most of my chords have root in the bass..

[pkirk]

Yes man, but I totally disagree, you think it's my problem but for 99,99 % of the tonal music, the third is the most important note in a chord.
Amin can't be considered as D7, there is no third... except if you play II V I in G but only in a modern quartal context.
That would sound more modal than tonal but if it runs fast there won't be any difference.

It is not complicated, I don't simplify : chords, voicings are notes, not simple shapes you've got in your hands.

That's how the tonal system has been working for three centuries and more.

I'm not that interested in arguing with you. I've been playing jazz long enough to know what it's about. I'm just pointing out to the OP chord subs is one easy way to get out of playing "root at the bottom" chords (and arpeggios), and hipping Matt to the fact that Reg's ideas (as matt presented them) are not significantly different from what most people talk about, although the terminology is not uniform.

[Lionelsax]

I'm not that interested in arguing with you. I've been playing jazz long enough to know what it's about. I'm just pointing out to the OP chord subs is one easy way to get out of playing "root at the bottom" chords (and arpeggios), and hipping Matt to the fact that Reg's ideas (as matt presented them) are not significantly different from what most people talk about, although the terminology is not uniform.

Pfff I don't care about it, I was talking about harmony not about playing jazz... Your playing is great !
I've subscribed to your channel.

[pkirk]

Pfff I don't care about it, I was talking about harmony not about playing jazz... Your playing is great !
I've subscribed to your channel.

sorry, I got a little snippy. Of course, a great thing to practice is comping in 2-note voicings, just 3rd and 7th. But I feel that too often, becoming a jazz musician is presented as if you need years of study of complicated harmonic theory to be even able to start, and yet in my experience a few simple ideas will get you a long way, *if you understand them abstractly* that is, if you recognize that many different things are just various facets of the same underlying idea, and so rather than learning dozens of rules, a more efficient thing to do is to see that many rules are just different ways of saying the same easy thing, that just has trouble being expressed verbally.

To get zen for a moment, every semester I tell my students (I don't teach music, I teach math) the 3 blind guys and an elephant story
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant as an explanation that although what I teach seems difficult, it only seems that way because human language is not well suited for explaining certain things that the brain has no trouble internalizing. I think this applies very well to music, especially standard "root movement" harmony: different people have different terminology, different "theories", etc, which makes it seem like a difficult topic. (just read any of the theory disscusions on this site for evidence of this) But eventually each player internalizes/organizes a method of understanding music that transcends any kind of theory or system, and at this stage it is not hard.

SO for example, learning many voicings and inversions of many chords (and connecting sequences of such) is one way to expand your comping toolbox. Thinking of chord substitutions is another. Reducing chords to 3rds and 7ths is another, using only guide tones (one note comping) and so forth. These are like the tusk, the trunk, the tail, etc of the elephant. Eventually your brain organizes all this in a higher level thing called "comping" and more generally "improvising" which is simple, if complicated to put into words.

For me, *purposely* failing to distinguish between an Amin and a D7 simplifies things. Of course this can go too far, for example I hate listening to improv where someone noodles on the same scale over an entire diatonic progression.

[Lionelsax]

sorry, I got a little snippy. Of course, a great thing to practice is comping in 2-note voicings, just 3rd and 7th. But I feel that too often, becoming a jazz musician is presented as if you need years of study of complicated harmonic theory to be even able to start, and yet in my experience a few simple ideas will get you a long way, *if you understand them abstractly* that is, if you recognize that many different things are just various facets of the same underlying idea, and so rather than learning dozens of rules, a more efficient thing to do is to see that many rules are just different ways of saying the same easy thing, that just has trouble being expressed verbally.

To get zen for a moment, every semester I tell my students (I don't teach music, I teach math) the 3 blind guys and an elephant story
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant as an explanation that although what I teach seems difficult, it only seems that way because human language is not well suited for explaining certain things that the brain has no trouble internalizing. I think this applies very well to music, especially standard "root movement" harmony: different people have different terminology, different "theories", etc, which makes it seem like a difficult topic. (just read any of the theory disscusions on this site for evidence of this) But eventually each player internalizes/organizes a method of understanding music that transcends any kind of theory or system, and at this stage it is not hard.

SO for example, learning many voicings and inversions of many chords (and connecting sequences of such) is one way to expand your comping toolbox. Thinking of chord substitutions is another. Reducing chords to 3rds and 7ths is another, using only guide tones (one note comping) and so forth. These are like the tusk, the trunk, the tail, etc of the elephant. Eventually your brain organizes all this in a higher level thing called "comping" and more generally "improvising" which is simple, if complicated to put into words.

For me, *purposely* failing to distinguish between an Amin and a D7 simplifies things. Of course this can go too far, for example I hate listening to improv where someone noodles on the same scale over an entire diatonic progression.

I have studied harmony, baroque, classical and romantique, that's all about tonal system, the jazz one is more open but follows quite the same rules but much more simplified in the way of playing it. In classical harmony, 7th and 3rd must go somewhere (there is no rules but laws in classical), in jazz they have their lives even if in a chord progression, they barely work like in classical harmony.
I've listened to some of your works, I think you're modern, you like quartal things, in acoustic, a 4th is a bit richer than a 5th, it has its colour but goes nowhere except on a 3rd.
During the 60's quartal harmonization came... chords that have a sense and no sense at the same time.
Like C F B E a voicing that means D-7 G7 CMaj7 but they are used in modal contexts.
They can be used in a tonal context but it's like a modal quotation.

[matt.guitarteacher]

I'm just pointing out to the OP chord subs is one easy way to get out of playing "root at the bottom" chords (and arpeggios), and hipping Matt to the fact that Reg's ideas (as matt presented them) are not significantly different from what most people talk about, although the terminology is not uniform.

I certainly wasn't trying to imply that reg invented chord substitution. I was talking about priorities, the sequence of things when you're learning chord voicings. There has been a lot of talk over the years here about learning all your drop chords (of two or three different types), for all diatonic chord types , in all inversions , across three separate string sets, then altering the roots to make them 9ths , and so on with other extensions etc. etc. Whatever you say about reg and his approach, the actual sequence he talks about him doing these things is somewhat simpler than that. And the scope and sequence of that IS pretty different imo from the "learn every inversion of every chord before making the broader connections" angle.

Taking the simple, semantics approach of naming chords by their diatonic sub, rather than spelling them as extensions also takes you a step closer to more complex relationships, and that's what I was really getting at. To be fair, most of what I've ever seen about substitution has been mainly about function: tonic, dominant, subdominant. Substitute ii7 for IV, vii for V etc, but there are others which fall outside of basic function categories. I don't know what you'd call them, reg calls them "extended diatonic relationships ".

In terms of abstraction, he talks a great deal about subs most of the time, (although he's conversant in spelling things out by alterations/modes etc. as well). Sounds like he's usually talking about subs, basic cord function, and thinking generally in terms of basic chord patterns, kind of the way you're talking about.

You're a fine player, far better than me for sure. Whatever works for you is cool. I don't quite understand the reg hang up , but I've heard you talk about it several times. He talks about doing a lot of things that others don't, but if you're fair about it and look at some of what he's saying, on a lot of levels, he's SIMPLIFYING things compared to standard practice, not making them MORE difficult. Not all levels and areas, but MANY.