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Comments
Regarding MTH Pro. I'm finding it really difficult to use for guitar because the chord names are different from what is written below. For example F7 (F, C, D#, A) is shown as a symbol made of F, D#, A, D (D13?). Seems like a pointless thing to do. I would really prefer they show the chord shape for the named chord or the named chord the same as the shape. Not sure why they would do this as they don't seem to want to reply to email queries. iReal Pro is a much more enjoyable experience for just playing through some progressions.
After I've memorized the chord progression of the tune, I pretty much ignore the chord symbols, to be honest.
Btw, even though D# and Eb refer to the same physical key or fret in the guitar, they aren’t the same for purposes of spelling chords. F7 has an Eb. You will find it helpful in the long run to keep them straight. A full explanation might just add to the confusion. The short version is that standard chords are made by skipping a note between each step. So, root, 3, 5, 7, etc.
In F that gives you F (Root) A(3) C (5) E (7) G (9) B (11) D (13) . Any of those notes can be altered. To give the different flavors. If you get used to spelling chords the correct way, it is easy to identify the extension by counting on your fingers as you say note names. So, think of it has Eb, counting the letters will tell you that E is some sort of seventh. But if you think of it as D#, it’ll be a flavor of 6th or 13th.
That makes sense. Although, are you saying chord names should never use the # symbol?
That makes sense and is what I've done in the past but for the time being I've found it a useful exercise to use the chord shape which forces me to figure out what chord I play. If I do it the other way it could work but the named chords are different, less complicated. Not sure how to reconcile that thought process but it seems to make sense. Feel free to point out the error or a better way.
No. Not at all. You use a sharp symbol or flat symbol based on the context. In a G chord, you will have F or F#. Those are seven note names away from G. That black key between F and G is F# in that context. I other contexts it is Gb. Counting the note names will help you know.
A "chord" is just a snapshot of harmony. Another way of putting it is... a chord is a "sample" of harmony . Harmony is two or more voices that are moving with the music. That's why Kevin Anker, co-author of a couple of editions of the Logic Pro Power book, meant when he said chords don't really exist. Kevin also liked to state that romplers are just polyphonic turntables, which is another hint into how he perceives music and sound.
Sorry, I can't think of a simpler way to explain it. Chord symbols, notation, etc. are all just attempts to describe how voices are moving over time, in relation to each other. I didn't get this until I started learning chord-melody arrangements for solo guitar, and started to hear individual voices flowing from chord to chord. This was further reinforced by the Randy Vincent book.
That's why I have no problem ignoring chord symbols once I've memorized the tune. By that point, I know what the voices are and where they may be moving over time.
This is where piano roll displays in a sequencer may be helpful. Each voice is represented as its own line graph in the piano roll.
What we think of as "chords" and "chord progressions" are just attempts to visualize the movement of multiple voices over time and the sequencer piano roll is yet another attempt.
I guess what I'm trying to say is after you hear the sounds that are supposed to be heard, don't get too caught up in visual representations. This is why learning whatever you can about voice leading is so important.
Again, I apologize in advance for any further confusion.
@GovernorSilver No not too confusing. The issue I have is more the use of different chords in the same spot. For example if you had a treble clef, tab, note name and chord diagram. But in each snapshot of harmony it showed 4 different chords with different harmonic content.
So many chords I have never played before but sound so beautiful to me now. D7b9 for example. I would never have though to play those notes together 6 months ago. But just checking, you would say it has an Eb to make sure I am on the right track. E is the 9th from the root, so counting up to nine makes Eb some sort of 9th.
You're really getting it. That F7(13) you mentioned earlier just sounds a lot more sophisticated compared to a F7 which is pretty 18th century. Adding 9's and/or 6(13)th's
is fairly standard for a sophisticated jazz vibe. For the listener those notes just scream
"jazz" at work.
Deciding which 9th to use is a matter of taste... flat, natural or sharp. It's usually a matter of
what's happening in the melody. The #9 sounds bluesy (since it's a minor 3rd which is one of those blue notes the soloists mine to show some soul). The b9 is schmalzy jazz coloring and the natural/major 9th is happy by providing a major third in relation to the 7th. Those intervals in your chords make the coloring.
Knowing when and how to add 11's is the next level. On guitar you typically can only get 4 notes without sounding muddy so 11's are pretty carefully chosen because the 3rd and 7th and mandatory... adding an 9th and an 11th works and let the bass player handle the root and 5th.
For guitar players, you can get a lot of solid information by watching Ted Green explain
what Lenny Breau was doing... where you play these jazz chords on the neck of the guitar is
key. There are 4 videos of Ted explain Lenny's approach tp sophisticated jazz harmony:
The 2nd video starts by explaining why Lenny voiced his chords up around the 8-12th frets.
In the 3rd he starts demonstrating the "Joe Pass" approach of a complete solo guitar arrangement with a bass line, chords and the melody on top.
In the 4th video he discusses why guitar players have favorite keys... to make the chords
ring out.
and here's Lenny himself in 1984 playing a 7 string guitar for more bass:
This guy shows how jazz players (based on the pioneering approach of Lenny)
try to minimize the change in the position on the neck to improve voice leading and make the chords changes sound smooth and not like your hopping around the neck.
If you mean, why is the same 4 notes given a bunch of different chord names... The chord names come from the underlying harmonic system, whether it's functional harmony or something else.
This article is about functional harmony. Note that not all music is built on functional harmony
https://www.artofcomposing.com/08-diatonic-harmony#:~:text=Functional Harmony is a way,tonic, in an orderly fashion.
I sound like a broken record, but your understanding would be greatly accelerated by building up a repertoire of tunes. The sooner you start learning tunes, the better. Without knowing tunes, it's 100x harder to understand this stuff.
Hi!
Wow, it's so refreshing to see discussion of Jazz and such here on the internet in the 21st century! It's a rarity for sure. I've spent my whole long life trying to be George Benson, and haven't even come close! I can't wait to get home from work tonight to pore over all the comments in this thread, but I thought I'd mention that a guy on youtube named François Leduc has some very nice guitar transcriptions to view - I have discovered some terrific neat tricks just from the single Larry Coryell song that is so far the only one I've spent time with - more ideas than years of flailing around on my own for sure. I only recently considered youtube as a teacher, and found material beyond a certain level to be rare, but this guy has some wonderful stuff for sure! Cheers.
If you love Benson, dive deep into the free videos peter Farrell has posted. He really knows his stuff , is Benson's protege and can really play.
Whoa - nice! A lot of content too. Thanks for the suggestion, these look wonderful! Man I wish I didn't have to leave to go to work now - I wanna play hookey and play guitar but reality keeps intervening, boo hiss.
I'm sure I do to
. I'm working on the repertoire. Thought MTH Pro would of great assistance but all it does is cause cause me confusion by saying hay play a C7, and for clarity here's a diagram of a completely different chord. Well not completely but, different, expanded.
Pffftt!!, Reality, I hate that guy.
Can you give the exact example of what MTH proposed. It isn’t clear from your comments and might be important for helping us figure out how to advise you. There may be some baseline concept it assumes you know that we could help you with.
Sorry, won't be able to help you with MTH until next week at earliest. I've prioritized learning those Christmas tunes, hopefully adding them permanently to my repertoire, and they don't require MTH to learn.
Quick thought: if you are finding it confusing to be given an F13 (F A C Eb D) where the chart says F7, you have some homework to do. While I don't have a specific resource to point you to, I am sure that one of the ones discussed much earlier will help you. Basically there are families of related chords. As mentioned up-thread, it is typical for a chart to mention the family of chord rather than the particular flavor of chord in that family -- except when a particular flavor is important.
The key families are (roughly) based in on the four note triadic chord at their base. So:
major 7 chords -- where you see maj 7, you can also generally play major 9 chords and others
minor 7 chords - where you see minor 7, you can play minor 9 and others
(dominant) 7 chords - where you see a seventh chord, the 9th and 13th and 11th are often played -- and in some cases altered versions of those (like 7#9)
(altered) 7 chords - jazz makes use of a lot of altered dominant chords. These are chords where the extensions (the intervals about 7) are flatted or sharped notes not found in the chord's key. Jazz charts will call out where an altered chord is needed -- but there are times when altered chords will get used in place of dominant seventh chords. When comping behind someone, you need to get a sense of when that will be good to do and when it won't,
Additionally, there are half-diminished 7b5, diminished and augmented chords. But, there aren't a ton of variants of those.
I'd recommend that you find a good article or some videos about those families of chords since a lot jazz charts (even ones for late beginners) will assume that you know that a ninth chord is the functional equivalent of a seventh chord.
If you were to transcribe the comping that iReal Pro does, you will see that in the jazz styles it isn't limiting itself to the vanilla min/maj/dom seventh chords.
Here's away to think about the G7 (heading for C) having all these possible chord voicing choices.
The G7 can be "embellished" with every possible note that is 1/2 step away from the C Major notes since G7 is headed for a root resolution on C major:
B and C# heading for a C
D# and F heading for an E
F# and Ab heading for a G
So, when a jazz player sees a G7 he'll make a colorful voicing that choose from these extra pressure notes to drive the hormone forward.
Here's another little gem. The pressure notes in the G7 are
B (1/2 step below C)
F (1/2 step above E)
That interval is the unstable tritone and it's inversion fits perfectly into a Db7.
So, a bass player seeing a G7 might actually play a Db and it will fit well with the cluster of notes the chord player is using.
Jazz players substitute b5 alternates for any 7th chord as a mental trick to leverage this tritone ambiguity and allow the bass player to also create a 1/2 step motion to the C root.
The basic notes of the Db7 are 1/2 step away from C major:
Db to C
F to E
Ab to G
B to C
All these extra notes open melodic choices for the soloist that traverse the self-similar "whole-half" diminished scale over a G7:
G - Ab - A# - B - C# - D - E - F
I hope someone gets this that wasn't already on this level of the Jazz Game.
I got something out of formulating the explanation.
There's a follow on explanation of why the 2 in the 2-5-1 (ii-V-I) uses an Ab
and is commonly played as a ii minor b5 - like Dm7(b5):
The 5 is flatted to drive a 1/2 step tension towards the G of the 5 chord.
Then a scale is often used called the bebop scale that adds this extra Ab to the C major scale:
C - D - E - F - G - Ab - A natural - B
Jazz chord players will also embellish there chord work with 1/2 step slides
of a chord shape above or below the target chord.
If the chord are listed as Dm7 - G7 - Cmaj7 the chord player might use
chords slides of:
C#m7 into the Dm7
G7 up to Ab7 and back down to G7 (in some fancy embellished shape)
C# max down to Cmaj7
A lot of these chord ideas were derived from the Impressionists that perfected a chromatic approach to harmony that was focused of mining these 1/2 step tensions... Debussy and Chopin. Jazz players love to create pop rendering that sound a lot like the works of these two masters. (Hat tip to Ravel).
I am going to disagree with you slightly. Altered seventh chords are OFTEN used in place of dominant sevenths but they are not as universally substituted in as ninth, 11th and 13ths -- and in some cases you really want to stay away from the altered chord -- whereas the unaltered extensions are more freely substituted in.
I am someone who used altered chords too often when comping -- and now realize that I was making life harder for the soloist because it limits their choices in away that the others don't.
I think that before a player starts thinking about altered chords, they should have the basics in the families down as synonyms and think of alt chords as a separate family. And then get a feel for when to throw them in.
I think I'm working through these ideas as a soloist as the keyboard or on the guitar. So, I'm considering the harmonic choices available to the re-harmonizer of a melody.
Yes... if playing with others (which I have done very little of) you need to fit a role. I was
playing keyboards with a larger jazz band and the bass player leaned over early in the gig
and said "I feel like there are TWO bass players." I stopped using my left hand because he was the better bass player. It really made the whole experience a lot better for me since
I could really listen to where my notes were helpful. I became more of a percussionist at the keyboard with less of a role in playing every possible harmonic possibility.
Depends on their role:
soloist responsible for bass - chords and melody
'comping rhythm section
Context is always key. Sometimes debate is just a discussion between 2 competing contexts.
FWIW This is a generalization but Altered dominant chords because of the extra tension and dissonance (b9, #9, b5, #5) are best used when they resolve to their I chord (example: A7 to D major or minor) otherwise use the “mixolydian” unaltered dominants (9, 11th, 13th). I remember when I was first learning jazz guitar and substituting chords, it took me a while to realize why my altered dominants didn’t sound good. I was using them on dominant chords everywhere and finally realized the extra chord tensions needed to resolve somewhere or else they just sit there and sound bad.
I think for someone who is just beginning -- which is where OP is. It really is helpful to have the basics down solidly before complexifying before having the basics. I also think that it makes more sense to primarily focus on developing a vocabulary through learning tunes (primarily by ear) and learn the theory that will help one understand what one has internalized than to focus on theory.
(That being said there is basic theory like knowing the basic four and five note voicings of the most essential chords that will help one's ear training if one is new to jazz.)
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the OP has decided to study bluegrass banjo.
Beginners beware... you'll never make money pursuing this knowledge. It's a bit like
Musical Chess... studying the literature and practicing against some clock.
If you like the colors, you'll keep going. If not, there are many genres to explore.
I see them regularly in stores but have not yet had the desire to pick one up. So we can hold the banjo bluegrass tips for now.
For me, shell voicings opened the door to these jazz charts. That's why I recommended the Fareed Haque comping courses and the Randy Vincent book. They help reduce seemingly complex looking chord progressions into something an inexperienced player can navigate just by playing 2 notes per chord, with the bass note being handled by the bass player. Using shell voicings, I learned to comp for "Donna Lee" in a fraction of the time it would have taken to work out all chords with 4- and 5-note chord voicings.
Fareed has a gift for dishing out useful info in easy to digest chunks, informed by his years of professional experience as a recording and performing guitarist, and as a teacher.
The Randy Vincent book complements Fareed's courses with the most thorough coverage of shell voicings I've seen by anyone, then introduces 4-note rhythm guitar voicings that build on the knowledge earned from thorough study of shell voicings. Julian Lage is probably his most famous student. The book is not guaranteed to make you as skilled as Julian Lage, but if you can just set aside a bit of time every day to just focus, get your mind off the Internet and all other distractions, and work with the book, you're guaranteed to be a better player than you were before you got the book.
Ok, back to practicing "White Christmas"....
I'm getting sidetracked. I have questions, and the answers are detailed. Before I know it I'm working on something I probably should not. Engaging discipline mode.
It's going to cost me $40 to get the Fareed Haque video lesson "Jazz Comping Survival Guide". I'm intrigued but hesitant.
There are clues here we haven't discussed that related to jazz harmonic choices:
guide tones
Chord Substitution
tri-tone substitutions (based on tritone inversion self-similarity/ambiguity)
leading chords
Google any of these and report back.