The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    Quote Originally Posted by ragman1
    I think there's something deeply wrong with Albert... :-)
    He apparently had some problems later on, and came to a rather unfortunate end in the East River.

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  3. #27

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    Now about songs by Miles Davis that use functional harmony but not in a 'standard' way like Solar or Four?

    Could such songs be a bridge to the more traditional tunes?

    Often such a 'bridge' can make any type of crossover a smoother transition for the mind \ soul.
    Last edited by jameslovestal; 05-19-2020 at 11:59 AM.

  4. #28

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    He apparently had some problems later on, and came to a rather unfortunate end in the East River.
    Ah, figures, although I wasn't being entirely serious - well, a bit maybe. I like to make eccentric sounds from time to time too - it's cathartic - but I definitely couldn't do it all the time, it would affect me.

    Mind you, Derek Bailey did it for a long time and he seemed all right to the end so maybe the music's got nothing to do with it.

  5. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by pingu
    It's totally cool ....

    do you like soul music ?
    it has functional changes quite often

    more Morden standards .... Stevie wonder ?

    jut interested
    Yes I like soul music and Stevie Wonder very much. Also the Stax productions.

  6. #30

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    Quote Originally Posted by ragman1
    But you see how it looks - however modal, soulful, funky, latin, bluesy or rootsy it was, if it was called Stella by Starlight you automatically wouldn't like it... so that's that!
    That song was just an example. I think I'm just tired of chains of II V I and I VI II V progressions. I appreciate everybody trying to convince me of liking their favorite functional harmony informed songs. I don't want to degrade this kind of music, I was just expressing my personal taste. It's not an uninformed decision as some posts seem to suggest – I studied jazz at the university and really tried to like the tradition. It's more like growing tired of harmonic cliché used to often. One of my teachers wrote his thesis about harmonic progressions used in the Real Book and found out: like 80 % (I don't remember the exact numbers – he told it like 25 years ago) of the songs use the same progressions and modulations – the rest he said is modal.
    And the question "is it OK to stay?" was meant to be ironic.
    My wife and I had a little time lately due to the quarantine we had to endure due to our corona infection. Luckily the weather is great so we often spend the evenings in our roof garden. Now my wife doesn't know much about music theory she just has to stand and survive me playing the guitar and listening to music whenever I can. If I put on what I call "Jazz-Jazz" she often asks me to turn down. One evening I was in the mood for Kind Of Blue and she asked me to turn it up. I don't know if that is about modal or functional, I think it was just the emotional quality and sense of space that fostered her interest. We seem to react to the same parameters: emotion and space. One could say that in general modal jazz provides more space for an improviser, the music can breathe more as the improviser doesn't have to concentrate on modulating keys as much. Now a musician is free to do the same with a functional harmonic piece of music – ist just seems like most don't do that.
    So let me rephrase my OP: I like space and breath in music. YMMV.

  7. #31

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    Quote Originally Posted by ragman1
    There's a difference between playing them and listening to them. Listening to the GASB can be a bit dull but, when one gets into trying to get round the changes, it's a whole new ball game. I think that's probably what attracts players to them.

    I mean, this first one would probably bore the pants off a lot of people (especially the OP) but if the other two do then I don't know... no bleedin' taste :-)





    Funny enough the opposite is true. From the three interpretations I like Gerry Mulligan's version the best. That doesn't mean I don't like Bill Evans' and Jesse van Ruller's interpretation. Now go figure. ;-)

  8. #32

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    Quote Originally Posted by KirkP
    If you find participation rewarding, why not stay?
    Sure, the question was a bit ironic anyway.

  9. #33

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    Quote Originally Posted by guavajelly
    That song was just an example. I think I'm just tired of chains of II V I and I VI II V progressions. I appreciate everybody trying to convince me of liking their favorite functional harmony informed songs. I don't want to degrade this kind of music, I was just expressing my personal taste. It's not an uninformed decision as some posts seem to suggest – I studied jazz at the university and really tried to like the tradition. It's more like growing tired of harmonic cliché used to often. One of my teachers wrote his thesis about harmonic progressions used in the Real Book and found out: like 80 % (I don't remember the exact numbers – he told it like 25 years ago) of the songs use the same progressions and modulations – the rest he said is modal.
    And the question "is it OK to stay?" was meant to be ironic.
    My wife and I had a little time lately due to the quarantine we had to endure due to our corona infection. Luckily the weather is great so we often spend the evenings in our roof garden. Now my wife doesn't know much about music theory she just has to stand and survive me playing the guitar and listening to music whenever I can. If I put on what I call "Jazz-Jazz" she often asks me to turn down. One evening I was in the mood for Kind Of Blue and she asked me to turn it up. I don't know if that is about modal or functional, I think it was just the emotional quality and sense of space that fostered her interest. We seem to react to the same parameters: emotion and space. One could say that in general modal jazz provides more space for an improviser, the music can breathe more as the improviser doesn't have to concentrate on modulating keys as much. Now a musician is free to do the same with a functional harmonic piece of music – ist just seems like most don't do that.
    So let me rephrase my OP: I like space and breath in music. YMMV.
    I do remember finding functional jazz changes incredibly old fashioned and annoying when getting into jazz. Modal music is more familiar to my generation I guess. I could understand Coltrane quicker than Charlie Parker.

    Anyway. The Real Book's changes represent a certain fashion for making everything into a ii-V-I. Older versions jazz changes use that device less in the original changes. Also a good bass player will come up with lines that move more intelligently than jumping around by fourths all the time... But you have to make it easy for the sax players... Because they are dense.

  10. #34

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    Quote Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
    The post-bop, hard bop and modal thing was a big departure from bebop covers of show tunes and contrafacts. It's no secret that Mile's Kind Of Blue tapped into a big audience for jazz that wasn't focused on that chasing the chord changes bebop manifesto.

    I am very drawn to the era of the jazz composer, Mingus, Miles, Shorter, Hancock, etc., and beyond, vs the Great American Songbook. The approaches to harmony are more modern and geared to a more personal approach to concepts and application.

    However...those that choose to ignore the vocab and practices developed by bebop do so at the peril of not sounding "authentic" as you try to tell your story with a path that takes you back and forth between consonance and dissonance, tension and release. It is still fundamentally essential as basic vocab.

    I do remember when mainstream straight ahead jazz was very progressive, and then the "young lions" thing happened with Wynton and his peers, and bam, people went back to the jazz museum and started rehashing old jazz again and it slowed the progressive stuff down a bit, IMO. Jazz academia seemed to become a force in the music.

    Nobody masters all of jazz, and the individualism of the genre dictates we choose the path that best satisfies our creative appetite, but important to know the tradition.
    Well played, sir. Like 29 years ago I was an avid student and I understood that diving into the tradition was essential for a profound knowledge of the music called jazz. So I did to some extend – but it never caught my heart. Still neither listening to nor playing tunes like Misty is enjoyable for me. In fact it still feels like "doing my homework".

    It has a lot to do with musical socialisation, I guess. I happen to be german and my family didn't have an understanding of american music – though my mother took me to a jazz festival when I was a kid. I was impressed that I still can remember the feeling when listening to that "alien" music. It was a small festival and the bands were not first league but anyway I was hooked – more by the blues than the jazz bands – which mostly played like dixie if I remember correctly. I mostly listened to pop music at home and classical music, pop and rock was what I played as a kid.
    There's a reason why it is called the "Great American Songbook". Growing up in Europe in a non-academic, strictly non-intellectual household chances are small you get in touch to that music. Kudos to my Mum for at least getting me in touch with it. When my interest in jazz was re-started in my early 20s in the mid 1980s it was through Steve Khan, John Scofield and Bill Frisell. I learned standards to be able to study – not the other way around. And I learned about Bebop when I took jazz guitar lessons. I think Americans may have a total different approach to the Great American Songbook.

  11. #35

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    Depends whether anyone knows shows or not. My mum knows loads of those songs - as show music, some crooners. She's not really into jazz.

    I started with Coltrane, so yeah... but as I've developed as a jazz musician I've developed a greater and greater appreciation for standards. They are a fantastic resource...

    And to think of them as having to wear a particular set of clothes is silly. The things that's important about them is the melody. The changes are of secondary importance and can be whatever you want. And certainly the changes in the Real Book are generally shit and boring sounding. They are neither modern enough to be interesting or original enough to be 'correct'.

    And so you have the woeful spectacle of European jazz musicians playing songs they learned because they were told to at jazz school, ploughing through them without swing, enthusiasm or imagination, wishing they were playing their convoluted originals or some squeaky bonk music (I jest, it's not quite like that).

    It doesn't have to be like that... the way NYC musicians climb inside a song? Because they know thousands of the things.

    Here's an actually fairly tame reharm I did... It's quite easy to disguise the dreaded ii-V's.

    Is it OK to be on a jazz forum while not liking functional harmonic jazz standards?-just-friends-reharm-4-jpg

  12. #36

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    Cool, but you still improv over those m7 bars like they're V's, yeah?

  13. #37

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    Quote Originally Posted by princeplanet
    Cool, but you still improv over those m7 bars like they're V's, yeah?
    No, kind of defeats the point. I play lots of pentatonics.

  14. #38

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    You can just solo on B and C as normal, it works, but go to Gm instead of G in the last two bars.

    Actually aside from that the only time you can’t solo as in the original is the first chord.

    Mostly the difference is in the bass, and I’ve taken out the dominants to get that floating non functional sound.

  15. #39

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    Yeah I find most show tunes performed in their originally intended style fluffy, commercial, dated and lacking of any edge.

    Sometimes you hear a modern singer perform them with an artsy edge and transform the tunes completely. It becomes more palatable to modern ears. There are fewer constraints for instrumentalists to transform old pop tunes than singers.

    I think part of the artistry of jazz is finding your edge to make these tunes sound interesting and fresh even today.

  16. #40

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    Playing standards is a tradition, and like any other it can be observed, ignored, challenged or subverted. It might have died out, were it not for the influence of reactionary opinions, such as those of Wynton Marsalis, Stanley Crouch and Ken Burns, which led to the twenty-first century phenomenon of young men in homburgs and waistcoats playing songs from musicals they have never seen.

    Fortunately, the progressive side of jazz still produces original music, thus preventing the art form from drowning in nostalgia and sentiment.

  17. #41

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    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    Playing standards is a tradition, and like any other it can be observed, ignored, challenged or subverted. It might have died out, were it not for the influence of reactionary opinions, such as those of Wynton Marsalis, Stanley Crouch and Ken Burns, which led to the twenty-first century phenomenon of young men in homburgs and waistcoats playing songs from musicals they have never seen.

    Fortunately, the progressive side of jazz still produces original music, thus preventing the art form from drowning in nostalgia and sentiment.
    This is a false dichotomy.


    Standards are a great solution to the problem - here we are in a room, what are we going to play?

    i suppose we could try and hack through one of your noodly originals in 11/8 or we could do some free improv... but standards are useful for playing pretty much any style of jazz. Even Derek Bailey did an album of them, deconstructed in his own way.

    Various jazz musicians have looked to more recent repertoire as modern standards but there’s (as mentioned elsewhere) a few useful things that any standard fulfils which more recent pop tunes and jazz compositions often don’t.

    one of the simplest criteria is that everyone knows at least a few of them.

    the history of jazz did go a certain way - we have jazz education canonising the standards rep still further - but I wonder what the natural inclination was for musicians in the 70s when having a play. Beatles tunes?

    In fact there’s almost more of a risk of doing the jazz tribute band thing if you cover jazz instrumental tunes rather than a standard tune....

  18. #42

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    The other thing is ... well learning tunes is a really good way of understanding music. Most of what I know about harmony FWIW comes from learning and getting inside compositions and the other half is from writing.

    So what you choose to learn is to some extent open. The standards rep is pretty broad. We might find Jelly Roll tunes (which are jazz originals, original music wasn’t invented in the 60s) at one end and Pat Metheny at the other, both of which tend to be songs with like tunes and stuff, instead of some mad chart. Actually the Jelly Roll stuff formally a bit more involved than Pat’s 32 bar song forms.

    I’m not sure pats tunes are as open for a cheeky reharm as an old show tune though, and that is a bit of a problem. I have heard it done though.

    It’s not necessarily the tunes Miles recorded in the 50s.

  19. #43

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lobomov
    Right .. Having standards in order to facilitate easy gigging is an overlooked point ... and that isn't even a jazz thing .. You can always instantly launch into Mustang Sally or Play that Funky Music with random strangers
    But you probably aren't going to improvise or in the case of Cohen et al meta the shit out of them, are you?

    A natural question would be - why not? Nature of the material, nature of the musicians, nature of the context in which the tunes are played?

  20. #44

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    Stella is the tune you pick as an example of boring harmony?

  21. #45

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    I'm good at unhearing lyrics.

    This Misty works for me.



    Would you, dear forum members, have gotten up and left as Joe was playing that?

  22. #46

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    Quote Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
    Stella is the tune you pick as an example of boring harmony?
    As said in the film My Man Godfrey: I've been waiting to say that all night!

  23. #47

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Standards are a great solution to the problem - here we are in a room, what are we going to play?
    There is that.


  24. #48

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    Quote Originally Posted by guavajelly
    ...my interest in jazz was re-started in my early 20s in the mid 1980s it was through Steve Khan, John Scofield and Bill Frisell. I learned standards to be able to study...
    Sometimes I forget that Bill has done his homework. I enjoyed what he did with it in that vid.

    I'm of the same generation as Bill, and like some others here I started in Miles and Coltrane of the sixties, and still pretty much live there. I didn't start working on GASB until a few years ago when I was trying to find some guys in my small town to jam with. I did an audition. Played fine on Mellow Mood and some other such things. Then they wanted to play Autumn Leaves. I said I'd never tried to play it before. Audition pretty much ended there.

    I'm not in love with that music, but if you want to play any other type of jazz around these parts you best be able to get thru it nicely. Still working on that....

    I'd never even heard of 'function harmony' until I joined this forum. I guess I'm a dysfunctional jazzoid.

  25. #49

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    Bill can play with anyone.



    he’s got a really good grasp of the history.... listening to him made me realise all these distinctions we make between flavours of jazz can be porous...

  26. #50

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    Quote Originally Posted by guavajelly
    This is a confession: I tried to like the kind of jazz standards that everyone seems to adore for decades, the standards that are based on musicals or other 40s and 50s popular songs, the Real Book variety. But honestly, songs like Misty sound just cheesy to me. "Close your eyes and a thousand violins begin to play" – once you know the line you can never unhear it. But even songs that stay a bit further away from Kitsch just bore me to dead with the stereotype modulations of functional harmony that all of them use. And whatever the arrangement may try and how innovative the interpretation may be – I just can't listen to it for more then a few minutes.
    I like modal jazz, soul jazz, funk jazz, latin jazz and the bluesy, rootsy stuff though.
    I hope it is OK to stay in the forum though I'll never feel inspired to discuss Stella By Starlight?
    I think it's fine to like whatever songs or types of songs you want. I am sure on this forum you'll find conversation partners who share your feelings. You also might wake up one morning and decide you love standards. Or not.

    I hope you do find a set of folks here who can encourage you to make the music you want to make, and we'll cheer you on.