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A lot of big band guitar is looking at hieroglyphics and somehow going ‘oh it’s a II V I’. How I came by this skill I find hard to explain. It’s mostly just something I kind of learned by having to do it.
Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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04-17-2026 03:59 AM
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Not really. The father of our modern concept of harmony is JP Rameau who developed the concept of what we call ‘chord roots’ back in 1730. Having looked at his treatise I’m struck by how similar people are taught today. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Bach objected to it btw lol. He wasn’t a fan.
The older way of doing it is fundamental bass, where you think about the chords coming up from the bass in intervals. So what we’d call a C/G chord has the intervals 6 and 4.
A lot of swing harmony, bossa and Steve Swallow school stuff (Metheny etc) is actually built this way even if they are talking about chord symbols.
For example, there’s a lot of this in Django. I’ve been playing Tears a lot lately and it all hinges off the bassline. It’s not uncommon in that era of music. According to Iverson chord symbols didn’t exist at that point. Pianists were often working from the bass. And the pre bop era is full of classic basslines like King Porter Stomp or It Ain’t What You do. Often the guitar and piano is in lock step with the bass.
There’s stuff in Cole Porter that can confuse the bejeezus out of you if you try to analyse it using basic theory, but if you look at it in terms of the bass voice leading it all makes perfect sense.
This all changed after the bop revolution, but in the 60s it starts to come back.
If you do a jazz course now they’ll tell you NOT to double the bass - which is something that resembles Bill Evans style more than Bud Powell’s approach - which isn’t that far from Harlem stride in some ways. If your bass player is Scott La Faro that makes sense lol. And that is tbf the archetype for basically all modern trios, both piano and guitar.
But you really hear it in stuff like Jobim and Steve Swallow etc. I’d argue Wayne Shorter and Kenny Wheeler too. Kenny was classically trained as a composer of course. Functional/root based analysis isn’t so helpful, and even it basically describes what’s going on, it’s very ‘lossy.’Take the bridge of Wave - functional analysis calls it a couple of II-V-I’s but it sounds utterly different, because Jobim is a bassline guy like a lot of the Brazilians.
I think Kurt is a bassline guy too. If you look at his charts you can see he thinks of his harmony up from the bass, which is often moving in steps.
Barry Harris had a rant about the great GASB composers not being ‘II to V to I’ guys. I think jazz harmony courses simplified a lot of stuff into that. But it’s crazy how this all goes back to a long dead Frenchman in a wig.
In terms of fretboard mapping, I think the interval approach is really helpful. It’s the way I look at Goodrick cycles and so on. I don’t think root movement is as important as the movement between voices, and above all the movement of the bass. It’s fair enough for triads and seventh chords but with more complex chords it can feel like you are discussing theology.
Even with something like a IV6 chord, Barry had this ongoing discussion with some classical theorists (post-Rameau guys) about whether it was an inversion of a II-7. According to Howard Rees, Barry conceded (!) but in practice who cares? Both are suspensions of V - but the bass is different.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 04-17-2026 at 04:40 AM.
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How do you determine whether the harmony of a given piece of music is based on: Originally Posted by Christian Miller
- application of various inversions, substitutions and other harmonic devices to 'chord roots' where the roots follow a common progression (even though the harmonic devices may obfuscate this).
vs
- application of intervals from the bass (I presume the "intervals from the bass" has voice-leading considerations not just for the bass but for the upper voices as well).
I have a hard time distinguishing between these as both of these considerations are vital to how to perform (or arrange) a progression. It's like the first one is "what to play", the second is "how to voice it". Or am I missing a more fundamental difference?
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I don’t know how I would determine it, but it does make sense in some cases. There are a lot of tunes in the standard rep that don’t make a lot of sense from the chord symbols. Originally Posted by Tal_175
I have a student working on Stella right now and it really doesn’t make much sense until you take the chords apart. So it’s not surprising that a tune like that was orchestral voice leading with chord symbols applied retroactively. A lot of Shorter stuff. A lot of Jobim.
Im interested to hear Christian’s answer.
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I think that's true with a lot of the standards. I strive towards arranging any progression with horizontal considerations. A lot of what I am working is getting to a point where I can improvise this way. I see chord-symbols as a short hand sketch of an arrangement represented in snapshots. It just leaves the arrangement of the specifics to the performer. The analysis w.r.t common harmonic devices may give you hints at how to do the specific arrangement, such as tritone substitutions imply chromatic, descending bass-line etc. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Suppose you're given a progression in chord symbol form and you want to come up with an arrangement on guitar or for an orchestra. Wouldn't you base your chord voicing decisions on horizontal considerations at least for styles of music that we are most concerned with on the forum?
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What do you mean by 'the harmony' of a piece and why is it important to determine? Not how to determine it, but why is it important to know. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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The best way to understand that question is in the context of Christian's post (which was in the context of Allen's goal of being able to access chords in a certain way). Christian pointed out a distinction between root based vs bass oriented view of harmonic movement. Originally Posted by ragman1
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Well the way I think is easiest to explain it is what you might seen the piano arrangement of a Tin Pan Alley song sheet and the changes given in the Real Book or an Aebersold. Originally Posted by Tal_175
There was a stylistic shift where people started to play II-V's to death in the 50's but people were getting pretty bored of it by the late 60s. Pat Metheny talks about moving away from that for example (and he cites Bach as an inspiration, with makes sense - I think we can also point to Pat's time in Brazil and love for that music.)
For some people who came up in that era and later, that's what standards harmony is - II-V's - because that's what they always saw on lead sheets, and it serves a role in jazz education (II-V licks). Of course the original songs aren't written that way - they are written with bass lines that complement the melody, and the harmony comes out from that. Actually, that's sort of how Steve Swallow advised people to write their lead sheets in the 70s IIRC - melody and bass, and then chord symbols in the middle. Steves' music is like that. And of course the whole slash/polychord thing in fusion and so on comes as an evolution of that type of thinking.
We can go into specifics, but that's the long and short of it. Some quick ones. Sometimes things can be understood as V-I's and so on at least by the soloist. So Tsears for example, has
Dbo7 Fm6/C Bo7 Eb/Bb Ao7 Fm/Ab
Which we can understand to be C7 Fm Bb7 Eb , no problem. The Ao7 Fm/Ab - a little less obvious, functionally speaking. Because it's bassline stuff - Django was going by ear of course. (You sometimes see charts written out like this for this song btw.)
But on the other hand, you have this, which is not uncommon in standards, and usually remains unbutchered in the Real Book:
I/V #IV-7b5 IV-6 III-7 bIIIo7 II-7 V7
Doesn't relate obviously to back cycling motion (you can see it as related of course) but if you write down the pitches the voice leading is actually incredibly simple and obvious.
There's loads of examples like that. I have a pdf lol.
In terms of soloing on a progression like this - you have a choice whether to follow the chromatic voice movement, make you own, or ignore it. You see all of these things in the wild.
In a way the problem is thinking of things as chord progressions. "Harmony is a fairy tale told about counterpoint" - nowhere is this clearer than in the songs we play. Focussing on the way chord roots move and the way that the chord symbols are written can actually distract from what common voice leading moves have in common. For example:
D-7 F-6 E-7
D-7 D-7b5 C
F6 F-6 C
F6 Bb7(#11) C
D-7 G13b9 C
etc
These are not all precisely the same - but they are all closely related. The differences often come from variations in other voices (such as whether the middle voice stays on 1 or goes 1-7-1) and, of course, the bass line.
For us guys we just have to learn to intuit these tings from charts. Experience and solo guitar playing helps I think?Last edited by Christian Miller; 04-17-2026 at 03:30 PM.
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Yeah tbh it’s widened out a bit Originally Posted by Tal_175
But I think it’s a good way to deal with harmony on the fretboard simply to look at intervals.
So ‘here’s a 10th and 13th on the bass going up the scale.’ Or ‘6ths and alternating 2nds and 3rds going down the scale.’
Rather than naming the chord roots etc. That sort of thing. Barry things are bit like that too. You can do the same with the Mick Goodrick cycles but he framed it in terms of root movement.
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Yeah, the chromatic movement found, for example, in Night and Day or sometimes called the "b5 ending" I think (when it's used as an ending). Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I think of this progression as starting with the I chord reharmonized through its tritone (#IV-7b5), followed by a variation of VII-III-VI-II-V-I cycle. I completely agree that the specific chords make a lot of sense when you consider the downward voiceleading. That's also how I usually arrange the comping of this progression (by minimal voice movement).
But isn’t this essentially just one voice-leading approach to a cycle of fifths turnaround, another Lego brick you can keep in the box and plug in tastefully when the moment calls for it?
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Yes, chord symbols often obscure the internal similarities between chords that look unrelated on paper but function in essentially the same way. The more you play through these progressions and the more you explore different voicings and voice leading options, the less important the naming conventions feel.
This might be a bit of a segue but I do sometimes wonder whether this perspective reduces the bass to just another voice when it really deserves more deference. The bass line carries enormous weight for the listener, not only in how it voice leads but in how recognizable it is as its own melodic thread.
I once heard Joe Pass say in a video that he did not like it when people comping for him substituted, for example, Db7 for G7 on the way to C. He said he wanted to hear the G moving to C underneath his melody.
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That's thinking in root progressions. An exercise in what I think of as 'music theology,' Originally Posted by Tal_175
A good player could no doubt get away with making that swap. It's a bit square pegs in round holes- but strong side/weak side, passing chords. Jazzers do that stuff. 9/10ths of it is in phrasing and chutzpah.
But I'm a literalist - what it actually is is a descending chromatic voice leading pattern. It's not cycle of fourths anything.
Bassline. Not chords - counterpoint. Porter was classically trained. He didn't know what a tritone sub was.
FWIW when I had a lesson with Peter Bernstein, he was a stickler for this. He very much had a concept of structural cadences that should have a strong bassline. He didn't mind the tritone, but he was hearing bass.Yes, chord symbols often obscure the internal similarities between chords that look unrelated on paper but function in essentially the same way. The more you play through these progressions and the more you explore different voicings and voice leading options, the less important the naming conventions feel.
This might be a bit of a segue but I do sometimes wonder whether this perspective reduces the bass to just another voice when it really deserves more deference. The bass line carries enormous weight for the listener, not only in how it voice leads but in how recognizable it is as its own melodic thread.
I once heard Joe Pass say in a video that he did not like it when people comping for him substituted, for example, Db7 for G7 on the way to C. He said he wanted to hear the G moving to C underneath his melody.
The historical side of it - by JS Bach's time music was organised around the bass. Even Bach. So we think of 'strict counterpoint', Fux and all of that - but it turns out there's no evidence any of the Bachs, including JS, ever taught strict Fuxian counterpoint BTW. It was all bass. And JS taught a LOT.
Later on, harmony became eventually understood in Liberal Arts colleges in terms of modern functional harmony - but despite this new, more theoretical (theological?) understanding, the old ways never really died out. You might know that V goes to I, but at the Conservatory you have to do the exercises. If you go look at what Tchaikovsky teaches in his harmony book (he wrote one - who knew) - you'll see its figured bass exercises. The title is important - Practical Harmony. He knows what chord inversions are, of course, but he teaches the old way. Hindemith too. And Boulanger too. They teach from the bass, with bass as the most important counterpoint to the melody. The chords are subservient to that.
Schoenberg OTOH was not a fan of figured bass and had his own branch of music theology (Hamonielehre), but he always emphasised the importance of the bass as 'the second melody'.
I expect it was the same at any school that turned out actual composers. Because composition is all about the specifics.
Bach regarded himself as a practical musician, for example - he found Rameau's work overly theoretical. He would get his student to write a slew of different bass lines to a single chorale melody and then flesh out the harmonies appropriately. Today chorale harmony is taught with a lot of emphasis on things like roman numerals, but I think they just write one harmonisation? I think it would be better to spend the time writing more basslines.Last edited by Christian Miller; 04-17-2026 at 06:03 PM.
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TL;DR I think a musician does best to focus on mastering specifics
Took me a long time to learn that. Depressingly long time.
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I've always wanted to learn figured bass. If it was good enough for Bach... Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Bach feels like the apex of combining a walking bass line with a melody and except for some rhythmic and stylistic elements pretty damn close to Jazz.
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At the very least, Bird and Coltrane seemed to like the guy Originally Posted by charlieparker
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Maybe you should do a video about it. It seems interesting, but I’m not sure how to use it. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Me neither haha! Mostly I find it has helped with the way I look at solo playing and composition actually. Maybe learning tunes. I don’t think it has a tremendous amount to do with soloing - beyond chunking down tunes to little sections. But you can do that with chord progressions. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
With all these things the video is contingent on me finding a good angle that will interest people. Maybe the solo guitar thing. Or something to do with fretboard harmony.
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Tbh my main reason for doing the figured bass thing is that it’s a nice fun thing to do and I like the way it sounds. Originally Posted by charlieparker
But it has taught me a lot about the fretboard. Here’s a video I did:
I’d recommend the Stanislao Mattei stuff - nice short bases that are also really gorgeous.
I usually tend to talk about Bach because he’s such a cultural touchstone but his music is really progressive which can make it harder to learn from. Obviously you can look at his stuff and go ‘oh there’s a beautiful way of expressing the cycle’ and so on, but his contemporaries on lute like Kellner and Weiss give up their secrets more easily.
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In A level and degree level music we were trained a fair amount in figured bass. I say a 'fair' amount - in hindsight there was not enough emphasis on how the exercises actually sound. Instead I felt like it was some abstract brain-teaser or something. Or perhaps that was just me - I certainly feel that during but mostly since my degree I've had to work to develop at least a semblance of audiation ability.
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Figured bass is most often taught as theory, when it is really a practical toolset for improvisation (early modern composition is really just an outgrowth of improvisation). It's also taught often through the perspective of modern harmonic theory, so saying stuff like '6 3 is a first inversion triad' and 'the 4 2 chord on the 4th degree is a third inversion dominant' which is really just chord symbols with extra steps. No wonder most people can't be arsed with it as soon as they have passed their exams and ticked the box. Originally Posted by James W
From what I've learned over the past ten years or so of messing with this stuff, that is absolutely NOT the way to go about it. It's not a chordal notation system, it's a very neat way of learning tonal counterpoint/voice leading (albeit an imperfect one). Figured bass should be taught on its own terms - and you can be making music very quickly. Hopefully I've shown that in my videos. They taught 8 year olds to do this.
Regarding the teaching of these sort of topics in general - there's an entrenched mindset in music education that shunts things like this, species counterpoint and chorale harmonisation and so on into the realm of irrelevant academic bullshit that everyone sort of has to do for reasons that have never been fully explored. I have a friend who teaches this stuff and was making it a practical session. People would sing through the harmonisations they wrote, create music from figured bass, etc etc. However, the Powers that Be decided this could be turned into an online course at is was 'theory', thus freeing up a room for another class.
Another friend has been recruited by a leading conservatoire to teach improvisation to classical students (TBH this does sound like the Gig from Hell, but if anyone can make it work, they can). The head of department is a big partimento and historical improv guy. An issue for them is everyone else on the faculty knows what a 7-6 suspension chain is, but most of them can't actually sit down at the piano and actually play one. (Although I expect the organists and the harpsichordists are all over this stuff.)Last edited by Christian Miller; 04-18-2026 at 08:32 AM.
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Putting stuff over bass lines can be comping as much as it can be single line right? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
‘Comping without jazz chords’
‘The Bach Route to Jazz Comping’
I’ll watch those other two videos you posted and hopefully be able to ask the question I’m trying to think of.
But maybe you already covered it in that rhythm changes bass line video
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Absolutely. In the classical world, comping is called 'continuo'. The rhythm section is called 'the continuo group.' It's a practice that is pretty common today. If you go and see the Messiah for instance with a period band, that's what the harpsichord will be doing (and the theorbo if they have one.) Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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It's basically the same process. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
BTW, I play a lot of early jazz gigs with wind bass (Sousa, tuba or bass saxophone) and it's really interesting how often those guys don't think of changes. They play a 'second melody' to go with the song. They are horn players, after all.
(I think some string bass players have a similar vibe, though. Paul Chambers springs to mind - when he is playing in cut time he sounds like a Tuba/Sousa to me.)
Early jazz is of course much more about the polyphonic blowing. Again I think this is often handled melodically, less by ear. Of course a lot of the cats know their chords, they went to jazz school as well, but the nature of a lot of those early tunes makes it easier to work melodically. (And it's telling that a lot of these players also seem to have an interest in free jazz.)
The counterpoint is not going to be 'well behaved' by classical standards (though some early jazz people composed these sections, most famously Jelly Roll) in the same way as bop solos are not always harmonically 'well behaved' on changes. Let alone the melodic Prez-influenced school of players like Miles Davis who took a more generalised view of the chords.
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I disagree with this characterization a bit. Whether a concept is a purely theoretical (or theological) abstraction or is a practical tool is not a property of that concept but it is a property of the musician based on how they use the concept. I don't think that voice-leading patterns are the only reason the progression I/V #IV-7b5 IV-6 III-7 bIIIo7 II-7 V7 is effective. Voices can move smoothly in any direction following infinitely different possible paths. Some of these paths are reminiscent of the structures that the listener is familiar with therefore invoke a certain response. Cycle of 5ths is a very familiar movement that acts as the blue print of this progression I think. The cycle progression is a very real and practical tool for musician, composer, arranger. We are so familiar with it that you can take certain liberties and use the interplay with the users expectations as a device. An arranger/composer can realize this structure with varying degrees of innovations. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Last edited by Tal_175; 04-18-2026 at 09:47 AM.
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“The blue print”? Whose? Originally Posted by Tal_175
Cole Porter’s? I doubt it for the reasons I gave above.
A modern jazz harmony professor? They didn’t write Night and Day
Yours? You didn’t write it either.
Then who? The big G?
That’s what I mean about theology. People start talking metaphysically (usually without realising it) very quickly about music theory.
Like the chap here who suggested Bach must have intuited the rules of functional theory that were developed in the 19th century, which strongly implies in his view that music theory must be ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered. That’s quite a metaphysical view (and not uncommon).
I think it’s worth pointing out if nothing else.
What Cole Porter actually wrote in N&D was the notes on the page. There’s no cycle of fourths there.
This relationship you perceive is a product of imaginative interpretation. You might use that as a way of soloing through the tune, for instance. But I would suggest that works because soloing doesn’t always have to honour every passing chord if you know what you are doing. It’s a layering up of one thing on another, another path to the same destinations.
If you claim this relationship to the cycle has some objective reality - the "blue print" no less - then that seems to necessarily entail a tacit appeal to metaphysics.
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Great video! But one question. Who comes up with the figures, the composer? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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