The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #276

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    Sorry to be grumpy and rude about your contributions rintin. Just because I happen to know that stuff already is no excuse for being brusque and dismissive.

    It’s a shame you don’t feel I was saying anything of value, I think the two hands separate/two hands together thing is actually quite an intriguing thing to bear in mind in the development of jazz harmony, and I find it interesting people don't talk about it more often; but people don’t seem to be interested. You’d be in a much better position to support/debunk it than most of us, as an actual jazz pianist.
    Last edited by christianm77; 05-28-2020 at 05:43 AM.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #277
    joelf Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by joelf
    Got permission! Here's Glenn Mills's Broad Daylight, chart and sound file:
    Anyone listened or scanned the score?

    Thoughts?

  4. #278

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    Quote Originally Posted by joelf
    Anyone listened or scanned the score?

    Thoughts?
    i really enjoyed listening to it, but haven’t really got into the score yet

  5. #279

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    My favorite Wayne soprano sax track ever, "Ponta de Arieia". He didn't write the theme, but he owns the bridge and solo in the middle. It's remastered, and if you haven't heard it in a while treat yourself to a listen.


  6. #280
    joelf Guest
    I've been delving heavily into 20th Century European composition---in particular Debussy; Bartok; Stravinsky---and lately Schoenberg.

    It only further brings home a thought I'd been nurturing all along: if you think note-to-note you could be liberated from the tyranny of traditional Western chordal thinking (then there are other systems never broached in Western academia: African hemiola, and other 'World Music' approaches---another topic for another day).

    These people, especially Schoenberg, who organized the thinking in theory books and created a 'school' were thinking in pitch sets,not chords in the way we normally think of them. Certain tradition scales, like whole-tone, crop up in Schoenberg's Opus 11, as do what sounds awfully like post-bop jazz chords. The 'chords' may be accidental, in the sense that they are being approached by those interval sets, and may be thought of as temporary moorings.

    I also think you can apply this thinking to older harmony. Just think note to note; and of chordal movement as 3 or more scales moving simultaneously. If they don't 'move' in the expected ways, note to note, chord to chord still covers it---and drives us less crazy.

    I created a page here---Score Analysis Thread---that explores this in more detail. Latest entry: Schoenberg's Opus 11---recording w/score followed by a cool analysis.

    It's not too far a leap of faith to glean how modern jazz harmony borrowed liberally from these folks. It's true fusion, when you think of those harmonic implications coupled with jazz rhythm and feeling...

  7. #281
    joelf Guest
    And this is a decent overview of African harmony---which touches on chords not resolving in the traditional (Western) way...

    Traditional sub-Saharan African harmony - Wikipedia

  8. #282

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    Yea... I went through this process back in the 70's and 80's... was composing and arranging as much as I could, trying to make living. I don't think it's a stretch at all....I mean expanding leads to basically any possibility one hears.
    Just expanding Diatonic and Functional organization open almost all jazz doors.

  9. #283

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    Quote Originally Posted by joelf
    And this is a decent overview of African harmony---which touches on chords not resolving in the traditional (Western) way...

    Traditional sub-Saharan African harmony - Wikipedia
    Aha - interesting so

    "The subdominant (plagal) cadence is (resulting from the frequent tendency toward parallelism in African music) the favored cadence and not the perfect cadence, which is the norm in classical western music...Cadential patterns are frequent in African music and invariably result as a consequence of melodic movement either by thirds, fourths, or fifths – that is as a consequence of what may be referred to as shadow harmony ... A cadential descending minor third is frequently noted between the minor third step and the tonic (Reiser, 1982:122) in African music."[9] These cadential movements are made using the melody and the scale as the guiding factor.

    Relates to this thing I noticed about jazz musicians often avoiding the leading tone when playing V7-I. I call them cool dominants. The go from Lester Young though to McCoy Tyner and beyond.

    Of course V7sus4 is the classic 'churchy' example... Apparently gospel harmonisations use a parallel harmonisation with a hexatonic scale

    1 2 3 4 5 6 1

    'Cooled tonality' - and of course, jazz might take place over a tonal backdrop, but it itself is not necessarily tonal, but modal. As Conrad Cork puts it, jazz has always been modal.

  10. #284
    joelf Guest
    I think they were saying----not implying---that Africa was there 1st. With modality and lots of other things.

    Hear, hear---'bout time.

    I misspoke about the hemiola---some of this is new to me: it has to do with a 3/2 or 2/3 polyrhythm---undoubtedly where clave was born. Apologies. One of the articles did tie it in with sub-Saharan harmony and singing. I'll look into it more and report back...

  11. #285

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    Well I'm reading Gerhard Kubik's 'A case in point: Bebop: the African matrix in Jazz harmonic practices' cited in the Wiki article. Fascinating stuff.

    Incidentally, I'm getting the feeling this is the exact conceptual split which makes jazz harmony hard for classical musicians to understand. There was a Nicholas Payton thing I must did out - where he said that he was surprised that classical musicians couldn't play the chords he was writing - they couldn't hear them in some way...

  12. #286

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    Quote Originally Posted by joelf
    I think they were saying----not implying---that Africa was there 1st. With modality and lots of other things.

    Hear, hear---'bout time.

    I misspoke about the hemiola---some of this is new to me: it has to do with a 3/2 or 2/3 polyrhythm---undoubtedly where clave was born. Apologies. One of the articles did tie it in with sub-Saharan harmony and singing. I'll look into it more and report back...
    Been reading Simha Arom's African Polyphony and Polyrhythm, and the author states its a mistake to think about meter in traditional African music - there is none, nor is there syncopation, as syncopation requires a meter with strong and weak beats. There are patterns of accents in a repeating period, but trying to add metrical subdivisions of this period are a European construct without any useful purpose.

  13. #287

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    Also in the book, which focuses exclusively on the Central African Republic, but extrapolates to other W African cultures, he noted that vocal harmonies outside of Pygmy groups, where the only real vocal polyphony is found, the vertical harmony tends, depending on the group to be exclusively either thirds, fourths or fifths, much like medieval organum. So one group might exclusively harmonize with thirds while another in fourths, etc. He also noted the use of the whole tone scale, but within Pygmy groups so it likely did not travel to the Americas

  14. #288

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    I didn't know this story, I haven't read Berliner from cover to over, but that book is just amazing.

    "Individual jazz musicians also differ. For Miles Davis, the harmonic background glow was most important, the e/eb distinction paramount. He is reported to have argued with Charlie Parker on one occasion con- cerning whether it was really possible that players could do "anything" with chords, as Parker maintained. Davis told him that d could not beplayed in the fifth bar of a B-flat blues. Parker replied that he could do it. One night later, Davis heard Lester Young doing exactly that, although he seemed to "bend" the note. Parker gave Davis a triumphant glance (see Berliner 1994, 252). In fact, Charlie Parker, for example, in "Good Dues Blues" in the key of D, begins a phrase in measure six with ft (Parker 1946)."

    In fact Miles Davis's Solo on Now's the Time is full of such false relations. He was obviously paying attention?

  15. #289
    joelf Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    There was a Nicholas Payton thing I must did out - where he said that he was surprised that classical musicians couldn't play the chords he was writing - they couldn't hear them in some way...
    I think it's more that they don't hear them in the same way. Whole other orientation for the identical material! A hair-breadth away----and a world away...

  16. #290
    joelf Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by BWV
    Been reading Simha Arom's African Polyphony and Polyrhythm, and the author states its a mistake to think about meter in traditional African music - there is none, nor is there syncopation, as syncopation requires a meter with strong and weak beats. There are patterns of accents in a repeating period, but trying to add metrical subdivisions of this period are a European construct without any useful purpose.
    Yeah---they probably started 'dividing' when the slaves were brought West---and 're-educated'...

  17. #291

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    Quote Originally Posted by joelf
    I think it's more that they don't hear them in the same way. Whole other orientation for the identical material! A hair-breadth away----and a world away...
    Yeah, so this is it.

    But that's the whole framing of things like the Jazz Theory Book, the idea of jazz harmony as vertical, the harmony evolving in a nice neat way like it did in classical music. Levine constantly uses that narrative, in common with many jazz educators, even when he has no good reason to - and even when he is demonstrably wrong... Probably totally unconscious, inherited from somewhere. It's a Eurocentric view, in a weird sort of way because I think that's what they are trying to escape. As I say unintentional.

    (Like 50s critics who gave Third Stream records better reviews than Blue Note, because that was their lens for understanding the progress of the music; that it should be allied to European modernism, not blues and swing)

    But culturally, do these positivist, ahistorical models of jazz have the end effect of writing the blackness, the African-ness out of jazz? I've certainly read a lot of papers that argue that... Ethan Iverson seems to suggest it started with Tristano.

    And it's sad because that culture has been suppressed for centuries. And us white idiots can't stop doing it in the academies and conservatoires. Sure, we mean well.

    I find the 'ring of truth' in Steve Coleman's ideas about the layered nature of bebop, or this guy Kubik the music is layered with harmonic and rhythmic possibilities. It's not built up from some imaginary root, with the chords and scales agreeing. How could anyone look at a transcription of Monk, Parker or anything and come away with that conclusion? Bill Evans, maybe, but even then...

    Jazz is a music of layers, always has been. Especially during the modal era.
    Last edited by christianm77; 06-22-2020 at 07:51 PM.

  18. #292

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77

    Jazz is a music of layers, always has been. Especially during the modal era.
    First glance I read that as "...a music of lawyers..."

  19. #293
    joelf Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    But that's the whole framing of things like the Jazz Theory Book, the idea of jazz harmony as vertical, the harmony evolving in a nice neat way like it did in classical music. Levine constantly uses that narrative, in common with many jazz educators, even when he has no good reason to - and even when he is demonstrably wrong... Probably totally unconscious, inherited from somewhere. It's a Eurocentric view, in a weird sort of way because I think that's what they are trying to escape. As I say unintentional...

    But culturally, do these positivist, ahistorical models of jazz have the end effect of writing the blackness, the African-ness out of jazz? I've certainly read a lot of papers that argue that... Ethan Iverson seems to suggest it started with Tristano...
    Mark Levine would bristle at that assessment, being very accomplished in (and at one time highly sought after for) many forms of Afro-Cuban/Salsa/'Latin Jazz' music. I didn't read that book---used to have the excellent Jazz Piano book, still recommend it.

    I'm sure whatever Levine's student indoctrination, he paid it little mind in his performance career---guy's straight out of black jazz and Latino forms*. He wrote a book in the language he knew would be grasped. It's called Lingua Franca---like it or not. My guess: he knew the game, and what would play to academia and its progeny and what wouldn't. Students having been steeped in Eurocentric learning are gonna think someone writing counter to that is weird. Jazz education is a business, and nobody will buy a book by one a deemed pariah. Hell, they may get kicked out of school, excommunicated from the herd (to mix metaphors). And I don't profess to know, and won't defend or diss what I haven't read.

    *If you want to hear where Mark Levine is really coming from, I'd start with the excellent Up Til Now (Catalyst, 1976---featuring also some great earlier Tom Harrell).

    Tristano: oi vey! A brilliant man with an ego and Christ complex even bigger than that copious noggin. It would be very unfair---and just not reality---to suggest he in any way willed the blackness out of jazz. He knew who the innovators were, sang their praises, brutal critic though he was toward almost everyone else playing, and made his students sing their solos.

    Where he went south in a big way was that his use of rhythmic displacement---though brilliant and worthy of study---was Western, not African-derived. I guess that was his sin by indoctrination. He displaced things metrically, but it had nothing to do with polyrhythm or clave, b/c he didn't really know from that. Not his fault, but that of his teachers.

    The dominant culture---and now I'm purposely going global---always feels they must win, and containing 'minority' (take that both ways) views is one of the insidious methods that insinuates itself into every aspect of society. Why would the classroom be different when it's the perfect bully pulpit for advancing ossified; business-savvy; self-perpetuating; white views (agendas?---yeah, I'll go with that)?

    How do you unchain yourself---you creative musician of any color truly in search of knowledge and informed self-expression? You take the 'way of the autodidact'---you read everything, from every point of view. You ask questions, questions, questions. And all of that won't mean much if you don't take that leap of faith to hang with and get your ass kicked by true practitioners---playing the music, living the music and the life. If they spot talent and sincerity there's nothing they won't do to help and encourage you. (That was what I lived, what I was so lucky to have been given).

    There are no conclusions---only evolutions. That's on each of us...
    Last edited by joelf; 06-22-2020 at 11:35 PM.

  20. #294

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    thanks for your thoughts. The Theory Book has a lot of overlap with the Piano Book, there's some similar memes and tropes in it which I find come up a lot in education, stuff about the 4th and so on.

    Of course Levine would bristle. (I thought you might know him.) Though, just because I’m extremely critical of what he has written doesn’t mean I’m attacking him personally (I don’t know him). I think he means well, and everyone knows he’s a great musician.

    However, some things are actually out of our hands. There’s something about the very act of writing jazz books etc which causes us to frame our knowledge in a certain way. Levine’s books are really interesting from this perspective, because he seems aware of it to some extent. (I think that’s probably why Howard Rees felt it important to have the video in his Barry Harris series (also makes them too expensive for those not already interested) to try and get closer to that community feel.)

    What you say about ‘game playing’ and ‘lingua franca’ seems about right. The context was different. Back when he was teaching and writing these books, this knowledge was less widely known... he was probably one of the few guys to be able to explain what was going on in the post bop era. For trailblazing music educators its reasonable to assume they couldn't predict the effects of what they were coming up with. Again, I don't blame them.

    But that doesn't mean there aren't problems with where we find ourselves.

    One thing I realise revisiting them is that jazz educators teach pretty much chapter and verse out of the two books. For instance, Levine's approach to voicing left hand chords 3-9 (although I'm sure he didn't invent that), the scale choices, analysing progressions as modulating II-V's, I see that out in the wild all the time. It's become it's own thing. Theory often comes before the music for many students.

    That's why Barry Harris is so popular with young players, almost to cultish levels - they understand he has something to offer that their teachers aren't giving them and they couldn't get many other places.

    OTOH Ethan Iverson seems to be on a mission to question these sorts of jazz education memes. I think he goes a bit far sometimes, like that 'if your favourite jazz drummer is Buddy Rich you are a racist' screed (didn't Charlie Parker love Buddy's playing?).... But he's often very interesting and insightful.

    I think that's a generational thing. For my generation and younger, we have a different relationship to theory. It goes in cycles.

    Again, I think these boomer generation theorists and teachers are 100% aware that there are problems with all this, because they've seen it all change on their watch, mostly it must be said to forces outside of their control (the decline in live music, the expansion of the educational sector and so on). There's a good Aebersold quote that I'll dig out.

    Anyway I 100% agree about the rhythm thing with Tristano - that’s what I had in mind. The rhythm is more like Bartok than Bird in that sense, additive rather than layered.

    In terms of how we 'unchain ourselves.' That's a question worth asking maybe, even if we can't actually answer it. I think it's helpful to be aware. In the end we educators have to write books, syllabuses and so on. At least being sophisticated enough to understand that there are always problems with how we present things, and to try to be clear about it. Again, I think Mark Levine was actually trying to do this to some extent. It didn't work, but it's there...

    Anyway, a William Blake quote that I feel is relevant

    "To Generalize is to be an Idiot; To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit"
    I need to remind myself of this... Jazz teachers, including Levine, are at our best when are particular. Theory itself is an act of generalisation, so is in some sense doomed to idiocy. It's a necessary evil sometimes, but it's still an evil.
    Last edited by christianm77; 06-23-2020 at 05:01 AM.

  21. #295

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    Quote Originally Posted by pauln
    First glance I read that as "...a music of lawyers..."
    I love it! That's what its become haha

    'But isn't the F# a bad note against the G7? It says here in the Chord Scale Theory book.'
    'Well actually, we have legal precedent from 1958 when Wes Montgomery played that note in this solo here.' (that's me lol)

    Oh god....

  22. #296
    joelf Guest
    The preferred---the best way to really see what's up with anything: if possible, go to the source! Otherwise, you're twice or thrice removed from real empirical knowledge, and---well-meaning and sincere though you be---you'll still be talking out of your bunghole. By comparison.

    I listen, and have for years, to both sides of the Israeli-Arab conflict. I let the opinions and vitriol wash over me---then wash it off b/c I've never been there---haven't lived among and spoken to Israelis; Palestinians; Syrians; etc. (Because I'm Jewish there are Israeli-sponsored programs (the 'return', in English) that would allow me to live there free for 6 months. If I were at liberty, and truly interested, I'd take up the offer. But I'm not, so I read the papers like anyone else, but have no opinion of any value and say nothing if asked.

    Closer to home, if I want to learn a tune, I try to get as close to a composer's version as I can. Short of that, I'll listen not to Sarah or Ella---who will 'jazz it up', but Doris Day or Jo Stafford, who won't, and with an arrangement that doesn't deviate much from the composer's intent. Then, informed, I have license to do what I will with the song.

    I would love to, one day, take sabbaticals to Africa; Brasil; Cuba; the Mideast; Orient---live among the people and listen. When I'd learned enough I'd ask to sit in. Maybe working vacations could facilitate these trips (like Tim Armocrost took to India for the same reasons).

    If it never happens, I'll do my best to learn from here and get as close as can be. But I only trust the printed page so much, respect myself (and those musics) too much to be another student-sounding copycat. And if I never do get to go to the source I'd be only another well-meaning, but clueless--------------theorist...

  23. #297

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    Quote Originally Posted by joelf
    The preferred---the best way to really see what's up with anything: if possible, go to the source! Otherwise, you're twice or thrice removed from real empirical knowledge, and---well-meaning and sincere though you be---you'll still be talking out of your bunghole. By comparison.
    Indeed.

    I listen, and have for years, to both sides of the Israeli-Arab conflict. I let the opinions and vitriol wash over me---then wash it off b/c I've never been there---haven't lived among and spoken to Israelis; Palestinians; Syrians; etc. (Because I'm Jewish there are Israeli-sponsored programs (the 'return', in English) that would allow me to live there free for 6 months. If I were at liberty, and truly interested, I'd take up the offer. But I'm not, so I read the papers like anyone else, but have no opinion of any value and say nothing if asked.
    Well perhaps that's a safer topic of discussion than Mark Levine haha. But yeah, I have a friend who lived in Jerusalem for 10 years. The experiential side of it is pretty important to her - she always says no-one can truly understand the complexity of it until they spend some time there. She should write a book - some hair raising experiences, a lot of absurdity, pitch black humour. She misses it like crazy.

    Closer to home, if I want to learn a tune, I try to get as close to a composer's version as I can. Short of that, I'll listen not to Sarah or Ella---who will 'jazz it up', but Doris Day or Jo Stafford, who won't, and with an arrangement that doesn't deviate much from the composer's intent. Then, informed, I have license to do what I will with the song.

    I would love to, one day, take sabbaticals to Africa; Brasil; Cuba; the Mideast; Orient---live among the people and listen. When I'd learned enough I'd ask to sit in. Maybe working vacations could facilitate these trips (like Tim Armocrost took to India for the same reasons).

    If it never happens, I'll do my best to learn from here and get as close as can be. But I only trust the printed page so much, respect myself (and those musics) too much to be another student-sounding copycat. And if I never do get to go to the source I'd be only another well-meaning, but clueless--------------theorist...
    I think there's a tendency to venerate the visual in education... I was reading an interesting paper yesterday about how the very language we use suggests the primacy of the eyes.

    So here's a thing that occurred to me - the very same process happened to classical music. Listen to early 20th century classical recording and you often hear something that's actually quite at variance with the score.

    In jazz, the same effect is happening. People become most preoccupied with what can be written down.

  24. #298
    joelf Guest
    'F what's written down'----Charlie Parker

    'The written music's just a menu'----Miles Davis

    'A note's like water---you can do anything with it'---Ornette Coleman