The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
Reply to Thread Bookmark Thread
Page 1 of 4 123 ... LastLast
Posts 1 to 25 of 81
  1. #1

    User Info Menu

    Corrections, fact checking etc welcome.


  2.  

    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

    User Info Menu

    My research is clearly beyond reproach

  4. #3

    User Info Menu

    Jim Hall's comping is astonishing.

    But, you can hear comping, not FG, on Her Name Is Julie in 1955 by Barney K. You can hear foreshadowing of it in 1952 by Johnny Smith. I checked out a 1952 Chuck Wayne album, but the comping is FG.

  5. #4

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    Jim Hall's comping is astonishing.

    But, you can hear comping, not FG, on Her Name Is Julie in 1955 by Barney K. You can hear foreshadowing of it in 1952 by Johnny Smith. I checked out a 1952 Chuck Wayne album, but the comping is FG.
    Oddly enough, I've heard teachers call comping "big band hits on guitar"

    Listening to the shout choruses that characterized Basie's band, or how the horns handled harmonizing the melody in Dukes band--the idea of compin didn't sound so far fetched.

    I think it was Ed Bickert who said that he wanted his guitar to sound like the horn section of a big band NOT a piano.

    Food for thought?

  6. #5

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by Irez87
    Oddly enough, I've heard teachers call comping "big band hits on guitar"

    Listening to the shout choruses that characterized Basie's band, or how the horns handled harmonizing the melody in Dukes band--the idea of compin didn't sound so far fetched.

    I think it was Ed Bickert who said that he wanted his guitar to sound like the horn section of a big band NOT a piano.

    Food for thought?
    Perhaps oddly, I recall an interview in which Jerry Garcia said he modeled part of his rhythm playing after horn section parts.

  7. #6

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    Jim Hall's comping is astonishing.

    But, you can hear comping, not FG, on Her Name Is Julie in 1955 by Barney K. You can hear foreshadowing of it in 1952 by Johnny Smith. I checked out a 1952 Chuck Wayne album, but the comping is FG.
    Cool, I was wondering about Barney K and Johnny Smiths place in the history of course - Chuck Wayne was a great rhythm player.

    They all were, that was the gig.

    Thanks for the info!

  8. #7

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by Irez87
    Oddly enough, I've heard teachers call comping "big band hits on guitar"

    Listening to the shout choruses that characterized Basie's band, or how the horns handled harmonizing the melody in Dukes band--the idea of compin didn't sound so far fetched.

    I think it was Ed Bickert who said that he wanted his guitar to sound like the horn section of a big band NOT a piano.

    Food for thought?
    Definitely hear the big band thing with Wes

  9. #8

    User Info Menu

    Thanks Christian, good video on an interesting subject.

    I recently wrote a tune that modulates over different keys, and it turned out to be a puzzle to decide what key to use as the main key. Change of key in the middle of a song is no problem, the tricky part is to decide when to highlight a change in the score and what key (mode) to use. From the perspective of improvisation, we like to know the key/mode (this is more important than the chord symbols). We typically have to figure out the modes ourselves and this is when extended chord symbols could be of great help also for the improvising soloist.

    Melodic minor and Harmonic minor are not modes of the major scale, but exist as separate modes. It doesn't have to be complex, but we get complex looking chord names because we inherited a notation system based on the Ionian mode. It's like bashing a square peg into a round hole.

    So, notation could help a musician to understand or it could add to the confusion. It much depends on the individual musician and his approach to interpreting written music. For example; the arranger/ band leader/conductor may have different needs and preferences than the improvising soloist.

    And then there are all those little dissonances that make harmony exiting and have been used with a purpose by all the greats. A dissonance may or may not be a clash. It depends on the pitch, not the name of the note, and the instruments involved. For example; It's not possible to invert every chord and expect a musical outcome and again, preferred notation depends on purpose. -What if the lead note is not within the scale of the chord symbol? Extending the chord symbol helps us find the right key/mode for improvisation purposes.

  10. #9

    User Info Menu

    Part 2:

    Your observations;

    "Nowadays it's like the chords are the most important thing"
    "from harmonization of melody to melodization of harmony"
    "This is a massive thing, lots of modern jazz composition fall into this category"
    "We learn tunes from chord symbols and lead sheets"

    Yeah, why not? I think it's an interesting development, BUT crafting melodies must not get second priority. Let's say I write a tune and start by writing harmony with the purpose of adding a melody in step 2. If harmony constrains melody, I must reiterate and change harmony for melody to find its way. It's a common way of writing and it works. I have practiced writing like if my only tool was a horn, writing melodies emulating harmonies by scales, arpeggios and patterns. But the process I prefer these days is to write melody and harmony simultaneously, bar by bar. Anyway, sometimes a melody have a life without any accompanying harmony, sometimes harmony speaks without a lead melody. Most of the time they exist in symbiosis.

  11. #10

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by JCat
    Part 2:

    Your observations;

    "Nowadays it's like the chords are the most important thing"
    "from harmonization of melody to melodization of harmony"
    "This is a massive thing, lots of modern jazz composition fall into this category"
    "We learn tunes from chord symbols and lead sheets"

    Yeah, why not? I think it's an interesting development, BUT crafting melodies must not get second priority. Let's say I write a tune and start by writing harmony with the purpose of adding a melody in step 2. If harmony constrains melody, I must reiterate and change harmony for melody to find its way. It's a common way of writing and it works. I have practiced writing like if my only tool was a horn, writing melodies emulating harmonies by scales, arpeggios and patterns. But the process I prefer these days is to write melody and harmony simultaneously, bar by bar. Anyway, sometimes a melody have a life without any accompanying harmony, sometimes harmony speaks without a lead melody. Most of the time they exist in symbiosis.
    I was keen to be non value judgmental about it, if you’ll excuse the convoluted sentence construction :-)

    I sometimes feel it’s enough simply to learn about the history and observe some forks in the road that might present interesting adventures, as well as elucidate the differences in styles, epochs and approaches.

    My compositional process varies radically from tune to tune. But usually, I am chords first. However I did write a tune with melody first and I’m really pleased with it. Ended up being a song.... very old school.

    I do feel if a melody can’t stand on it’s own it’s not a strong melody. That melody doesn’t have to be conventionally tonal or modal necessarily, but it must be strong .

    I think the great modern jazz composers have melodies that stand on their own. Wayne for instance. Some of the Kurt stuff too actually. Kenny Wheeler etc.

    I just think there’s a lot of melody free contemporary music in general. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I think I want melody to be central plank of what I do.

  12. #11

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by JCat
    Thanks Christian, good video on an interesting subject.

    I recently wrote a tune that modulates over different keys, and it turned out to be a puzzle to decide what key to use as the main key. Change of key in the middle of a song is no problem, the tricky part is to decide when to highlight a change in the score and what key (mode) to use. From the perspective of improvisation, we like to know the key/mode (this is more important than the chord symbols). We typically have to figure out the modes ourselves and this is when extended chord symbols could be of great help also for the improvising soloist.
    In terms of standards if you are experienced with this repertoire, I have to say this is rarely a problem. Extensions are normally diatonic to the prevailing key or a closely related one (which is no surprise because that’s what the extensions in these charts are those related to the melody notes.)

    So, you’ll normally see #11 not Nat11 on a IV7, bVI7, II7 or bVII7 for instance. Not on a V7 so much (unless it’s a b5 and you can usually tell the difference by the other notes in the chord and the way it resolves.)

    Playing piano really helps with this btw. I can’t recommend it enough. Just play everything in C major.

    There’s no need to observe the written extensions implied by the tune in your solo, unless you have a insensitive accompanist who learned jazz out of a chord scale book :-)

    In bebop we don’t really pay any attention. You can if you want of course. But bebop accompaniment is usually shell voicings right? And even where it isn’t, players back then were perfectly happy to clash, because they knew how to resolve.

    And if you play without another chordist you have a lot of freedom.

    In terms of more modern tunes it’s usually written out in the chords and the you just do the thing.

    Melodic minor and Harmonic minor are not modes of the major scale, but exist as separate modes. It doesn't have to be complex, but we get complex looking chord names because we inherited a notation system based on the Ionian mode. It's like bashing a square peg into a round hole.

    So, notation could help a musician to understand or it could add to the confusion. It much depends on the individual musician and his approach to interpreting written music. For example; the arranger/ band leader/conductor may have different needs and preferences than the improvising soloist.

    And then there are all those little dissonances that make harmony exiting and have been used with a purpose by all the greats. A dissonance may or may not be a clash. It depends on the pitch, not the name of the note, and the instruments involved. For example; It's not possible to invert every chord and expect a musical outcome and again, preferred notation depends on purpose. -What if the lead note is not within the scale of the chord symbol? Extending the chord symbol helps us find the right key/mode for improvisation purposes.
    Well melodic minor harmony is like an extra layer you can paint on standards, but it’s not necessary to play those tunes - for the reasons I described above.

    ‘If the lead note is not within the scale of the chord symbol?’ I’m not sure what you mean by that. Do you have an example?

  13. #12

    User Info Menu

    For a while, I could never make chords sound musical when I read them off a chord chart. I know I'm gonna sound "new age", but I think reading the sheet music of harmony as it relates to the song--that helped me the most. You know, like Barry Galbraith's Comping book from his Jazz Study Guide Series? That book made the most profound change in my playing. I was able to see the voice leading, the changes in harmonic density, and the thematic development in CHORDAL playing. Barry's material was where the light went off in my head--you can tell a story with your accompaniment.

    We often simplify this by saying "just play some drop voicings on the top four and five strings--and put an interesting melody on top". Great accompaniment is SO MUCH MORE than that.

    Right now, just like Jordan K., I'm obsessed with triads--however, my reference point is a little different. The next book that had a profound effect was George Van Eps's Guitar Method (not to be confused with his Harmonic Mechanisms series). For the longest while, I tried to translate the triads I worked on into the constraints of a tune. I tried to look at a tune in the Real Book and apply triads--it never worked.

    I soon realized that I needed to LISTEN--and play along with my favorite piano players. I also realized that I needed to figure out how to simplify harmony as much as possible before I could really create the harmonic movements I wanted to play. I'm more interested in the whole "simultaneous melodies that meet up at the same time" thing--harmony as linear, as opposed to harmony that is vertical "chord to chord to chord".

    Drop voicings are so entrenched in jazz guitar vocabulary that it was hard to find people that understood my vision (it's not my vision--I didn't come up with it--but this is how I want to comp). Luckily I found two, one who I've never met in person (Steve Herbermen) and a local Washingtonian not too far from where I live. The further I get into this study of melodic triads--for accompaniment, I wish I could apply them holistically like Jordan K.--the more and more I realize how incompatible jazz charts (especially from the Real Book) really are.

    Maybe we need a figured base nomenclature? Maybe we just need a chart with guide tones and no chord labels? I still use charts when I don't know the tune, but it's always for comping and never for soloing. I hope, in a couple of years, to experience the same harmonic freedom that I have with my single line improvisations--with triadic movement.
    Last edited by Irez87; 07-05-2019 at 02:30 PM.

  14. #13

    User Info Menu

    Interesting topic. One thing I didn't quite understand is if the discussion is mainly about improvisation using chord charts or if it also concerns comping.
    On the comping side of things, there seems to be two alternative approaches that determine how one sees chord charts:

    1. Minimalist: Between the bass and soloist, comping harmonies is really redundant. Compers job is mainly rhythmic. The nature of the rhythmic role also depends on whether there is a drummer or not. Without a drummer, even Freddie Greene style can be the appropriate choice. With drummer it's way subtler. Stabs of shells or dyiads sprinkled here and there.

    2. Orchestrater: Comper's job is to take the chart as a blueprint make an arrangement that sounds like having a big band horn section backing the soloist. Create movements with passing chords, secondary dominants, approach chords, quartal harmony, inversions etc. Reverse engineer all the implied chromatic movements of chord voices in adjacent chords and create counter melodies etc.

    I think there is a great value in taking a plain Jane chart and being able to do "2" while bringing out the melody. It's not always appropriate to comp that way, but for guitarist and pianist, it's a great way to learn a tune. There are also times when doing "2" really elevates the band and the music.
    For the situations that falls in the category of "1", may be how one sees the charts isn't as important, right?

  15. #14

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by Tal_175
    Interesting topic. One thing I didn't quite understand is if the discussion is mainly about improvisation using chord charts or if it also concerns comping.
    On the comping side of things, there seems to be two alternative approaches that determine how one sees chord charts:

    1. Minimalist: Between the bass and soloist, comping harmonies is really redundant. Compers job is mainly rhythmic. The nature of the rhythmic role also depends on whether there is a drummer or not. Without a drummer, even Freddie Greene style can be the appropriate choice. With drummer it's way subtler. Stabs of shells or dyiads sprinkled here and there.

    2. Orchestrater: Comper's job is to take the chart as a blueprint make an arrangement that sounds like having a big band horn section backing the soloist. Create movements with passing chords, secondary dominants, approach chords, quartal harmony, inversions etc. Reverse engineer all the implied chromatic movements of chord voices in adjacent chords and create counter melodies etc.

    I think there is a great value in taking a plain Jane chart and being able to do "2" while bringing out the melody. It's not always appropriate to comp that way, but for guitarist and pianist, it's a great way to learn a tune. There are also times when doing "2" really elevates the band and the music.
    For the situations that falls in the category of "1", may be how one sees the charts isn't as important, right?
    It really concerns both.

    You missed out one role that the guitar serves until the 1960s - which is drum/percussion. Needless to say it still functions this way in most popular music.

    I don’t like the term Freddie Green style as that’s very specific and I know four or five people who do it and they are specialists. Mostly guitarists don’t play his way when they play 4s.

    Piano used to more like this - stride, boogie woogie, New Orleans style and so on.... but it left this function about 15 years before guitar.

    Also it’s possible to do this in jazz without playing 4s. There is a bop way to play 4s though, quite distinct from a swing or gypsy jazz way. Listen to Jim Hall and Tal Farlow...

    But regardless of function within the group jazz players have always embellished the basic chords of a song whether soloing or comping.

    It can be argued that they do it less now that the charts are more complicated.

    There used to be more of a separation. Now players are more likely to unify chords and improvisation, which is to say the embellishments used for comping is no longer different to those used for soloing ideas. It’s such a basic trope now people are often unaware there ever was a separation.

    Two words here for an example - major seventh

    Tbh for me a good comped can fulfil either of your roles while remaining an integral part of the rhythm section. That doesn’t of course mean playing 4s.
    Last edited by christianm77; 07-05-2019 at 02:30 PM.

  16. #15

    User Info Menu

    I recently attended a couple of shows by Chico Pinheiro who, among other abilities, is as advanced a rhythm/comping guitarist as I've ever heard.

    He is constantly changing chords, even on tunes where I know there is a single chord (on the original) for multiple bars. And, it's not the usual. Many players change voicings, move voicings through scales/modes, and find passing chords that connect the basic harmony.

    But, what Chico did seemed to go beyond that. His harmony constantly varied, as far as I could tell, without obvious regard to the usual rules. I couldn't figure out what was going on, except maybe for this. I'll explain my thought with an example. If the original chord was, say, an A7. He would construct a palette of every chord/voicing that could possibly relate to A7. So it would be every alteration of A7. Every alteration of Eb7. Every chord that came out of a mode associated with an alteration of A7 (so, Emelmin, just to give an example, and all its voicings). And then, maybe the same thing for every passing chord that he might use to lead towards A7. All selected by ear.

    This would be a recipe for disaster in the wrong hands. But, in the context I heard him (no piano) it was beyond brilliant. The key point here is "selected by ear", although he's a Berklee grad and, presumably, knows the usual theory, to say the least.

    It occurred to me that I was hearing the future.

  17. #16

    User Info Menu

    I got curious about the evolution of comping.

    This is from 1950. Not Jim Hall, but not FG either.



    This is one from the late 30's. You can hear FG in the guitar, but the piano is something else.


  18. #17

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    ‘If the lead note is not within the scale of the chord symbol?’ I’m not sure what you mean by that. Do you have an example?
    Simple example; chord A7, lead note F on top. This is the voice of A7add-13, practically A7/5+. Dominant +5 chords have a minor feel, (the sharp 5th of A7/5+ corresponds to the minor third of Dm7 aeolian, which suggests d-minor (or F-major).
    For simplicity, let's just say there are passing changes as well as passing notes, where some linger a bit longer than others.

  19. #18

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    I got curious about the evolution of comping.

    This is from 1950. Not Jim Hall, but not FG either.



    This is one from the late 30's. You can hear FG in the guitar, but the piano is something else.

    Well Nat was acknowledged as a bit of a trailblazer.

    I think again it’s worth pointing out guitar lagged piano.... in the sense that guitar had a specific function but it changed to imitate the piano.

    The latter idea is to me, a mistake: Jim Hall didn’t make it - he came up with a guitarist way to do it. That’s the trick - people like to hear the guitar, and what’s more guitaristic than a bit of strumming?

    I need to listen to the Norfolk trio stuff again.

  20. #19

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by JCat
    Simple example; chord A7, lead note F on top. This is the voice of A7add-13, practically A7/5+. Dominant +5 chords have a minor feel, (the sharp 5th of A7/5+ corresponds to the minor third of Dm7 aeolian, which suggests d-minor (or F-major).
    For simplicity, let's just say there are passing changes as well as passing notes, where some linger a bit longer than others.
    I don’t understand how that very routine minor key dominant is in any way unusual. It’s just d harmonic minor, one of the diatonic minor scales.

    I can think of an example of this in a tune btw, first bar of the middle 8 of Stella. The #5 resolves down by a half step.

  21. #20

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Well Nat was acknowledged as a bit of a trailblazer.

    I think again it’s worth pointing out guitar lagged piano.... in the sense that guitar had a specific function but it changed to imitate the piano.

    The latter idea is to me, a mistake: Jim Hall didn’t make it - he came up with a guitarist way to do it. That’s the trick - people like to hear the guitar, and what’s more guitaristic than a bit of strumming?

    I need to listen to the Norfolk trio stuff again.
    What Jim Hall did, to my ear, better than any guitarist before him (and maybe since) is play sparsely. His accompaniment was often based on just a few notes and plenty of space. There was always some kind of countermelody. And, when he finally strummed a chord, often from the highest note, descending, it sounded huge. You can hear an antecedent in Nat King Cole, but that's among many other places. I think it may start with piano backing voice on ballads.

    Doing this, in my experience, isn't so easy unless you're the leader. Most pianists will prevent it by filling in the silences. Some bassists too. You need a laid back bassist, a drummer willing to just tick along, a pianist who will stay at home (meaning, no piano) and a horn player whose idol isn't the angry young tenors (great musicians, but not this style afaik, no disrespect).
    Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 07-06-2019 at 03:30 PM.

  22. #21

    User Info Menu

    As far as modern comping is concerned, Oscar Moore's playing with Nat King Cole was pivotal. Barney Kessel, mentioned earlier in relation to the Julie London recordings, considered Oscar to be the 'missing link' between swing and bebop guitarists.

  23. #22

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    Jim Hall's comping is astonishing.

    But, you can hear comping, not FG, on Her Name Is Julie in 1955 by Barney K. You can hear foreshadowing of it in 1952 by Johnny Smith. I checked out a 1952 Chuck Wayne album, but the comping is FG.
    Chuck Wayne's early comping is often like supercharged FG. Check out his playing in this 1950 clip:



    Tal Farlow reckoned that Chuck was the most modern guitarist working in NY when he arrived there in the mid-'40s. However, I hear both Farlow and Wayne as coming from quite a different place than Jim Hall. Jim idolised Freddie Green and now that we know from closer listening and anecdotal evidence that FG was mostly delivering 'one-note comping', his connection to Hall makes more sense.

  24. #23

    User Info Menu

    Oddly, I often subscribe to the position Pat Metheny once quipped of jazz guitarists that "one jazz guitarist in a jazz band is one too many."

    But seriously, I am not a natural fan of traditional jazz guitar and listen far more jazz without guitar than with it as I am a much bigger fan of horn based groups.

    Fortunately, there have always been exceptional players like Reinhardt, Wes, Burrell, Green, Benson to show me the err of my ways and I would add to this list ...Oscar Moore!
    How jazz became the study of chord symbols-prewar_gibson_05_oscar_moore-jpg

    I love Nat King Cole and never found myself wishing that the tune didn't have a guitar break when Oscar was playing. I really liked the guitar sound he had in this era too with the L-5 into an old old octal amps.

  25. #24

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by PMB
    As far as modern comping is concerned, Oscar Moore's playing with Nat King Cole was pivotal. Barney Kessel, mentioned earlier in relation to the Julie London recordings, considered Oscar to be the 'missing link' between swing and bebop guitarists.
    I can buy that. Again I need to go back and listen to Oscar again in more depth....

    But the point is I suppose that playing 4s is not specifically a swing era thing.

  26. #25

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    What Jim Hall did, to my ear, better than any guitarist before him (and maybe since) is play sparsely. His accompaniment was often based on just a few notes and plenty of space. There was always some kind of countermelody. And, when he finally strummed a chord, often from the highest note, descending, it sounded huge. You can hear an antecedent in Nat King Cole, but that's among many other places. I think it may start with piano backing voice on ballads.

    Doing this, in my experience, isn't so easy unless you're the leader. Most pianists will prevent it by filling in the silences. Some bassists too. You need a laid back bassist, a drummer willing to just tick along, a pianist who will stay at home and a horn player whose idol isn't the angry young tenors (great musicians, but not this style afaik, no disrespect).
    Depends what bands you play in.... I almost never play with a pianist.