Variations on the Flat-5 Walk-Down

AKA the Flat-5 Ending.

The other day I was listening to an old vinyl I hadn’t listened to for decades. “Cal Collins Cincinnati to LA” was recorded on the Concord Jazz label in 1978.

Cal was an early influence on me; I listened to this album extensively in the late seventies - early eighties. The liner notes said that, unlike other jazz players of that era, Cal Collins played exclusively with a pick; no finger style. This album helped me get over the presupposition that in order to do solo jazz guitar gigs I had to master fingerstyle jazz a la Joe Pass, who was the model for that kind of thing at the time.

I eventually settled on a hybrid style; pick and fingers both. I talk about that evolution in Picky, Picky, Picky!

Thanks to YouTube, I now know that Cal used a hybrid style, just like me!

Anyway, I’m listening to this old Cal Collins record. At the end of the tune, "Easy Living" he begins what I call a "flat-5 walkdown" or a "flat-5 ending." This is a device I use for endings quite a bit; it's a musical cliché - which in this context means, "It's so good everybody uses it."

In the key of F it would typically look like this:

It’s used when the last chord in the song is an Fmaj7 or an F6, with the melody being the root, “F.” The walkdown keeps the “F” on the top of every chord.

NOTE: The Gbmaj7 chord employs what's called a, "cross-fret barre" or a, "diagonal barre." I talk about the cross-fret barre in The 5th-Finger Principle.

So I hear the first two chords and I know where Cal is going with this. The third chord is the Amin7+, as expected. The fourth chord is Ab13, as expected. But then an odd chord comes out of nowhere and slaps me upside the head. I instantly heard what it was; he substituted Dbmaj7 for the G7, then went to the Gbmaj7, as expected, and resolved to F6.

I said I instantly “heard” the surprise chord, but I still had to pick up a guitar and double-check. Here’s the progression with the Db chord:

I thought, “Why have I not heard this before?”

I’ve listened to this album dozens, if not over a hundred times, and yet this is the first time I noticed this variation on a very familiar arranging device.

Sparked by this, I gave it some thought and my mind went to many other possibilities:

C7sus instead of Gbmaj7:

How about combining the 2 variations? Why yes, thank you! Dbmaj7 subbed for the G7 plus the C7sus subbed for the Gbmaj7:

Ooooh! How 'bout D7(#9) subbed for the Ab13?

Aaaand then all three subs put together!

Well, let's just go ahead and sub E7(b9) for the Bb-6 and make a cycle out of it:

NOTE: If you don't know what I mean by "cycle," go through the "5-Lesson Foundational Series." You can download it for free HERE.

There are many other combinations possible. The basic concept is the use of tritone subs. Tritone subs cannot be functionally understood without first understanding cyclical movement, that is, movement around the Key Circle (i.e. a Circle of Fourths - see the link on "cycle" above).

I have a 3-Lesson series on the tritone sub. It's a PDF with 15 pages of explanatory text, 16 fretboard diagrams, 13 song charts and 3 demonstration video links, all for only $19.95. Click on the pic below to access the download page:

Finally, here's the cyclical version of the flat-5 ending with the last two chords re-voiced:

All this from hearing one single variation to a cliché I've been using for decades.

I'm 70 years old and have been playing the guitar for almost 60 years. I'm flabbergasted I hadn't figured this out years ago. I’ll be using some of these on my next gig!

It's never too late to learn.

Download a PDF of this lesson to your device of choice for $9.99:

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