude came straight from the skate park to cut this vid. Not even mad at that

This melody is perfect for sight reading and learning to read. Thanks so much for this tutorial!

Thank you, Sir! I have only listened to 5:05 minutes of your video thus far. I have been playing "at" Donna Lee since college and the Bb harmonic scale since High School. I have never thought of playing the over the F7 chord. I had to stop the video and sit down at my piano in my studio and try it out. I will definitely watch the remainder of your video. Cheers, ap

Congratulations Arthur!!! That’s wonderful! I will miss you and your RU-vid lessons, but I have a lifetime of practicing what you’ve shared= your book and all the members stuff. Best regards Bruce

The early point you make about the harmonic minor is important. This came from the Swing Era especially on songs like Sweet Georgia Brown and I've Found a New Baby. Back in the old days, it ws common to teach a 2-5-1 as - play Cm over the Dm-G7, and play C major on the C major.

I don't have enough words to thank you for this invaluable lesson! I'll work hard to afford the money to have regular lessons with you! You are an awesome teacher! Thank you from Brazil!

I got an ad for alcohol and it had a really nice beat right after you said lets listen to it I was like I wonder where he is going with this not what I expected. So funny.

Extremely lucid lesson. You are amazing! Thank you!!!

Great lesson man! I'm saxophonist and will be amazing exercise! Donna Lee always is! Thank you!

You are my favorite teacher on piano right now, dude. This was super awesome

You can see this scale as the 3rd mode of “Barry Harris diminished scale”, so for a C7, a Ab major with its added b13

Such a valuable lesson! I learned so much as a listener (don't play the sax).

Thank you for this! I spend a lot of years playing sitar. Much to the chagrin of my traditionalist acquaintances, I often experimented with non-raga based music. I used the head for Donna Lee as an exercise on sitar. It was,,, well,,, you get the idea! LOL! You have inspired me to work on the piece again!

I love the A natural that you pointed out in the other video about the Real Book. You're right, it's SO much better this way.

I agree with you. All sorts of scales, lines chromatic neighbors. Lately I've been learning in all twelve keys, which has really opened up some fingering puzzles for me to figure out and get smooth in all keys. On tenor g flat concert is taking some time. I'll get it. Playing the lines forward and backward helps too.

I love this channel. Thank you Adam.

so Niice..an intelligent comment section and, great session/lesson/analysis/presentation ! thank you

That secret dominant works beautifully on the V in a minor blues. Thanks for the tip.

you are such great teacher. thanks

Amazing! The way I think about what to play over Secondary dominant chords in the simplest way possible (the least dissonant) is to take the parent scale they are in and only change the 3rd and 7th of the respective chord so that they form a dom7 chord. This gives you these scale possibilities (starting from the root of the chord): I7 = Mixolydian, II7 = Mixolydian, III7 = Phrygian Dominant, IV7 = Lydian Dominant, V7 = Mixolydian, VI7 = Mixolydian b6, VII7 = ?

This is so useful - thank you. Please 'complete' the set and do similar for diminished and chromatics! Thanks again!

I think much more in terms of triads and arpeggios (and whatever passing or chromatic tones between them), but I must admit it is easier for me to target the "secret dom7 scale" tones by playing off a "blues scale" built on the 7th degree of the current Dom 7. F7 - play Eb blues scale gives you the 7th, root, b9, #9, 3rd, 4/11, 5th, b13 of that F7.

always a great lesson

I just had to learn this song for our jazz band “final” at school this past semester! So. Many. Notes.

Nice work, Adam and one of the only accurate transcriptions of the head I've come across (not just the A natural but also the correct contour of the arpeggios). Another way of approaching the 'secret dominant' scale is to treat it as the relative major 6th diminished as defined by Barry Harris: Db, Eb, F, Gb, Ab, (A), Bb, C - the Bb harmonic minor scale and Db major scales, Bbm7 and Db6 chords and their related altered dominants, F7b9 and Ab7b9 all in one package!

this is so good....thank you

My two music buddies challenged me to learn this. So I’m off to the woodshed! Great work!

One of the best lessons that I’ve ever 😮

Thanks for some great ideas! The secret dominant scale can also be seen as two major triads a half step apart with one chromatic note thrown in. It's easier (for me anyway) to implement in a solo thinking about it like this, because I keep the actual chord being played in mind and I don't need to process as much information. You can also extend the idea from here because if you repeat the same again up a whole step you get into dimishished scale material.

The “secret dominant scale” is the Db major bebop scale. Db6=Bbmin. You’re doing Ab7/F7 -> Db6/Bb (which resolves to Bb13 in this case).

Very fluid teacher. Sub’d ya because of ya style and channel content bro. Bring it!

Love this channel. As a bassist, and now playing guitar, this is a little outside my ability, but I get most of it and it’s very educational

Great lesson! This will keep me busy for quite a while. 👍

I've yet (years later still) to finish getting Donna Lee under my piano fingers fully. This just motivated my weekend plans.

There are many that believe Miles wrote this, including Miles. Having played these tunes for many years, it seems to me that there is some language that is not typical of Bird, although his vocab was huge. In fact the chromatics in the first lick sound more like Miles than Bird.

Gracias!

You didn't have to do the *whole thing* again, but we appreciate it!

Learned Guthrie govans version ten years ago, still know it, and still had trouble analyzing the theory. This video made it a lot easier. Thanks!

great lesson

Fair enough, that WAS a great lesson; subscribed !

Dude you are awesome! Thx So much!

Okay. So what a lot of folk miss on this tune is that the first phrase is a two beat displacement. Ever thought that it's odd that the melody starts on beat three? That's because it's displaced from beat one. The harmony is much more straightforward if you analyze it from this non-displaced perspective. In that context, the Ab chord is just the major scale with a chromatic passing tone between the sixth and fifth; the F7 is from the half/whole diminished; and the Bb7 is mixolydian using a D half diminished arpeggio. I think it makes much more sense when you look at it like that.

First time visiting, great lesson and Great video, and thanks!! Liked an subscribed!

great video 💜

Thanks for putting it back up,Open Studio !

The scale in bar 31. 3 flat 9 1 7 going in sequence is magic. I played that scale a million times over 30 years but never understood it. Until one day I was studying D. Lee and boom, there it was.

I am so under the average player enthusiast its beyond ridiculous; thats my disclaimer. I like this because it shows an argument to what i've heard about modern music (classical and jazz in general) being "dissonant" and sort of un or non-resolved patterns that philosophically / spiritually lead to, &/or come from, chaos. This proves there really is beauty and form in the genre.

Very useful!

hey great job thanks alot

Thanks master !

Bar 15 - a Honey Suckle Rose quote. 🎶

This dominant “harmonic #9” scale fits nicely Bb- and C& first chords of Cole Porter’s “I love you”

Melody from scales,that's my eternal journey!

This a very cool lesson. For years I struggled with plying half/whole dim over the dominant. everyone shreds diminished on the dominant chord. It start to sound “too out for too long” and I struggled making dim sound good. Also it’s become too…almost cliché. So first I made a b9 arpeggio and then added #9. I use the dominant mode of harmonic minor or from melodic minor depending on the melody/vibe. I play slow and half-whole diminished can work but these other options sound better to me in some situations. Like on a dom 7#9#5 the half/whole doesn’t have the #5 but the altered scale from melodic minor does…I think. Everyone plays half-whole over the V on autumn leaves but the dormant mode from harmonic minor sounds better to me or using the arpeggio….like dom 7 arpeggio and add the b9 and even #9 does sound good to me. Great lesson man!

This is amazing

GREAT GREAT GR..

Great Thanks

I remember as a young pianist I once played that “secret dominant scale” and thought I invented it lol. Then I heard bird on this exact recording and felt really bad for the next few weeks

Here's me desperately trying to get the altered dominant scale under my belt and then you go and throw in the secret dominant! Anything goes!!

Awesome video, you’ve earned a subscriber

I’ve played preformed Donna Lee more than any other jazz song. I learned the head in 2 octaves. The upper octave was figured out by me and Sid Jacobs at MI. We used economy picking and were able to play it at blistering speeds.

magic thanks

I’m back home again in Indiana! Russel Webster here always said remember the melody- one can start there

It's interesting to watch people make technical sense of things that just come naturally to me.

Soundslice is a great way to interact with students. Thanks for the video, liked and subbed ✅

Music is mainly a sequence of harmony with melody. All you need is melody as there are many backtrack handouts there for you to practice and use. Melody could be complex but a drone helps a lot to understand dissonance or ornamentations

Thanks! Love the name you gave to that scale - "secret dominant". I've been playing and teaching that scale for years as one of the best things to play over a dominant of a minor chord, but have been surprised that no one mentions it in any jazz theory book. I finally found it in Dan Greenblatt's excellent "Minor is Major" (he calls it "Harmonic Bebop"). I love how it has the same notes as the relative major's "major bebop scale" (or Barry Harris's dim 6th scale).

There's that one chromatic part that makes me think of the Conan Show theme. Love it!

Seeing the music and listening makes one realize the immediate connections to the etudes of Chopin. I am more a devotee of the melodious tunes of Davis and Coltrane, the bebop of Parker being more technically profuse but somewhat less accessible than the birth of cool. I have always been fascinated with Coltrane's veneration for Roger's, "My Favorite Things." Without research and off the top, I believe a Tokyo live recording, sadly one of his last, had an 18 minute upright bass solo improvisation into the number which must have ended up in toto being well over thirty minutes. I know that theoretically Coltrane's Favorite Things may have been technically wanting, but what an improvisational masterpiece.

I love this. I grew up on Lee Konitz/Lennie Tristano/Warne Marsh. As much as I love their extrapolation on Pres, Roy Eldridge, Fats, Bud, Bird, I feel Lennie never got fully on top of bebop (he had his views). Lennie had his one remarkable melodic thing going. But your video has helped me.

Donna Lee was written by Miles Davis. That takes nothing away from your wonderful video. "Although for generations “Donna Lee” has been credited to Charlie Parker, it was actually a Miles Davis composition based on the chord changes to “Indiana.” The authorship of the tune came to light when Gil Evans (who later arranged some of Davis’ most successful albums) sought permission from Parker to arrange the song for Claude Thornhill’s Orchestra. Parker referred him to Davis who gave Evans the go-ahead. This information is confirmed by several sources including Brian Priestley’s Chasin’ the Bird: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker and Stephanie Stein Crease’s Gil Evans: Out of the Cool. In Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis author J. K. Chambers relates a comment by Med Flory, a saxophonist who arranged a lot of Parker material for the group Supersax. His comments, made during a blindfold test at Down Beat, came before Evans’ discovery. When Flory heard “Donna Lee” he said, “It doesn’t sound like a Parker chart. It sounds like Miles wrote it.” Priestley goes on to say, “The fact that its opening idea has been described as deriving from a Fats Navarro solo (on Ice Freezes Red, a version of the same chord sequence) at least underlines that this is much more of a trumpeter’s phrase than a saxophonist’s, especially played at this pitch.” In Priestley’s notes at the end of the book he offers an explanation for the confusion of authorship. “James Patrick demonstrated (notes to Savoy S5J5500) that Charlie’s contracts usually provided for the record company to purchase rights to all the original compositions he recorded. Thus, if one happened to be written by a sideman, it was still likely to be credited to the bandleader.”

I have learned so much as a harpist from you. My playing is better. Thank you for adding a mark in the jazz harp world ❤️

Ok. Great work and I appreciate the work it takes to do these vids. That said, I retract the previous post. You are right about what was played on that recording. However it's not what is played by most players and the books have a different transcription. Some differences: Bar 6, note 6 is a G nat, not an E nat. The chord becomes an Eb7+5 resolving to an Ab major. It's a bebop thing for sure and heightens the tension. Again in bar 8 notes 5 (Enat) & 6 (C) make that an Ab7+5. The choice of chords in the head would be up to the pianist and bassist. My guess is the RS was told it's on the changes of "Indiana" so that would be what they played. Bar 16, 4th note's an Eb. Bar 21, 4th note is an A natural in this recording but many such as Clifford Brown play an Ab . The C7 is setting up F minor, the key of the section to come. I have never seen a chart that has any of those above notes in it. I wonder why. Also if this is the first reading of the tune Bird and or Miles may have changed it in later recordings or shows taped by bootleggers or radio. The tune is a line (or contra-fact for any academics out there) on (Back Home Again in) Indiana. The F minor section, bars 21-27 is completely F minor in both tunes and is played that way by dyed in the wool beboppers. Also no one know for sure whether Bird or Miles wrote it. Maybe even Dizzy. Keep up the good work. Thanks.

I was just thinking, "Hey, that looks just like Adam Maness"!!

The key to playing mode V of Bb harm. min over the F7 in measure 2 is making sure that the note "Bb" resolves logically to the "A" (as, of course, Parker does in the head.)

Very interesting.

Would love one on the diminished arpeggios

Miles Davis actually definitely wrote “Donna Lee” @OpenStudio (compare it his other tunes of the time like “Sippin’ At Bells”- very similar, it is like a bebop ‘étude’. It was also highly influenced by Fats Navarro’s solo on the tune “Ice Freezes Red”)

So the secret dominant scale is the Bb harmonic minor scale with the addition of the #9 note of the current F7 chord, which you are nevertheless naming as Ab instead of G#, so you've nominally turned it into a minor third, which is the enharmonic equivalent but theoretically different. Got it!

The Secret Dominant Scale is like combining harmonic and natural minor. Your/Bird's extra note, #9 of the dominant, is b7 of the parent scale, giving it both min and Maj 7. I'm sure you know this already. I just mention it, if it might help some folks plug it into their fingerings.