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I am starting to practicing my inversions and I have got up to 7th chord 4 voice extensions. I was interested to know if inversions were commonly used for more complex chords such as 9ths, 11ths, 13ths etc? I ask as I wondered if these chords just became too ambiguous when inverted to have much functional l use? If I play a major 7th in a few inversions I can still tell it is a major 7. But a few inversions I have attempted with more complex chords tend to sound like a different chord than intended, either through the notes I have removed to simplify the playing of them or through the change in bass note leading the chord away (to my ears) from the tonal center I am aiming for.
I am interested to hear your thoughts on this. Do complex inversions get used more in free jazz for example and does it vary depending on the instrument played on, do certain inversions sound better or easier to translate on piano for example?
Cheers!
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01-27-2018 02:19 PM
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It depends a lot on the tradition you're working within Babaluma. You're right, when you begin to give up the triadic structures, and particularly when the root moves out of the bass, it becomes less identifiable. For traditions that go through hard bop, and the chordal sounds within this vocabulary, it's not as clear and not as easy to identify. THey're not used much.
When I had the great fortune to spend some time with Tal Farlow, I asked him about chord voicings because chordal harmony was the magic of guitar playing to me. He said second inversion of diatonic chords was as far as he'd feel comfortable with (not in those words but by example) and even 7th in the bass was too "far out" for his ears. He'd never go there.
But there's a whole different attitude with harmony in the post Shorter era and it's one of the things that distinguishes players who studied with Jim Hall and beyond, and guitarists who had some exposure to pianistic options and arrangement vocabulary. (Ed Bikert, Mick Goodrick, Ben Monder) In those perspectives, the sound of harmony doesn't necessarily need to be rooted in the traditional sense. Rootless voicings, voice led voicings that wouldn't sound appropriate, or even consonant by themselves, are a part in looking at harmony as a dynamic series of moving threads. In that context, non diatonic chords, individual chords that may look like an augmented triad by themselves, are integral parts of movement from one chord to another. Of course context is everything. As is a knowledge of where you're going.
What I'm saying is the firmer you are rooted in an identifiable chord sound each measure, the more important recognizable individual chords are. The more you think of harmony as movement from one place to another, the more you can look at chords in a horizontal, voice led continuum and within that, your chords may or may not be recognized as stand alones.
Those ambiguous chords you're discovering. Can you follow them with a chord or chords that make them move to resolution? Can you work out chord combinations that create beautiful movement? Make it work and it's good. I love the sound of "Whoa! What WAS that?".
Make it work.
David
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My thought is - learn what is good to play on the guitar. If a particular inversion sounds good and is good to play, learn it well. "well" means way horribly too much in music. There is no single sentence that would describe "well" good enough here.
Guitar is not a piano. Unlike piano, on guitar you should learn well all the stuff that sounds good and is comfy instead all inversions. You can check all inversions but not all of them are usable on the guitar. A few of those sound bad on any instrument also.
So, check out all of them but learn only the good-sounding comfy ones first.
Learn those in context of progressions of your tunes.
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the study of harmony in jazz is a long term project..
before you tackle this .. ask yourself..do you really WANT and/or need to know this stuff..if yes I will give you a few basic suggestions
In jazz the four-note chords are mandatory as they are the building blocks that will support altered chords based on them..so a thorough knowledge of them and their inversions (in ALL keys and positions) will be required at some point in your study of harmony..as many chords are related by just one note movement.
in your post you state some of the inversions don't sound like the original intended chord CMa7 in the third inversion for example B in the bass and your correct it is out of context but it may work well if the following chord is a Dmi7 with C in the bass..and so on..learning to connect one inverted chord to another inverted chord is common in todays jazz..and in pop music as well..
so learning all the inversions of all the chords in a key becomes necessary..now connecting them together takes time and a good deal of persistence determination and patients .. playing ii7-V7 -1MA7 progressions in all inversions is quite a task but once done the momentum of finding and using them becomes easier with practice..going forward..after going through all chords in a given key and inserting a V7 chord in front of each of them and extending the cycle in a diatonic progression will give you a very good base to continue you harmonic explorations..
example: CMa7 A7 Dmi7 G7 CMa7...extended B7 Emi7 E7 Ami7 A7 Dmi7 D7 G7/G9/Bmi7b5-CMA7..in the course of inversion study you will begin to see "connection" notes and the inversions forms for these kind of progressions..and a review of the arpeggios and scale fragments (12356) of each chord will reinforce fretboard knowledge as well
again this will take time and dedicated practice to get this kind of thing to flow smoothly and be comfortable under your fingers
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Wolfen's question re WHY you want to learn them is really important. Have an idea of where you're going and priorities etc.
Originally Posted by Babaluma
I asked a forum pro about chord voicings once , and I was told that you really need to cover BASIC harmony OVERALL and there's a lot of ground to cover. All inversions of everything through thirteenths across four or five different strings sets could be years just to cover basic MAJOR scale harmony, And you really need to have harmonic and melodic minor together as well.
In light of that, his advice was to learn basic voicings for four-note 7th chords , and then work on playing chord SUBS up-and-down a third for those as well. So, for G maj7, you learn to sub Bm7 and Em7 voicings against it. Those voicings give you the sounds of Gmaj9 and G6. Do the same for your other diatonic chords and you get all of your 9ths and 13ths.
Anyway, he was basically advocating starting with ONLY ROOT POSITION -based chord voicings from the sixth, fifth, and fourth strings, and then using SUBS this way (as your inversions). There are additional functional sub chords besides just these thirds, and there are endless variations of other common chord patterns. You'd need to know them eventually anyway to play jazz. Right?
Basically, he said life is short. Plan at a pace that allows you to get there. It's certainly not the only philosophy, but it IS one.
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Inversions may serve to:
- get the tops of the chords out of the way of the melody line when accompanying a soloist
Pianists do this pretty instinctively when reading lead sheets - the chord symbols indicate the basics and the notated melody indicates there the chords need to give way and room to the melody. The mechanism of the "drop voicing" does this and naturally leaves a finger or two on top for the melody.
- get the tops of the chords to purposely be the melody line when chord soloing
Chord melody and similar sections of playing this style
- get the roots off the bottom of the chords to make space for the bassist
To avoid doubling the bass, but mostly to avoid boxing in the bassist to fewer choices
- increase vagueness so a chord may interact with other chords more complexly
G13/F [x][8][9][9][8][x]
this kind of thing...
[x][8][9][9][8][x]
[x][9][10][10][11][x]
[x][8][9][9][8][x]
[x][8][9][8][11][x]
[x][7][8][7][8][x]
[x][7][8][6][8][x]
[x][8][9][9][8][x]
- promote a particular style sound
13th with 7th on bottom is very Bossa Nova... G13/F [x][8][9][9][8][x]
- act as a substitute for another chord (if only as a supporting idea for improvisation)
compare G13 [x][10][9][10][10][12] to G13/F [x][8][9][9][8][x]
- make us happy; I just love extended altered rootless inversions, especially in a flowing series
Like most things in jazz, as opposed to other forms, things in isolation are difficult to internalize. You've heard the G7 chord so much you know where and how it works, but playing a chord like G7b13b9add#9 in isolation can leave you wondering how that sound could ever be used in any song, but when put in the right place it is THE sound that works best and sounds wonderful. Same with inversions, especially of extended and altered chords; they need to be practiced within the context of songs in order to hear how they work with respect to how the song goes. Then you learn to internalize these relationships and generalize to other songs.
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It's always easier to discuss a specific song. Originally Posted by Babaluma
If I understand what you're driving at ... There's a chance that inversions containing the correct notes will sound just fine once the bass player shows up and you play the entire song. The bass note (and the song itself) will anchor the ear and make the chord sound more specific.
I don't know anything about free jazz, so I can't comment on that.
I don't know that I've ever heard a chord sound good on one instrument and bad on another, assuming it's playable at all on guitar. But, lots of stuff pianists to is really hard to do on guitar.
Some of the great players eventually gravitate to three note chords for a lot of their comping.
For a basic vocabulary, I like the approach that I heard attributed to Chuck Wayne. The way I was taught it, you start with xx3433 which is G7. Then you move each note up to the next one on the same string, in G7. So, the next one is xx5768. And then to the next one and the next one. That gives you 4 ways to play G7. Then you start altering notes. So, you lower the B to a Bb in each chord to get Gm7.
You keep doing that until you've got G7 G6 Gmaj7 Gmaj7#11,Gm7 Gm7b5, Gm7#5, Gminmaj7, G9, G7b9 and whatever addition chords you want.
Then you do that on the middle four strings and then the bottom four strings.
And, then you learn it in every key.
Could be a year of work, maybe more.
At that point, you've got a good command of basic chords. You'll be able to get any note on top of any chord, which helps with chord melody.
You may want to add some of the old style big band chords too with muted A and high E strings (another post).
And, if you have paid attention to the notes in each chord, you'll be in good shape to learn more.
After that, (or during it) it's about songs. You've got the basic vocabulary, so how are you going to make music with it? At that point, it's about listening, watching youtube videos where guys play great harmony and show you what they did, hanging around great players, figuring out chord melodies of your own etc.
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I can't see how anyone can make a judgement call about a chord inversion sounding good or not without context. Until it gets plugged into some type of voice leading or chord sequence, it's hard to hear the magic. But when you do, you'll realize the potential value most all inversions/voicings might provide.
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A basic guitar way to address inversions is by choosing 4 good notes and then treating it like a 7th chord.
1 3 5 7 9
yields
3 5 7 9
1 3 7 9
1 5 7 9
1 3 5 9
9ths when placed too low is the bass can obscure function.
Some chords that lose clarity when sustained sound ok as a passing structure.
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Ears change... now I tend to hear even 7th chords inversions as different chord... depends on context though
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There will never be any end to the chords. Every new chord you learn leads to more chords...
CHORDS CHORDS CHORDS CHORDS
TBH though, I think it's got a bit out of control with some players. I listen to them and go 'it's amazing you can do that and I am humbled by your knowledge, but at the same time, it sounds a bit ugly and contrived to me.'
But that's why it's an artform.
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There are a number of ways to invert 9th chords.
The way I've seen is to take the voicing and move each note up through the permutations - this is how Lage does it
1 3 7 9
9 7 1 3
3 1 9 7
7 9 3 1
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I agree with the statements above, that these chords lose their functional clarity in certain inversions. If you need to restore the clarity, you can always arrange with a very clear bass line.
However, there's a whole interesting area of jazz harmony that's less concerned with function and more concerned with sonority. Quartal harmony is a good example, especially in inversion. Quartal chords in inversion become clusters. Maybe in root position, you can hear a D quartal chord and think of it as D minor or D sus, but once you start moving notes across octaves, what are you going to call it? And quartal is just the beginning, right? Once you start thinking about intervallic content rather than "what is this chord supposed to be named based on the notes that are in it?", you can really start having more fun.
I think the bottom line is, do you like the sound? Who are you listening to that inspires you?
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I think there's a slightly uneasy crossover between functional and colouristic harmony when some of this stuff is applied to functional harmony.
For instance, I really like the inversions of the maj9 chords as sounds, but sometimes int he context of a jazz standard they can be a bit much... However, in the context of a composition or a modal vamp, they can be really cool.
It really is a matter of personal taste. I think what you are and aren't drawn to defines your sound world as a player and writer.... But, it's good to try out as many things as you can (also great for learning the fretboard!)
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Christian I agree. I was thinking of modal tunes more so than standards when I wrote that, although I think this stuff works well over ballads, where you have more time to spice up each chord.
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Yea... it's not that complicated....
1)The top note is most important.... If your not playing a lead line on top, you really don't need to even be playing.
2).. the next most important note is the bottom note.... Play a chord tone that works with the lead line.
3)... next you fill in the inside of the two from the notated or implied harmony.
So the top note needs to be heard... keep space between next note. I like at least a 3rd, and prefer 4ths, 5ths and 6ths
That top note is like a contrapuntal supporting line... either a counter melody or a groove line.
During the head.... your supporting the melody.... you can play almost anything, but don't overshadow who or whatever is out front.
This doesn't imply stay below etc... you can frame use octave displacements, all the usual arranging BS.
Once your comping for a soloist.... now you free to create. Don't be a backing tract. The old shit about playing no bass notes, small voicings etc... has been over for 50 years. If you don't understand Harmony, jazz harmony. It's time to get it together.
Comping doesn't mean... playing the same changes, the same vanilla changes over and over. Just as the soloist is improvising... so should the comping. And as before, your not out front, you need to listen, but your free to create, but need to be able to react to where the music may go...
Chords are not complex... generally your just not aware of harmony and complete chords and where they are from.
The same guidelines for complex chords and voicing are the same.... the only things that change are the voicings and the lead lines.
There are other closed and dissonance type of voicings... those are used differently. They generally are used for effects.
Again using lead lines can imply almost any harmonic motion
And of course the rhythmic approach where you play the chords and voicings... needs to work with the context of where and what your playing.
Almost any tune has a Harmony rhythm.... the basic rhythmic attack pattern, with harmony, that creates the rhythmic feel.... they generally repeat in some type of pattern. There is a form.... that is the basic reference. That doesn't mean... it's repeated over and over, just like the changes don't need to repeat over and over... But the feel is not lost , even when changed or even not played.
Even Form can change... but generally still needs to fit with in a larger form. This requires some skill, awareness of the big picture, not just locked in the moment etc..
Moving on with the rhythmic concepts... once that Harmonic Rhythmic pattern is established.... your then free to create weak side of the beat harmonic motion. What that means... the weak side of the beat, isn't downbeats and upbeats, its with relation to that rhythmic attach pattern of the feel, the style of what tune your playing. The weak side of the beats are attack patterns that work with the basic Harmonic Rhythm established by the feel and style of the tune.
This definitely requires skills, and need to be understood as well as practiced. One of those things that just doesn't happen with any amount of practicing. Unless your going to memorize every tune and feel ever played... or still to be played. It's just not going to happen, you need to be aware of what your doing... and eventually start feeling.
So 2) It think I covered above... you can play any chord tone... even the root or bass note. You just need to be aware of register, rhythm and spacing etc...
3)... I generally fill the inner notes from the function of the chord or chord pattern. If you need to imply a cycle... spell it and move on. Once it's established... it's there even if you don't play it. Like spelling V7 chords with 3rds and 7ths..... that gets old and very vanilla... really quick. Personally I like 9ths and 13th mixed with chord tones, would depend on the style and feel or effect.
Blue notes work great with lead lines... but sometimes create mud when used as inner voices.
You can use tunes to learn or.... just take the time to learn patterns of voicing and then actually comp.
I use basic voicings with chord tones on top moving in 3rds. And the same thing with the extensions.
So Voicings with...Rt, 3rd, 5th and 7th on top
and then.....with...9ths, 11ths and 13ths on top
I also use those same basic voicings with Blue note patterns on top
You end up with being able to use the same voicings for different chords.
My approach has always been...keep it simple and be able to play well. Even if you only have 21 voicings.... maybe even only 7.... but be able to use them well. If you can cover... it really doesn't make any difference what your using.
Music goes by extremely fast when your playing jazz, live jazz. It's generally better to have a simple vocabulary, comping voicings and be able to use them well... Not just play... use then well, be able to react and interact etc... Develop basic comping skills, use of form, rhythm and lead lines.... then slowly add more voicings and chord patterns to your already existing comping skills.
You just plug in a few voicings as you go.
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A lot in this post...
Hey Reg, curious about what you're talking about here. Example maybe? Originally Posted by Reg
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as long as inversion simply means some tone other than the root being played as the bass/lowest note in your voicing... the answer is a simple YES. In fact the voicing may be rootless. Originally Posted by Babaluma
3rd in the bass for 9th chords and 7th in the bass for 13th chords are a couple of examples.
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Originally Posted by Reg
x 1000
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It's easy to get intimidated by the sheer amount of possibilities.
That said there are players- Lage Lund, Ben Monder, and so on - who seem to have a vast number of ideas very thoroughly applied. And others - Peter Bernstein perhaps - who get a lot of mileage from using very familiar voicings in creative ways....
And then players whose comping is super obvious but really supportive, solid and makes the soloist sound great... Those guys get booked :-)
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It may actually work to play only this shape: xxx232, and use it for everything by sliding it up and down the fingerboard. It's a major, a m7, a 13b9, lydian, it will be a (poor) sub for dom 7, maj6, whatever. Originally Posted by christianm77
x 1000
I'm (mostly) kidding here, but the point is that you certainly need to know how to use the simple voicings before you start going beyond them -- and some very simple shapes can serve many different functions.
That said, around here, the guitarists working a lot playing jazz are not doing just that, but, typically using all kinds of stretchy voicings (the commonality is that they hurt my hand to play) and making them sound great.
One world class player told me that he doesn't use drop 2 voicings at all, because they sound old fashioned. I think that videos of his gigs would prove that he uses them occasionally, but not as much as players of yesteryear.
To put this in context- I don't often hear guitarists doing standards gigs. Occasionally. Most of the live music I hear is original or original arrangements, or piano only, or r&b or something other than an old fashioned standards gig. Of course, maybe I should get out more. But it seems to me that the old idea of knowing several hundred standards and calling them at random on the bandstand with no charts isn't what is usually happening in the live music venues I encounter.
I know that there are going to be responses from players who are doing exactly that, and in my area. SF Bay Area. I hope they post the dates/venues so I can go hear them.
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I think good jazz guitarists would find every context for something simple like that triad shape.
I think that’s what separates out the people who ‘get it’ - they apply small bits of information intelligently
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@TruthHertz Originally Posted by TruthHertz
Thanks for this very informative post David, very interesting and good story and advice
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Wow so much amazing advice guys thanks!! This will keep me busy!
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