The Minor Cliche

[Christian Miller]

Dizzy uses it alllllllll the time over minor key tunes or ii-Vs

Ah yeah. Sure, bird too on occasion.


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[pamosmusic]

But can't we drop the chormatic part after the head? I'm looking for things to do on the 5th time round the chorus, when the song is established and I'm bored of the D C# # B move.

How many ways are there to link up Dm and Gm?

Lots ...

Dm Eo7 Dm6/F F#o7 ?

Does that work?

Dunno ... play it and find out.

You don't have to literally play that chromatic line all in a row, but the spirit of it is cool and you have to get where you're going.

I think a big part of this comes from looking for these options with other chord progressions too. I do a lot of fiddling with my little shell voicings and just seeing what happens when the melody note moves out or down by half steps (stole that from Vic Juris), or moves by scale steps, or whatever. So seeing those options can be a bit of a medium term skill to hone.

[AllanAllen]

On the other hand if we take the chromatic descent as bassline, there's a million chord progressions on it, and without getting into the woods I'll just say this is a source of fun substitutions.

But.... this is the road I wanted the thread to go down.

[AllanAllen]

I just play on the minor chord m8. Look at the melody actually - amazing note choices


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I'm talking about comping here. Not improv, I'm nowhere near good enough to get bored during improv.

[ragman1]

You could try this which I just worked out. Quite pretty.

Cm7
B7b5
Eb6/Bb
F7/A

8x888x
7x786x
6x554x
5x354x

[ragman1]

PS. It's nicer than you think. Here's a bit of My Funny Valentine where the cliche occurs twice over 4 bars in the first 16 bars.

[Christian Miller]

I do quite enjoy the omnibus progression, chromatic contrary motion



The chord symbols being

C G/B Bb7 Dm/A Bb/Ab G7 C

[ragman1]

There's another way too. It's not very chromatic but it sounds okay. Very strummable.

Cm
Eb+
EbM7
Am7b5

x3554x
x6544x
x6878x
5x554x

[Mick-7]

There's another way too. It's not very chromatic but it sounds okay. Very strummable.

Cm
Eb+
EbM7
Am7b5

x3554x
x6544x
x6878x
5x554x

The obvious progression would be this. Why that Am7b5?

Eb6 | x-6-5-5-4-x | >> Eb+ | x-6-5-4-4-x | >> EbM7 | x-6-5-3-3-x |

[Mick-7]

I do quite enjoy the omnibus progression, chromatic contrary motion



The chord symbols being

C G/B Bb7 Dm/A Bb/Ab G7 C

Your "G6" chord has a 7th instead of a 6th in it. And why write the 3rd twice (unison?) in the final C chord?

[Christian Miller]

Your "G6" chord has a 7th instead of a 6th in it. And why write the 3rd twice (unison?) in the final C chord?

I think you have misread G/B as G6. Actually that should have been G7/B as you say it has an F. That said you need to be careful about the voicing because the top note needs to be a G for the contrary motion

You are probably alluding to the fact that traditional SATB harmony generally frowns upon doubling the third.

I didn’t write the example in question, so I don’t know really. But putting the tenor on G creates a consecutive fifth, and the alto is on the F which should descend to E. Tenor going to C is the best solution in my opinion, then you have all the classic archetype cadential voice movements. You do however get a direct octave in the lower voices and the chord remains ‘incomplete’.

It’s off Wikipedia if that explains anything?


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[Christian Miller]

There's also this. This being 'off teh interwebs' and I haven't checked the chord symbols. Despite it being the inspiration for Insenatez, the bass line movement is different, starting on the third of the key in the Chopin and on the root in the Jobim - but the middle line chromatic voice leading is very similar in spirit, and of course the melody starts off very similar.

Notice the #9 in the last bar. (D against B7alt). We get #9-b9-1 which becomes the 5 of Em in next bar. Which I always think of as the bebop cadence. Barry adored Chopin btw, often mentioned him in class and played him in recital up to the end of his life.

(Also the 13th in the melody against the V7 chord in the cadence is so Chopin it is sometimes called the Chopin 6th. Bear in mind this is in like 85% of jazz standards, especially in the final cadence.)

[Christian Miller]

Unfortunately this one isn't on the lovely Jean-Paul Brodbeck Chopin project record (with Kurt Rosenwinkel - one of my favourites of recent years) but here's a nice version from Peter Beets:

(Peter of course being another Barry student)

I'm not sure why he's smiling so much haha...

[ragman1]

Presumably you're reversing the Jobim/Chopin connection. No reason it wouldn't work for non-Jobim tunes but it would have to be okay with the melody.

I think the idea here is to give Allan different ways of playing the usual cliche. I'm not sure how your two Chopin examples fit. One's major and the Em one's got lots of chords and we only need two bars (or four for a long one). I suppose we can just pick which of the descending chords would fit. Or are you just posting any old thing?

I mean, how would you apply Chopin to Funny Valentine, for example?

[Christian Miller]

Presumably you're reversing the Jobim/Chopin connection. No reason it wouldn't work for non-Jobim tunes but it would have to be okay with the melody.

I have no idea what this means. Jobim had a Time Machine?

I think the idea here is to give Allan different ways of playing the usual cliche. I'm not sure how your two Chopin examples fit. One's major and the Em one's got lots of chords and we only need two bars (or four for a long one). I suppose we can just pick which of the descending chords would fit. Or are you just posting any old thing?

I mean, how would you apply Chopin to Funny Valentine, for example?

I suppose may have to exert their imagination, wit and ear to make use of it.


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[pamosmusic]

Your "G6" chord has a 7th instead of a 6th in it. And why write the 3rd twice (unison?) in the final C chord?

The 6/5 and 6/4 etc aren’t chord symbols, they’re figured bass referring to chord inversions.

[pamosmusic]

I mean, how would you apply Chopin to Funny Valentine, for example?

It’s a four-bar progression with chromatic voice-leading taking you from i to iv on the fifth bar … see if it works.

[Alter]

An easy way to comp for a line cliche is A-7, A-6, A-7, A-6. Or play A-7, G#dim7, A/G (so a drop 3 or drop 2 inversion of an A-7 depending on the string), F#-7b5. Doable both on the fifth and sixth string.

A-7 chords
5x555x 4x345x 3x221x 2x221x

E-7 chords
x7978x x6757x x5545x x4545x

[Christian Miller]

I should probably do a video on this

The thing I find quite important about all of this is that even though the progressions look very different in chord symbols often they are based around supporting the same melody as well as the same sort of baseline. So there’s more interchangeability than one might think from looking at the functional relationships.

Obviously the link between

Dm A7/C# D7/C G7/B C7/Bb
And
Dm C#o7 Cm6 G7/B Bbmaj7

Is not beyond the remit of chord theory (if we look at Cm6 as a type of D7 sub) but honestly wouldn’t have occurred to me to swap one for the other before I started thinking about melodies and basslines. (Although not all melodies would fit both… that’s just the way of it and no theory can help with that…)

Another thing - if you are the sole harmonic instrument playing a standard sans arrangement in a band (which is often the case for gigs) when accompanying the head your obligation is not to the chord symbols but to the bass and melody. So you have an opportunity for some creativity in terms of the middle voice harmony

On the solos your priority imo is to keep it open and responsive to the soloist.

[AllanAllen]

I used a few of everyone’s suggestions on yesterday’s gig. Nobody complained or complemented my effort, so… success?

[pingu]

xx7555
xx6557
xx5558
x24232
(xx3210)

there’s a tune in there somewhere

[Mick-7]

The 6/5 and 6/4 etc aren’t chord symbols, they’re figured bass referring to chord inversions.

Yeah, I vaguely recalled that but Christian wrote G/B for the chord symbol so thought he implied G6 rather than the dominant chord.

I used a few of everyone’s suggestions on yesterday’s gig. Nobody complained or complemented my effort, so… success?

Probably. If the trick you used is obvious, it usually means it was done clumsily.

I think that George Van Eps Harmonic Mechanisms books are full of this stuff, I should actually read them.... nah, on second thought, they have not collected enough dust yet on my shelf.

[garybaldy]

Covered Blue Skies at a residential care home today. Two key changes - Em > Gm > Cm. My solo in Gm!

[Christian Miller]

Oh I found this knocking around on my drive. Might be better than verbiage.

[Mick-7]

Trying to understand what the firewood pic has to do with this piece, maybe a remedy for the damp monastery?

"It is believed that the title "Quelles larmes au fond du cloître humide?" ("What tears (are shed) from the depths of the damp monastery?") corresponds to Prélude No. 4."