The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    So I was going through these songs with a student:





    both share a common root in the song Scarborough Fair as performed by British folk legend Martin Carthy



    One common factor between these songs is this voicing:

    0 5 4 0 3 0

    in various capoings.... Simon plays

    x 0 4 0 3 0

    I then watched Peter Bernstein talk about how Kind of Blue changed the sound of the minor chord, and something went ‘dong!’ in my head.

    he really defines the change in terms of adding the b7 to the minor chord...

    Because that voicing is in the first case very much that sound:

    1 b7 9 b3 b7 1

    in the second it’s a sus sound.

    1 6 b7 4 5

    (Lage Lund demonstrates a moveable version of this shape as an inversion of the maj9th chord incidentally.)

    Scarborough Fair is a Dorian melody as a lot these old tunes are. But the use of harmony is strikingly 20th century.

    And I remembered that McLaughlin uses the exact same voicing in the first few moments of the album ‘in a Silent Way.’ This voicing also pops up in Blues. Jimi uses it in Voodoo Chile Slight Return for instance.

    Anyway I bring it up because there modal voicings are obviously a big part of 60s music. I’m thinking of Joni, for instance, or Davy Graham’s DADGAD tuning and the way many in Irish and Scottish music seem to have adopted lush modal voicings that in another context would sound jazz. Also John Martyn (a big fan of the Miles album as you can certainly hear in his early 70s work) would use alternate tunings including DADGAD instinctively to get lush modal sounds much like Joni did.

    And then of course there’s Pentangle. Bert Jansch and John Renbourn were clearly very interested in jazz.

    any thoughts on these connections? How what we think of as ‘jazz sounds’ ended up in folk music, folk rock and acoustic singer songwriter material? No doubt people were eclectic listeners with big musical imaginations, but I’m interesting in learning more about the connections...
    Last edited by christianm77; 05-20-2020 at 08:16 AM.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    The Troubadour on Old Brompton Road was the headquarters of the 1960s folk revival, but also hosted jazz gigs. It was there that Alexis Korner discovered Charlie Watts.

  4. #3

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    Another example...

  5. #4

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    The Zombies "She's Not There" x0201x -> x0403x -> x0505x

    Free "All Right Now" A ADA x05030 -> x04030

    Emerson Lake & Palmer "From The Beginning" 5x5500 -> 5x4030

  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    The Troubadour on Old Brompton Road was the headquarters of the 1960s folk revival, but also hosted jazz gigs. It was there that Alexis Korner discovered Charlie Watts.
    Ah, I spent many a happy hour in there!

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Bert Jansch and John Renbourn were clearly very interested in jazz.
    I was at a John Renbourn gig in a pub in Brighton. He played some very nice jazzy stuff at the end. He said he got the sounds from piano music.

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by ragman1
    Ah, I spent many a happy hour in there!
    Still going

  9. #8

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    The folk thing is a hindrance, I struggle to not sound like Scarborough Fair or a jam band even on a ii7, let alone trying to play modal Jazz

    Indian music is the other 60s influence, most Hindustani CM is one of the diatonic modes

    this is the Dorian mode as well


  10. #9

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    Also John Martyn (a big fan of the Miles album as you can certainly hear in his early 70s work) would use alternate tunings including DADGAD instinctively to get lush modal sounds much like Joni did.

    Joni Mitchell.. her early attractiion to jazz..created story lines and harmonic/melodic chords movements that appealed to a jazz flavor...not surprised that an icon of the art form Charles Mingus..worked with her .. she also had some of the best jazz players on some of her work..Metheny..Hancock..Michael Brecker..and other jazz players have used her songs on some of their recordings

    over the years ther have been tributes to her work performed by musicians and singers that may not be well known but are well versed in the jazz launguage...

    and this of course brings up once again..what is Jazz..??...(or any type of music..) the ridged definitions of any type of music fail when musicians bring several elements of style into their work..Mitchell is one who did that early on..and it was noticed by some of the top musicians in all genres...





  11. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by wolflen
    Also John Martyn (a big fan of the Miles album as you can certainly hear in his early 70s work) would use alternate tunings including DADGAD instinctively to get lush modal sounds much like Joni did.

    Joni Mitchell.. her early attractiion to jazz..created story lines and harmonic/melodic chords movements that appealed to a jazz flavor...not surprised that an icon of the art form Charles Mingus..worked with her .. she also had some of the best jazz players on some of her work..Metheny..Hancock..Michael Brecker..and other jazz players have used her songs on some of their recordings

    over the years ther have been tributes to her work performed by musicians and singers that may not be well known but are well versed in the jazz launguage...

    and this of course brings up once again..what is Jazz..??...(or any type of music..) the ridged definitions of any type of music fail when musicians bring several elements of style into their work..Mitchell is one who did that early on..and it was noticed by some of the top musicians in all genres...




    Well it’s easy to hear that Court and Spark on where her sound started to realign with jazz/rock to a greater and greater extent... but it was always there in her voicings.

    take these chords that open this atmospheric early song



    its easy to hear where Metheny got some of his sounds from.

    Although to be honest I’ve never been crazy about jazz artists covering her songs. Or anyone tbh.

  12. #11

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    So in a way I’m kind of less interested in the artists who obviously crossed over into jazz like Joni and Martyn, because their connections are well known, and more in those who play acoustic folk music and yet use these rich voicings... where does all that stuff come from?

    ive heard some stories about Scottish band leaders hearing American jazz broadcasts on long wave and adding voicings into their arrangements that way, which is a good story... but I don’t know much about that music or where to start... certainly it’s fascinating to me that for instance Irish Trad Folk music is actually extremely eclectic, but instantly recognisable... a bit like jazz....

  13. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by BWV
    The folk thing is a hindrance, I struggle to not sound like Scarborough Fair or a jam band even on a ii7, let alone trying to play modal Jazz

    Indian music is the other 60s influence, most Hindustani CM is one of the diatonic modes

    this is the Dorian mode as well

    there’s a terrific guitar summit out out by my music masterclass a few years back...



    IIRC Fuse (I think) demonstrates the blues scale embellished in an African American way, a Hindustani way and a Carnatic way. Each example sounds like that music right away....

    So an awful lot of music is ornamentation and rhythm. We favour pitch choices in education because we are idiots. Sorry I mean because it’s easier to quantify and assess. so the killing blues guitarist gets told to demonstrate knowledge of more scales for instance, and a weaker musician with more theory gets marked higher... (one of my students had that experience at the uni I was teaching at)

    Even changes in intonation. West African scales that sound superficially Ionian have subtle differences in intonation that make them sound very particular....

  14. #13

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    Having said that there’s something pretty jazz about rolling a scale out vertically as a chord, which is what those voicings do...

    Obviosuly not hard at all - simple chord forms moved up the neck with open strings.... but to hear those sounds as valid requires a conceptual leap?

    the Bob Dylan example is a sleeper, because we all imagine he’s a three chord guy (at least I do) - and I think of those chords had been used a generation earlier they would have been regarded as beyond the pale...

    or maybe not.

  15. #14

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    I suppose the traditional connection is the harp, especially for the fingerstyle stuff.

  16. #15

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    As far back as I can recall, the folk guys were not sticking to straight major minor and seventh chords. Rather, they were employing guitar tricks to add other notes. So, they'd drop their pinkie on B string 3rd fret (D) to add some richness to a Cmajor. Same thing by adding an A on the G string in a Gmajor. And, so on.

    I can't tell you who did it first, but I'd question whether it really comes out of a jazz sensibility or just the pop music of the day.

  17. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    So I was going through these songs with a student:





    both share a common root in the song Scarborough Fair as performed by British folk legend Martin Carthy



    One common factor between these songs is this voicing:

    0 5 4 0 3 0

    in various capoings.... Simon plays

    x 0 4 0 3 0

    I then watched Peter Bernstein talk about how Kind of Blue changed the sound of the minor chord, and something went ‘dong!’ in my head.

    he really defines the change in terms of adding the b7 to the minor chord...

    Because that voicing is in the first case very much that sound:

    1 b7 9 b3 b7 1

    in the second it’s a sus sound.

    1 6 b7 4 5

    (Lage Lund demonstrates a moveable version of this shape as an inversion of the maj9th chord incidentally.)

    Scarborough Fair is a Dorian melody as a lot these old tunes are. But the use of harmony is strikingly 20th century.

    And I remembered that McLaughlin uses the exact same voicing in the first few moments of the album ‘in a Silent Way.’ This voicing also pops up in Blues. Jimi uses it in Voodoo Chile Slight Return for instance.

    Anyway I bring it up because there modal voicings are obviously a big part of 60s music. I’m thinking of Joni, for instance, or Davy Graham’s DADGAD tuning and the way many in Irish and Scottish music seem to have adopted lush modal voicings that in another context would sound jazz. Also John Martyn (a big fan of the Miles album as you can certainly hear in his early 70s work) would use alternate tunings including DADGAD instinctively to get lush modal sounds much like Joni did.

    And then of course there’s Pentangle. Bert Jansch and John Renbourn were clearly very interested in jazz.

    any thoughts on these connections? How what we think of as ‘jazz sounds’ ended up in folk music, folk rock and acoustic singer songwriter material? No doubt people were eclectic listeners with big musical imaginations, but I’m interesting in learning more about the connections...
    Paul Simon saw Martin Carthy perform SF at a club in the UK, and went backstage and Carthy wrote out the changes he used for his version for Simon.
    Simon thanked him by not giving a cent to Carthy when it became a hit record in the US. Carthy kept bothering Simon for years about it, and finally, after about 30 years, Simon gave him credit for the beautiful arr. Carthy wrote of SF.

  18. #17

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    There's also a lot of very hip changes in Nick Drake's folk tunes of that time, and Drake played a bit of jazz alto sax in college. River Man was covered by that US jazz pianist (forgot his name). Drake told the arranger of "River Man" to "do something 20th century classical" with the string arr. of River Man. "Maybe a bit of Delius" he suggested.
    Drake used jazz guys like Danny Thompson on acoustic bass on most of his recordings, and the use of acoustic bass was one of the strongest connections jazz and folk music of the 60s had. Donovan used acoustic bass on a lot of his stuff, and even mentions Mingus in the lyrics of "Sunny Goodge Street", a jazz-influenced tune of his.
    Pentangle's "Reflection" was their most overt excursion into jazz. Dylan's "If Dogs Ran Free" was an homage to the jazz/Beat poetry movement of the 50s.
    The hipper folkies were more well rounded musically than the strict traditionalists, and were quite aware of what was going on in jazz.
    US artists like Dave Von Ronk, Richie Havens, Judee Sill (was a jazz bassist) and others were hip to jazz, and Judee Sill used Paul Horn and Don Ellis' bass player, Bill Plummer on all her records.

  19. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    As far back as I can recall, the folk guys were not sticking to straight major minor and seventh chords. Rather, they were employing guitar tricks to add other notes. So, they'd drop their pinkie on B string 3rd fret (D) to add some richness to a Cmajor. Same thing by adding an A on the G string in a Gmajor. And, so on.
    I’m not being funny but are there people who don’t know this stuff? (Actually probably are, there are people who go direct to djent after all) It’s the deep folklore of the instrument. Must have come from somewhere though.

    the Beatles have some tricks for sure, where they picked them up - harder to trace. I’m sure some people have the knowledge.

    I can't tell you who did it first, but I'd question whether it really comes out of a jazz sensibility or just the pop music of the day.
    its the timeline.

    when you are taking about someone like Carthy you are certainly not talking about a pop musican but someone who was obsessed with English folk music, and in addition you are talking about someone who was influential on Dylan etc and therefore on the entire music scene after. Dylan, man. The song he helped inspire, Girl from the North country was 1963. The Beatles were in the early stages .

    So a lot of this guitar folklore was probably being developed at this time. And things like ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’ sounds like an attempt to channel Dylan, for instance, which I mention because it has all those droney added note tricks.

    I would also question it; but just saying ‘it was the pop music of the time’ tells us nothing. Everything comes from somewhere... V7sus4 chords are a trope of the time, and I have a good working theory of where they came from.

    those m7 tinged tonic minors are a real trope of 60s music of all kinds.

    So the question I’d like to know is was this a thing elsewhere/before Miles? Did he really have that far reaching an influence? Or was it more of a convergent thing?
    Last edited by christianm77; 05-20-2020 at 06:50 PM.

  20. #19

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    Come to think of it Bossa quite often used these sounds. At least m9....

    Paul Simon has mentioned being a Jobim fan for instance....

    Bossa comes a bit out of Barney Kessel, doesn’t it?

  21. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by sgcim
    There's also a lot of very hip changes in Nick Drake's folk tunes of that time, and Drake played a bit of jazz alto sax in college. River Man was covered by that US jazz pianist (forgot his name). Drake told the arranger of "River Man" to "do something 20th century classical" with the string arr. of River Man. "Maybe a bit of Delius" he suggested.
    Drake used jazz guys like Danny Thompson on acoustic bass on most of his recordings, and the use of acoustic bass was one of the strongest connections jazz and folk music of the 60s had. Donovan used acoustic bass on a lot of his stuff, and even mentions Mingus in the lyrics of "Sunny Goodge Street", a jazz-influenced tune of his.
    Pentangle's "Reflection" was their most overt excursion into jazz. Dylan's "If Dogs Ran Free" was an homage to the jazz/Beat poetry movement of the 50s.
    The hipper folkies were more well rounded musically than the strict traditionalists, and were quite aware of what was going on in jazz.
    US artists like Dave Von Ronk, Richie Havens, Judee Sill (was a jazz bassist) and others were hip to jazz, and Judee Sill used Paul Horn and Don Ellis' bass player, Bill Plummer on all her records.
    Im also thinking very obviously Astral Weeks.... not that Van was a ‘folk’ artist exactly: but it fits into the vibe.

    Everyone used Danny Thompson haha. According to John Martyn he was a Blue Note obsessive before Martyn hipped him to electric Miles later on, but all the ‘folk baroque’ guys seemed to play with him....

    super eclectic scene it sounds like although I’m sure a lot of the traditionalists hated it...anyway this was all a few years later... Martin Carthy and Davey Graham were foundational figures on that scene... Graham’s thing was a fusion of folk with jazz and Moroccan influences influenced Jimmy Page to use DADGAD (which he is meant to have invented) for instance....

    but then DADGAD shows up as a popular tuning in Irish trad

  22. #21

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    Also @sgcim - Donovan taught the Beatles to fingerpick didn’t he? So the White Album stuff - Dear Prudence and Blackbird, Mother Nature’s son can be tracked back to him to some extent...

    I must confess I don’t know Donovan’s music very well at all. Listening to Sunny Goodge Street, brush waltz drums, mellow electric guitar in the mix, chromatic descending bass... OK

    EDIT: double time 4/4 jazz flute solo
    i have reached peak late 60s, but also the jazz vibe is not small.

    Goodge Street for those who don’t know is a street and tube station in north soho, Central London.

    You’d head south to the seedy side of town where the jazz scene was in the 60s... Ronnie Scott’s and the Pizza is still there now. On the way you’d pass Ivor Mairants guitar shop where I bought my Macaferri and my first archtop; where John McLaughlin used to be a salesman back in the 60s. Sadly gone last year.

    And presumably also the folk clubs back in the 60s.

    I was in halls there as a student in the 90s. Changed a lot since then even...

    Certainly gets the vibe....
    Last edited by christianm77; 05-20-2020 at 07:33 PM.

  23. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    I’
    I would also question it; but just saying ‘it was the pop music of the time’ tells us nothing. Everything comes from somewhere... .
    That "somewhere" can be the background music of life. It doesn't have to be a more specific influence. I don't see any reason to assume that folk musicians couldn't find an altered chord without having listened to Monk.

  24. #23
    joelf Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    So I was going through these songs with a student:





    both share a common root in the song Scarborough Fair as performed by British folk legend Martin Carthy



    One common factor between these songs is this voicing:

    0 5 4 0 3 0

    in various capoings.... Simon plays

    x 0 4 0 3 0

    1 b7 9 b3 b7 1

    in the second it’s a sus sound.

    1 6 b7 4 5

    Scarborough Fair is a Dorian melody as a lot these old tunes are. But the use of harmony is strikingly 20th century.


    Anyway I bring it up because there modal voicings are obviously a big part of 60s music. I’m thinking of Joni, for instance...

    And then of course there’s Pentangle. Bert Jansch and John Renbourn were clearly very interested in jazz.

    any thoughts on these connections? How what we think of as ‘jazz sounds’ ended up in folk music, folk rock and acoustic singer songwriter material? No doubt people were eclectic listeners with big musical imaginations, but I’m interesting in learning more about the connections...
    First of all, thanks for posting Carthy's (pre-Simon) version. Beautiful singing and playing---so pure!

    I've been thinking about this myself a lot lately, especially since I recently got a good Martin and plan to do a lot of performing/recording with it. Those beautiful, dark, low-position voicings were as much the lingua franca of the '60s as the electric stuff---and I'm a child of the '60s. Those things are in all our souls and brains. I was turned on to Jansch and Renbourne while still a teen. Remember learning Angi (did Paul Simon also record that?). Yeah, Joni played some weird-ass chords too! (And, since singing is so important in that music, I'd like to add the great Sandy Denny to the list).

    And, yes, there are connections to jazz, strong ones---but we also ought to be a bit careful about hybrids. If you don't do right by either component you can ruin both. That folk music is so pure to me---like basic blues is---that I'm sort of torn between using it as a jumping-off point and just presenting it 'uncorrupted' (harmonically). Both ways can work, but I myself can't see, say, stacking a whole bunch of pentatonics and stuff over one or two chords solely on the grounds of 'alleviating boredom' or sameness*. That sound of low E, B, and adjacent F#/open G, D---3rd fret of B string is so pure, and resonant, it speaks volumes with nothing else needed. Simple, 'inside' improvising over that is what I hear---for myself.

    *But I've been wrong before, lord knows...

  25. #24

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Also @sgcim - Donovan taught the Beatles to fingerpick didn’t he? So the White Album stuff - Dear Prudence and Blackbird, Mother Nature’s son can be tracked back to him to some extent...

    I must confess I don’t know Donovan’s music very well at all. Listening to Sunny Goodge Street, brush waltz drums, mellow electric guitar in the mix, chromatic descending bass... OK

    EDIT: double time 4/4 jazz flute solo
    i have reached peak late 60s, but also the jazz vibe is not small.

    Goodge Street for those who don’t know is a street and tube station in north soho, Central London.

    You’d head south to the seedy side of town where the jazz scene was in the 60s... Ronnie Scott’s and the Pizza is still there now. On the way you’d pass Ivor Mairants guitar shop where I bought my Macaferri and my first archtop; where John McLaughlin used to be a salesman back in the 60s. Sadly gone last year.

    And presumably also the folk clubs back in the 60s.

    I was in halls there as a student in the 90s. Changed a lot since then even...

    Certainly gets the vibe....
    Is the Bull's Head still going? I recently read the Tubby Hayes bio "The Long Shadow of the Little Giant", and never knew that it became his home base after Ronnie Scott had a little tiff with Tubbs.
    The folk-jazz-rock cross-pollination of the 60s and early 70s produced some great stuff. Who knew that Ian McDonald originally wrote KC's I Talk To the Wind as a folk song for Judy Dyble, and then Giles, Giles and Fripp changed it a bit, and finally KC produced the masterpiece on TCOTCK, with Fripp's octaves solo, and McDonald's swinging flute solo with Giles' tasty drum fills.

  26. #25

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    Bulls head still going!