How to Create Jazz Chord Progressions: Book

This book cuts through the mystique of jazz harmony by treating chord progressions as learnable systems rather than mysterious conventions. Marohnic's sequencing, moving from basic scales and voicings through substitutions and blues vocabulary, gives students concrete handles on material that often frustrates keyboardists learning the style.

Clear-headed and systematic. Rather than overwhelming you with jazz convention, the book scaffolds each harmonic idea so you gain real fluency without memorizing rules by rote. By the final chapters, substitutions and turn-arounds feel logical rather than arbitrary.

Keyboardists committed to understanding jazz from the inside out, whether you're new to the idiom or filling gaps in your harmonic knowledge. This works equally well as a self-study text or as classroom material in a jazz theory or keyboard methods sequence.

• Start with the cycle of fifths as your foundation; every progression in this book builds from that architecture, so internalizing it early pays dividends across all other concepts.
• Use the III-VI-I and blues progressions as your laboratory for voicing choices; these are the patterns you'll encounter most, so mastering them opens real playing situations.
• Apply chord substitutions incrementally rather than all at once; try substituting one chord in a progression, then add complexity once the ear adjusts.
• Practice turn-arounds in context with a recording or metronome so the harmonic movement feels intentional rather than mechanical.

Assign this as required reading in a jazz ensemble or keyboard course, or use individual chapters to address specific harmonic concepts as they arise in your rehearsals. For self-directed learners, work through the progression systematically; for ensemble settings, pair chapters with repertoire that demonstrates those exact concepts in action.

• Constructing jazz voicings on keyboard with appropriate voice leading
• Reading and executing chord substitutions (tritone, relative minor, secondary dominants)
• Understanding the cycle of fifths as the organizational principle behind jazz progressions
• Building and improvising over blues changes
• Recognizing and playing functional turn-arounds in context
• Connecting relative major and minor tonalities in harmonic progressions