Method for playing swing rhythm chords from a bassline

[Christian Miller]

Just done this worksheet which will probably turn into a video. This was triggered by an article by Ethan Iverson were he pointed out that chord players in the era before chord symbols (so before the bop era) would make up their chords from baselines. It struck me that some kind of rule of the octave might be of use in doing this in the same way as we see for baroque music.

This is something I used for a long time in swing bands - stepwise chordal motion is a real staple of that music, as well as strong, melodic baselines. I had a sort of mental look up table of which chords fit on which degrees. This is related to but not exactly the same as the Barry Harris scale of chords.

Be interested if people find this concept helpful! I've included some real world examples. (I also think this is a concept relevant to more modern forms of jazz - see my Rosenwinkel video for example.)

[rpjazzguitar]

I spent a few minutes trying to understand the history of chord symbols.

1920's sheet music was typically a piano score. Chord symbols apparently started getting popular in the 30s. Unclear to me how the banjo was handled. Did the banjoist need to read piano scores?

Piano score made sense because they were selling the sheet music for people to play at home, typically on piano.

Of course, that was the commercial chart. What did the musicians themselves use?

Per Chatgpt the advent of jazz propelled the use of chord symbols. Presumably because it facilitated jazz comping in a way that a piano score does not.

So, then, when Eddie Lang accompanied Joe Venuti and Eddie played all those chords -- did he have to figure them out from a piano score?

[Christian Miller]

Authentic 20s (and maybe 30s) dance band banjo and guitar parts are apparently completely scored. I know a band in London who uses the original music.

(Bass lines would have been written in these situations. Improvised walking bass did not appear until the bop era. So musicians may have been able to look at the bass chart too?)

I have no idea if Eddie or Joe wrote their tunes down. They may have just worked out the arrangement without scoring it. I really don’t know.

Some of the big band stuff from the late 30s was never scored at all, for example the Basie band arrangements. These bands played together a lot, and given the arrangements of the tune the rhythm section would be fine playing the usual changes and memorising the hits and stops etc. it’s still somewhat true of later big band music, if you know the song, not all of it, but quite a bit. And the swing stuff is really riff based.

I’d love to know more, I wish there was more info on this stuff.

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[rpjazzguitar]

A horn player I know said that he had played in big bands with no charts. I remember hearing a story years ago about a guy faking 4th chair of some horn.

Did everybody know the same recording? Is that how they did it? Were there rules? Head arrangements either you remembered or they replaced you?

[Christian Miller]

A horn player I know said that he had played in big bands with no charts. I remember hearing a story years ago about a guy faking 4th chair of some horn.

Did everybody know the same recording? Is that how they did it? Were there rules? Head arrangements either you remembered or they replaced you?

I’m not an expert, but I get the impression sections behaved in a very clear way. Saxes for example tended to play the melody, and there were formulas for harmonising melodies of which 4 way close and drop 2 mechanical voicings are the best known. Trumpets played punchy chord stabs, and so on.

I think there’s a lot of stuff people would have known. Tbh after a few years of playing shiny stockings, I do know that chart lol. I should try some of those tunes off the book sometime


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[Tal_175]

So I guess quarter note basslines didn't come until bebop either?
Is this the kind of guidance you are using to come up with the chords?
https://www.singanewsong.org/byu/the...e%20Octave.pdf

[Bop Head]

So I guess quarter note basslines didn't come until bebop either? [...]

Not true.

[Christian Miller]

So I guess quarter note basslines didn't come until bebop either?

There was a period when bass players would double up the bass line, so simply turn the half note into repeated quarter notes. This was more appropriate to the Kansas city flat four style. Parker of course came from Kansas city jazz, so that style is often seen as a step towards modern jazz.

People usually credit Walter Page of the Basie band as moving more towards a walking bass style, but as I understand it was transitional. Ethan’s transcribed his bass line on Lady Be Good (with Lester) in this blog article, if you scroll down a little.

Oh, Lady! | DO THE M@TH

You can see it’s a mix between the double up style - for instance he walks up G G B B C C C# C# D D in the first three bars - and some scale and arpeggio linking figures.

Another big change was technique. Bass slowly became less percussive and more legato.

But these tuba style set half note bass lines never died out. You can hear them in later jazz, usually in the head. You’ll often find fully written out bass parts in big band arrangements. Walking is used as a way to kick it up a gear and to bring in the blowing. Take the 50s Miles recordings of standards for example. Good bass players know these ways through these tune.

Is this the kind of guidance you are using to come up with the chords?
https://www.singanewsong.org/byu/the...e%20Octave.pdf

Well this is what I had in mind as a general principle, but in terms of the chords, not really. Mostly I’m just thinking about what I would most often play on that degree. It so happens that there’s some similarity with this c18 ROTO, but that’s perhaps unsurprising. Jazz inherited a lot of harmony from european music, but was slowly moving towards a more ‘jazz’ approach to comping chords - notice the 6th in the I chord for example. I associate this much more with late 30s/40s music than 20s (where the basic chords are often triadic.)

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[Christian Miller]

I spent a few minutes trying to understand the history of chord symbols.

1920's sheet music was typically a piano score. Chord symbols apparently started getting popular in the 30s. Unclear to me how the banjo was handled. Did the banjoist need to read piano scores?

Piano score made sense because they were selling the sheet music for people to play at home, typically on piano.

Of course, that was the commercial chart. What did the musicians themselves use?

Per Chatgpt the advent of jazz propelled the use of chord symbols. Presumably because it facilitated jazz comping in a way that a piano score does not.

So, then, when Eddie Lang accompanied Joe Venuti and Eddie played all those chords -- did he have to figure them out from a piano score?

I read a paper discussing the history of chord symbols Mark Abel * Radical openness: Chord symbols, musical abstraction and modernism (2016) and it cited only an online article by Gerry Gates [sic], ‘Chord Symbols As We Know Them – Where Did They Come From?’ which can no longer be found on the Berklee site.

This is the sort of frustrating stuff I run into all the time. I daresay you read the same paper? So Gates says chord symbols were first used in the 30s, but I have little other info.

Ethan for his part gave no sources for his assertion.

I might email professor *Jerry* Gates directly and see if he has a copy of the article.

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[Average Joe]

I read a paper discussing the history of chord symbols Mark Abel * Radical openness: Chord symbols, musical abstraction and modernism (2016) and it cited only an online article by Gerry Gates [sic], ‘Chord Symbols As We Know Them – Where Did They Come From?’ which can no longer be found on the Berklee site.

This is the sort of frustrating stuff I run into all the time. I daresay you read the same paper? So Gates says chord symbols were first used in the 30s, but I have little other info.

Ethan for his part gave no sources for his assertion.

I might email professor *Jerry* Gates directly and see if he has a copy of the article.

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I don't know that Gates' blog post is terribly informative, but it is readable through the Internet Archive
The Writer's Corner Blog - music arranging, music writing

[Christian Miller]

I don't know that Gates' blog post is terribly informative, but it is readable through the Internet Archive
The Writer's Corner Blog - music arranging, music writing

Great thanks - a useful little bit of oral history. Not exactly a definitive account though. Tbh I have lost a lot of respect for a lot of music/music edu academia on this basis. Following up the sources is valuable …. Often confidently stated conclusions are built on sand.

With an apparently scholarly article quoting informal internet blogs it becomes really easy to see how Woozles get started. Imagine if I wrote an article citing both the paper and Gate’s article for example. Who would check?

It’s not that such sources shouldn’t be cited but it’s not an equivalent for citing a scholarly researched text. Unfortunately such texts are rare in jazz, as so much of the history is oral. Berliner’s is one of the few books with that level of rigour. (No index article for chord symbols in an almost 900 page book though!)

I think there was a Nikhil Hogan interview with a musicologist (?) that touched on the history of chord symbols, but Nikhil’s stuff is really hard to search for on YouTube. Ah well…

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[rpjazzguitar]

I just came across an old Gershwin chart for Embraceable You with guitar chord grids and chord symbols. I can't tell if the chart dates to 1930, even though the song does.

There is a printed note on the chart that the grids are for guitar and the chord symbols are for banjo and ukulele.

To my surprise, the song has a long verse, which is repeated. Apparently sung by first the male character and then the female in the play. Then, the body of the tune is also repeated, the second time with the female (Molly) singing a different lyric than the one we've all heard. Ira Gershwin, a very clever lyricist, rhymes delectable and respectable in the second chorus.

[Christian Miller]

I just came across an old Gershwin chart for Embraceable You with guitar chord grids and chord symbols. I can't tell if the chart dates to 1930, even though the song does.

There is a printed note on the chart that the grids are for guitar and the chord symbols are for banjo and ukulele.

To my surprise, the song has a long verse, which is repeated. Apparently sung by first the male character and then the female in the play. Then, the body of the tune is also repeated, the second time with the female (Molly) singing a different lyric than the one we've all heard. Ira Gershwin, a very clever lyricist, rhymes delectable and respectable in the second chorus.

Sounds like an original sheet music - uke grids were common in the early days in fact (it was a craze at the time.) But they were often pretty sketchy and certainly didn’t deal with the harmony in total, and especially not the bass line. Professional musicians worked from the piano score apparently.

Lots of interesting context in the original sheet music!


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[Bop Head]

Sounds like an original sheet music - uke grids were common in the early days in fact (it was a craze at the time.) But they were often pretty sketchy and certainly didn’t deal with the harmony in total, and especially not the bass line. Professional musicians worked from the piano score apparently.

Lots of interesting context in the original sheet music!


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Can't find the article or interview ATM but Hal Galper worked from uke chord grids IIRC while studying at Berklee.

EDIT: Found it. Cadence Magazine Oral History-Part 1 | Hal Galper

[RLetson]

I have a compendium volume of standards--100 Best Songs of the '20s and 30's (Gramercy Books, 1973)--in which the charts appear to be reproduced directly from the original sheet music (visible range of print quality and engraving), and I see what rpjazzguitar has noted in some of them. "But Not For Me," for example, has a uke tuning at the top (A-D-F#-B) and uke chord frames, along with the note at the bottom that the "Uke diagrams are names of chords adaptable to Banjo or Guitar." The preceding tune, "Body and Soul," has chord frames for guitar. Both charts carry 1930 copyrights, and I suspect these are original--I've see many similar charts in other collections. Interestingly enough, many of the 1920s selections have guitar, not uke chord frames. I do wonder, though, whether some of the chord names might have been added to the charts later--the same typeface recurs, and it doesn't look quite like that of the rest of the charts'.

[rpjazzguitar]

Ebay has vintage sheet music for sale, including Embraceable You. The cover page lists a number of different formats, vocal, piano, Bb instrument, band etc.

There are several for sale. Some are listed as 1930, but it really isn't clear if that's the copyright date of the song vs the date the sheet music was printed. There's a 1949 version which looks the same, but has chord symbols in a different font.

The printed notes might be interpreted to suggest that pianists were expected to read their part and that chord symbols were for lesser lights. That's consistent with the idea that chord symbols bubbled up from the street, so to speak -- and the publishers were figuring out that the banjo and uke players would would buy sheet music if there were chord symbols.

[Christian Miller]

I’m popping up a link this lovely little article from - yet again - Ethan. He discusses the history of sheet music briefly and plays a few standards in their original forms.

You have to sign up to his thing to get the full scans of the sheet music.

Original Sheet Music of Two Dozen Jazz Standards | DO THE M@TH

The anecdote about Barry Harris asking Mike Kanan about a chord is sweet.


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[Christian Miller]

Ebay has vintage sheet music for sale, including Embraceable You. The cover page lists a number of different formats, vocal, piano, Bb instrument, band etc.

There are several for sale. Some are listed as 1930, but it really isn't clear if that's the copyright date of the song vs the date the sheet music was printed. There's a 1949 version which looks the same, but has chord symbols in a different font.

The printed notes might be interpreted to suggest that pianists were expected to read their part and that chord symbols were for lesser lights. That's consistent with the idea that chord symbols bubbled up from the street, so to speak -- and the publishers were figuring out that the banjo and uke players would would buy sheet music if there were chord symbols.

The other thing is that early TuneDex and Fake Book lead sheets had very simple chords, major minor and dominant mostly.

The more complex chords we see in the Real Book and later the systematised notation in the legal New Real Books all lie well in the future. I think these innovations had a lasting effect on the way we conceptualise harmony and improvisation.

(And as Ethan indicates you still lose details in the song.)

The (for me) obscure side of this history is what was happening in the big band charts? What’s the timeline for that?


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[docsteve]

I heard a snippet from a Dr. John interview, saying that he had found some old Big Band sheet music somewhere, and was surprised how little was written out. In his words, (imagine New Orleans 9th ward drawl) "these cats could play, and they could make it sound good".

Those charts I play from have every extension written out. Sometimes I play them, sometimes I regard them as indication of avoid notes.