The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    I'm not sure how to frame this question so I'll be understood, but I'll give it a try. I'm a little confused about the use of major I-chord vs a dominant I-chord in a Blues.

    I'm thoroughly familiar with using all dominants in a standard Blues. That's the way I've always heard and played Blues. What I'm talking about is the style where a major I-chord is played everywhere except for bar 4 where a dominant is played to lead into the IV7.

    Mickey Baker's 1st Blues study in his book is hardly recognizable as a Blues except that it follows the 12-bar Blues form. If you try to play it over a typical Blues progression using dominants on the I-chord the melody clashes pretty badly. Throughout the book Baker mentions that a Blues progression is major I-chord for 3 bars, I7 in bar 4 and dominants on the IV and V chords. In other words, a basic Blues progression but using major I-chords except in bar 4.

    Now I'm looking at some Charlie Christian transcriptions and the chord symbols conform to Baker's progression. However, what Christian plays could be played over a dominant I-chord (I think).

    Are there any Blue tunes out there (other than a Parker Blues) where you'd have to stick to major I-chords and would clash if you played dominants? "Blue Monk," for example, can be played using either a dominant I-chord or a major6. In fact, I prefer the sound of a major6 on this particular tune, but not on Blues in general.

    I hope somebody can understand what I'm asking (I'm not sure I'm being clear) and shed some light on this. I can't find an good explanation anywhere on the Internet.

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  3. #2

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    no It’s a very good question !
    and I’m looking forward to getting the answer ... !

  4. #3

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    maj6 and I7 are interchangeable. Bird Blues has maj7 for tonic chord, so b7 might clash there,,,

  5. #4

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    Many Swing-era Blues have a I6 chord.

    Blues No.1 by Mickey Baker (page 33 of the old yellow-cover book) is an interesting composition. It has G6 for four bars, over which he indicates an Em7 run. As you will doubtless know, Em7 and G6 have the same notes.

    But in bar 5 and 6 he indicates a Gm7 run. A C7 or C9 chord there would clash with the F natural in his melody, so instead of chord IV we could have Im7, Gm7. You might think this unusual, but it appears in All Blues by Miles.

    He does the same in bar 9, though up a tone with an Am7 run which should be over a D9 or D7. So, what chord does he expect? Am7? Maybe he likes the clash of a G in the melody (bar 9) against an F# of a D7 chord.

    I think some of those guys weren't too fussed about such clashes, as long as the B natural of the G chord went to a Bb of the C chord, somehow it would all work out. But compare Blues No.1 with his Blues No.3, same page.

    None of this answers your questions, but it's roughly in the same area. And these MB blues heads are really quite good.

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Rob MacKillop
    Many Swing-era Blues have a I6 chord.

    Blues No.1 by Mickey Baker (page 33 of the old yellow-cover book) is an interesting composition. It has G6 for four bars, over which he indicates an Em7 run. As you will doubtless know, Em7 and G6 have the same notes.

    But in bar 5 and 6 he indicates a Gm7 run. A C7 or C9 chord there would clash with the F natural in his melody, so instead of chord IV we could have Im7, Gm7. You might think this unusual, but it appears in All Blues by Miles.

    He does the same in bar 9, though up a tone with an Am7 run which should be over a D9 or D7. So, what chord does he expect? Am7? Maybe he likes the clash of a G in the melody (bar 9) against an F# of a D7 chord.

    I think some of those guys weren't too fussed about such clashes, as long as the B natural of the G chord went to a Bb of the C chord, somehow it would all work out. But compare Blues No.1 with his Blues No.3, same page.

    None of this answers your questions, but it's roughly in the same area. And these MB blues heads are really quite good.
    Thanks for your input, Rob. I was hoping to hear from you on this. Baker consistently uses the V minor of any dominant chord either as a substitute chord or the V minor arpeggio over the original dominant chord. But that's not what I'm confused about. Also, I'm referring to Lesson 36 "Blues Solo" (page 39) as a specific example and the whole I6 thing in general.

    You mention that the I6 was common in the swing era. But is that I6 interchangeable with a I7 as princeplanet said above? I don't think that's true in every case. It certainly isn't (to my ear) in Baker's "Blues Solo." Then again, my ear might be pre-conditioned after so many years of listening to more Chicago style Blues.

  7. #6

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    There is a range for the one chord in blues:

    major - bare hard major is rare in both blues and jazz

    seventh - very common in blues and jazz, especially when wanting to stay harmonically "out of the way" of a good soloist, or playing in a group that includes a pianist, or horn section, etc.

    ninth - very common in blues, the ninth on the one pretty much signals "this is blues, probably not jazz"

    sixth - common in blues and jazz

    69 (used as maj7) - common in jazz, used as a sub for the ninth or sixth when wanting to sound more like jazz in progressions that go I ii7 iii7, or I biidim ii7 biiidim iii7. Also for those that make the passing change with bii7b59...
    The ninth and sixth take this change too, but going from bii7b59 to I6 or reversing the change to go from I6 to bii7b59 can sound a little off in some contexts.
    Going from bii7b59 to I9 or the reverse has a settled sound, slightly dark
    Going from bii7b59 to I69 or the reverse has a brighter settled sound
    Compare these chord changes...

    G6 - Am7 - Bm7 (3 x 5 4 5 x) - (5 x 5 5 5 5) - (7 x 7 7 7 7)
    There is not much sense of movement from the G6 to the Am7

    G9 (3 x 5 4 5 x) - Am7 - Bm7
    A more distinct movement

    G69 (3 x 2 2 3 x) - Am7 - Bm7
    A clearer brighter movement


    sixth/7 - very common in jazz, harmonically sophisticated, it easily relates to other chords well; compare these chords...

    (x 10 12 12 12 x) - G major
    (x 10 12 10 12 x) - G seventh
    (x 10 9 10 10 x) - G ninth
    (x 10 x 12 12 12) - G sixth
    (x 10 x 9 10 10) - G 69
    (x 8 9 9 8 x) - G6/F

    Play and hear below how G6/F as the one chord plays well with these nearby chords before moving to the four chord D9...

    (x 8 9 9 8 x) - G6/F
    (x 9 10 10 11 x)
    (x 8 9 9 8 x) - G6/F
    (x 6 7 7 8 x)
    (x 8 9 9 8 x) - G6/F
    (x 9 10 10 11 x)
    (x 8 9 9 10 x)
    (x 8 9 8 11 x) - think of this as Gaug/F with a b3 voiced on top or Db(13)
    (x 7 8 7 8 x) - D9...

    Best way is to play and hear.

  8. #7

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    I guess you take it on a case by case basis. But some guys started using a Bm7 arpeggio over the final G chord - see Blues No.2, especially after using a Cm7 arpeggio against the D7 chord - a very cool thing to do. So the F# of the Bm7 would imply a GMaj7 I chord.

    As a general rule, jazz players like sixes, while Chicago Blues players like flat sevens. There are a million exceptions to that, though.

    You could also see the F# as a "lower auxiliary" to the G, rather than as a genuine major 7th, much like a Bb to B natural (as in MB's Blues Solo measure 1). Any note could have a lower auxiliary, though some were more favoured than others.

    I think chords were more fluid than we tend to imagine they were, especially as regards thirds, fifths, ninths and sevenths.

  9. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jack E Blue
    I'm not sure how to frame this question so I'll be understood, but I'll give it a try. I'm a little confused about the use of major I-chord vs a dominant I-chord in a Blues.

    I'm thoroughly familiar with using all dominants in a standard Blues. That's the way I've always heard and played Blues. What I'm talking about is the style where a major I-chord is played everywhere except for bar 4 where a dominant is played to lead into the IV7.

    Mickey Baker's 1st Blues study in his book is hardly recognizable as a Blues except that it follows the 12-bar Blues form. If you try to play it over a typical Blues progression using dominants on the I-chord the melody clashes pretty badly. Throughout the book Baker mentions that a Blues progression is major I-chord for 3 bars, I7 in bar 4 and dominants on the IV and V chords. In other words, a basic Blues progression but using major I-chords except in bar 4.

    Now I'm looking at some Charlie Christian transcriptions and the chord symbols conform to Baker's progression. However, what Christian plays could be played over a dominant I-chord (I think).

    Are there any Blue tunes out there (other than a Parker Blues) where you'd have to stick to major I-chords and would clash if you played dominants? "Blue Monk," for example, can be played using either a dominant I-chord or a major6. In fact, I prefer the sound of a major6 on this particular tune, but not on Blues in general.

    I hope somebody can understand what I'm asking (I'm not sure I'm being clear) and shed some light on this. I can't find an good explanation anywhere on the Internet.
    I6 and I6/9 chord have the advantage of openness when it comes to the seventh.

    Parker liked Imaj7 and IV7, I7 in bar 4

    Tbh I think the basic modern jazz theory of constructing seventh chords leads to people thinking for about this than they would have in the day.... back then the major type accompaniment chords didn’t have a seventh very often.

    Baker was an old school cat.... this is what he would have known. 6th chords...

    But then you do hear 7 chords too.

    But even on a dom7, major seventh can sound good if it’s played in the right way...

  10. #9

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    Check this weirdness out though. Piano comps dom chords.



    You fail jazz school, Miles.

    TBF Bird’s cool blues melody has a major 7th on both the I and IV with dominants in the comping so he’d fail too. Errol Garner waits for the melody to finish before playing his chords. *ears*.

    See what happens when you ask apparently innocent questions? It’s almost like real music is more complicated than the simple smug rules of jazz theory.

    Seriously what do people think about the fact that if the young Miles auditioned for a jazz school now, he wouldn’t get in?
    Last edited by christianm77; 11-23-2019 at 04:55 PM.

  11. #10
    Thanks for all the responses. I'm still confused, but maybe I'm over thinking this.

    Pauln: I'll have to go over your post with guitar in hand. Looks like some interesting stuff there.

    What I'm getting from Rob and Christian is that 6th chords were the norm back in the day.

    At this stage of the game I'll probably never even play with a bass player let alone play at a jam session. However, I do get together with another guitarist and we've been having discussions about 6th chords vs 7ths on Blues.

    Thanks again.

  12. #11

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    Ad far as I am concerned blues goes like this:

    | I | | I | | I | | I | | IV | ...

    I is major, you can add extensions, or sub to taste. Most usual is I7 in bar 4, for whatever the reason. Also, it is not one steady chord. It's actually a riff. If you can not hear it in Bird, listen to it in Status Quo.

  13. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vladan
    Ad far as I am concerned blues goes like this:

    | I | | I | | I | | I | | IV | ...

    I is major, you can add extensions, or sub to taste. Most usual is I7 in bar 4, for whatever the reason. Also, it is not one steady chord. It's actually a riff. If you can not hear it in Bird, listen to it in Status Quo.
    The Quo also understand chromaticism and 1st inversion major chords into target root position a semitone higher.

    They just hear it of course :-)

  14. #13

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    I must do an Xmas special on Slade. Underrated musicians....

  15. #14

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    Blues music itself goes beyond rules ...countless examples Miles Trane Monk and beyond then Hendrix and many others ..

    I use all 12 tones in my solos against blues changes ..what wrong notes??..

    the very early "country blues" were just major chords sometime two chords some time three some time just one..

    when jazz got hold of the blues and began moving the changes around like on Stormy Monday..and Parker style progressions..the rules went south so to speak...

    if you want to play MA6 or MA7 as a ONE chord and it sounds good and you can back it up with other harmonic support ..do it..I use wide voiced 6/9 chords in blues progressions and they work fine

    Groups like Steely Dan made a standard MA7 chord sound new and very cool .. today the new "kids" are using all sorts of altered blues sounds..see John Scofield about this

  16. #15

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    I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. I get the impression that the history of the musics are much more messy and interesting than we often read in music histories. Also from my experience, most upcoming players now learn their blues starting with John Mayer, Bonamassa or maybe Clapton and SRV and are interested in going into fusion and post-Rosenwinkel music, so the disparity in approaches is super pronounced....

    It’s not that blues started off simple and evolved. Actually there’s several points where blues progressions got simpler.... the 12 bar progression never reflected the rural blues tradition, it was always a tidied up version of what folk musicians were doing. Of course we don’t have too much of that music recorded, so I’m going on what I hear from later artists... and of course we have to consider WC Handy in this.

    In fact if you listen to early blues artists, Ma Rainey and so on, the crossover with jazz is obvious. I’m not sure the two things were so separated back then. Lonnie Johnson with Eddie Lang and Louis Armstrong. Sidney Bechet playing with Josh White in the late 30s and so on....

    By the time Robert Johnson cut his iconic recordings in 36/37, jazz was well established all over the US and the swing era was about to break..... and his music often has progressions we might associate with the jazz of the time.

    in terms of the progressions themselves secondary dominants, #ivo7 and so on were well established in blues progressions of 1920s jazz.... They didn’t always play them.... Sometimes stripped down and simpler, sometimes slightly modified. Early Ellington is worth a look here. There was often a very strong connection with the rural blues tradition to my ears, vocal effects and articulations. Slide guitar and harp does not sound out of place in this music as it would in bebop.

    Later on the music branched off, took different directions, but while jazz and blues I don’t think were precisely the same thing in the pre war era, there was a sense of there being a spectrum from say, Artie Shaw through to say, Blind Lemon Jefferson, with artists like Billie Holiday perhaps being somewhere in the middle. (And as Clapton points out, most of the blues artists he met were actually looking for jazz gigs but ended up playing that music instead.)

    But the big difference that’s really important and not simply decoration is that the IV7 chord in bar 10 is absent in this music, and afaik is a feature of Chicago blues. That is often very hard for people who cut their teeth playing later blues music to get used to, but a good popular example from the later era is Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode, which doesn’t go
    To IV in bar 10.

    And it’s unfair to say Parker was the catalyst for removing the blues from jazz - he always referenced the blues even in his more complex compositions- check out the blues lick in confirmation for example - but certainly the players after him like Sonny Stitt developed the more harmonic, classical side of Parker’s music. I believe some artists were keen to distance themselves from that history, and instead look to the future. It’s easy to see why the newly confident and middle class communities in places like postwar Detroit were keen to set that behind them.

    Anyway, just some thoughts....

  17. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Slide guitar and harp does not sound out of place in this music as it would in bebop.
    Have you heard what GG does with Donna Lee...? If not, just wait for it... he switches pickups at 1:49 and then... (!)


  18. #17

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    See , this is the thing with ' jazz theory ' , it tries to abstract a set of rules from a music that was never approached that way , not until the late 50s .
    Everything you play depends for it's success on musical context ; so , if your line is strong enough , rhythmic , melodically interesting and you play it with real conviction it will sound good .
    A good accompanist will hear what you're playing and adjust , or at least keep out of the way - like Dizzy on piano when Miles Davis plays that E natural on a F7 chord in ' Now's the time ' - which in any case is an anticipation of the Bb7#11 in the next bar .
    You can be fairly free with your interpretation of chords and the independence of your line but it really depends on context , there are no hard and fast rules .

    There's a famous Parker recording of Slow boat to China , I transcribed it and realised that at one point in the changes , Parker was playing the wrong changes . Not a substitution but a real clanger but you don't notice it because you're caught up in the drama of his lines , the paino is not playing much and is fairly quiet and it's taken pretty fast .

    Incidentally , I saw Slade play live in the early 80s and they were absolutely storming .

  19. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by djg
    no weirdness. common bebop practice aka that's what bird did.



    check out the fun right after bird hits the maj7 in bar 1 of his solo.
    Well yes. I think you missed the sarcasm in my post.

    Anyway, modern jazz theory is definitive, the music is frequently inaccurate.

    Here’s the thing. In the book ‘Early Jazz’ Gunther Schuller is identifying what he sees as mistakes in Louis Armstrong records - IVm chords played against #ivo7 and so on.

    Ethan Iverson suggests a fairly logical rebuttal. What Louis, Miles and Parker did should probably be regarded as correct.

    Now this brings us to the issue of pedagogy. What do you think about the fact that that Miles solo (considered notable enough to be arranged by Red Garland for piano) would get a low mark in any jazz college? That Miles would fail the entrance audition in most likelyhood?

    Is it possible that jazz has become a rationalist community of practice divorced from its roots and more interested in nurturing craftsmanship than creativity?

    And how this relates to the issue of accountability and measurement of outcomes which at least have the aim of making things fair in what maybe an intrinsically unfair situation?

    And if this is fair to some degree how do we address this? I think most jazz educators are aware of these things to some extent, but many don’t seem to be....

  20. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rob MacKillop
    I guess you take it on a case by case basis.

    I think chords were more fluid than we tend to imagine they were, especially as regards thirds, fifths, ninths and sevenths.
    This...

  21. #20

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    And how this relates to the issue of accountability and measurement of outcomes which at least have the aim of making things fair in what maybe an intrinsically unfair situation?
    I think you've hit the nail on the head ( or rem acu tetigisti as Jeeves would say )

    For colleges to get state funding they need to have measurable outcomes and so a fixed and explicit set of musical criteria to measure students against . This is different to , maybe even exclusive of , a living musical culture .

    Miles Davis may well have got into Berklee ( or Trinity Laban ) but I bet Lester Young wouldn't have .

  22. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by djg
    i would think that it's rather pointless to speculate how young player from 1947 would fare in 2019. he did get accepted to juillard though.
    But he didn't play jazz at juiliard, if I remember correctly.

    I might remember it wrong though.

  23. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by djg
    i would think that it's rather pointless to speculate how young player from 1947 would fare in 2019. he did get accepted to juillard though.

    i know nothing about jazz schools these days but 30 years ago i did go to what was probably the best jazz school in the world at that time. of course a 19 year old miles would've been accepted there and then (hey, i did...).

    and none of my teachers would've considered IVm over #IVdim a mistake. these were all world class players, arrangers and theorists as well.

    i mean, this major7 over blues, bIIIdim over VI7, IVm over #IVdim is all incredibly basic stuff.

    has jazz education really gone so much downhill since my student days?
    I didn’t go to jazz college so cant tell you first hand. Just worked it out using my ears and used my limited grey matter once I got interested to find out what players were really playing rather then a what the books said they were.

    So, I assumed that stuff to be common knowledge among the jazz graduates I know. It isn’t. Those that do know it found it out themselves. It wasn’t taught.

    Also UK aside, you presumably know who Gunther Schuller was, right? And while your professors would have disagreed with him, he was the one who wrote the book....

    It seems like Ethan is discovering this stuff himself, listening and talking to the old players too... so maybe this stuff is less common knowledge than you think. Comments on the forum would seem to suggest so.

  24. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by greveost
    But he didn't play jazz at juiliard, if I remember correctly.

    I might remember it wrong though.
    Iirc He was classical. There was no jazz programme until recently.

  25. #24

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pycroft
    I think you've hit the nail on the head ( or rem acu tetigisti as Jeeves would say )

    For colleges to get state funding they need to have measurable outcomes and so a fixed and explicit set of musical criteria to measure students against . This is different to , maybe even exclusive of , a living musical culture .

    Miles Davis may well have got into Berklee ( or Trinity Laban ) but I bet Lester Young wouldn't have .
    OTOH the democratisation of education requires accountability.

    There’s nothing accountable about the apprenticeship system. There’s certainly areas of it that are open to critique.

    So can we find another way?

    My ideal lesson as a teacher is when a student comes in and says ‘i was checking this out but what’s going on?’ And we exchange knowledge and do problem solving together. I think transmission teaching of ‘jazz harmony’ achieves very little.
    Last edited by christianm77; 11-24-2019 at 09:45 AM.

  26. #25

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Iirc He was classical. There was no jazz programme until recently.

    Exactly how I remember it.