The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    George Benson version:

    Benson is great as usual. This tune is for him too.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #27

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    Quote Originally Posted by rintincop
    Minor 7 tonic is unusual.
    with the same elan we also could say: "dominant7 tonic is unusual, what a weird idea". ...except blues is not unusual. Catch the mood.

  4. #28

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    Yea... what a shock. And when one plays a F-7 to Bb7 vamp.... the II- V7 becomes the tonic. And maybe even when one plays F-7 to C7alt... that I V becomes a tonic, maybe even a modal like tonic... Sorry trying to keep it light. Yes that's the approach I've been playing, composing and arranging for decades.

    Yea Wolfen same here, I made chart of SFMF back when it first came out, I've always been a huge Horace fan, as well as Blakey... the messengers, that was my early days.

    yea have played SFMY as well as most of Horaces's tunes all my life. I mean the messengers were like the training ground for popular Jazz musicians. Silver and Blakey.

  5. #29

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  6. #30

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    Quote Originally Posted by rintincop
    Minor 7 tonic is unusual.
    not by the 60s

  7. #31

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    Yea... Now that the thread has moved to "Harmony".

    With F-7 as tonal Target... the Tonic.... (has been forever), The diatonic "functional subs" of that F-7 or F-9 are, Down a diatonic 3rd to Dbma7 or up a diatonic third to Abmaj7....

    If you simply expand diatonic functional harmony organization using modal tonalities with functional principles. You'll even get more chord patterns. "Modal Interchange or expanded Borrowing... or just traditional Borrowing using Relative and Parallel organization for Diatonic Subs.

    Man I'm old.... and most of this common practice harmony or melodic BS wasn't new or difficult to hear and incorporate into playing back when I was a kid.

    I will say what I've always said.... everything is difficult and complicated when you don't have your technical skills together, Really spend more time on getting your chops together than playing slow beautiful thought out or rehearsed lines and chord progressions. Everything become easy to play when you have technical skills, chops.

    All those one liners about... slow will become fast or even fast will become slow are all BS.

  8. #32

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    Here's another idea:

    Principle: start somewhere and change things as little as possible

    So, you start on Fm7. Let's assume the key is Fm. Strum the chords and scat sing a melody. But I digress. This is more about math.

    Key of Fm:

    Over the Fm7: F G Ab Bb C Db Eb.

    Now you have an Eb7. Chord tones are Eb G Bb Db. They're all in Fm! The left over notes are F C and Ab. The F makes it an Eb9. That will work. The C makes it an Eb13, that will work too. The Ab is the 4th. That makes it an Eb11 (or, with the F and C, an Eb13). That note should be handled with a little more care, although it can work fine in a good melodic statement. To sum up, pretty much, you're still in Fm and all your Fm stuff will work.

    We come to Db7. That's Db F Ab B. Three of those notes are in Fm. The B is not. We change as little as possible. Fm contains both notes a half step away from B. What do we do? I'd suggest omitting the C. Why? Because it's the major seventh and it will conflict with the dominant sound of Db7. You can leave the Bb. It's the 13th. What about the other notes from Fm? They are G and Eb. Eb is the 9th, so it's going to sound fine. G is the #11. Try it. What could go wrong? To sum up, you have to alter one note from Fm. You need a B instead of a C.

    C7sus. C F G Bb. All present in Fm. What about the other notes? They are Ab Db Eb. #5, b9 and #9. They all may work, depending on what sound you want. Nobody can tell you what you're going to like.

    So, to sum up the point of this post, one simple way of dealing with this tune (and many others) is to pick a tonal center and then adjust it, always as little as possible, to account for the notes that don't fit. Some of what I've just gone through will line up with what others have said about the mode names. If that's helpful, great. TBH, I can get a little overwhelmed by it, but I came to it after decades of doing it this way -- tonal center, chord tones and scat singing.

    Some players can take a bit of theory covering an new (to them) sound - and incorporate into their playing. I wish I could do that, but I've mostly failed trying to do things that way. I think I've learned most efficiently when I've heard and seen a guitarist play a sound that I like -- and been able to identify which note(s) against which chord(s) created it. Obviously, it would be better to be able to do this from any instrument, from a record or a chart or an explanation of theory. But, apparently, that doesn't work equally well for everyone.

  9. #33

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    Quote Originally Posted by Reg
    Man I'm old.... and most of this common practice harmony or melodic BS wasn't new or difficult to hear and incorporate into playing back when I was a kid.
    I always blame the education system, but truth of it is that there is much less harmonic pop music now. You don't ever have to play a standard if you don't want to, so you can play pretty much modal tunes, vamps and so on. (Look on instagram at the stuff that gets tagged #jazzguitar... I don't want to be a purist, but a LOT of shred on hip-hop and Neo-soul grooves...)

    It was hard enough for me, and I grew up with The Beatles on the stereo, and things like Soundgarden, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley and Nirvana a few years later... songs with cool changes, yes, but not always the GASB common practice ones. And not AABA song forms so much... So I didn't hear the GASB patterns and at first they sounded REALLY corny to me.

    Now - what do you have? Hip hop? EDM? Djent? I don't mean to be down on it, all music can be great when done well, but it's not feeding you much trad harmonic information or song forms. So when you get to jazz... well, you have to start from square one.

    I get the impression things were different for working musicians a few decades back.... You don't have to be a jazzer to know Sinatra songs etc, even if only by ear.