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Why aren't 6th chords as common as 7th chords?
Now if you say something like traditionally chords in the West were formed by stacking thirds, I'm not going to be happy. Music "theory" should go beyond "tradition"! If you say, they sound better, then I would immediately ask why! A star will be awarded for the deepest answer! (I have an idea, but I don't want to influence anybody or embarass myself. Hehe.)
Thanks in advance and good luck!Last edited by jster; 12-29-2011 at 09:20 PM.
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12-29-2011 09:17 PM
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They actually are. Most music books put "maj7" on all tonic and subdominant chords though the recordings have varied chords. 6th 6/9 maj9 maj13 maj13#11 are all commonly watered down to "maj7". In pre-bebop jazz 6ths and 6/9s were more common than maj7s. See the chord symbols as a rough guide and assume you can take creative license to play other colorations of the same chord-scale.
For example, every printed chart I've seen of Very Early by Bill Evans shows the 1st chord is Cmaj7 when the recording clearly has rootless C6/9 (E A D G P4's) with C played by the bass player.
Think of Cmaj7 in scale terms... It's C E G B. The extensions from the scale are D (F or F#; sus if F, #11 if F#) and A. Think of C pentatonic (also a very stable subset- arguably much more stable than the major scale itself or lydian) It's C E G with D A the triad with a 6th and 9th aka C 6/9.
These all work great in almost any combination in place of a strict maj7. The only thing to avoid is m9 intervals between any two chord tones and/or the melody (unless you have a liberal ear, B E G C low to high sounds a bit nasty).
Also note that C6 and Am7 are the same notes. C major pent and a minor pent are the same notes. You can reuse your vocabulary of voicings that way.Last edited by JonnyPac; 12-29-2011 at 09:44 PM.
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Thanks Jonny. I was thinking that perhaps it had to do with stronger (circle) progressions. Most significantly, can't have tritone resolution from a 6th chord. Anything to that line of thinking?
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You can't tritone sub things without the b7 and M3 without getting "out", IMHO. Play Dm11 Db9#11 to C6/9, it works fine. The V7 can be subbed if you dig like so.
---3--3--3--------------------------------------
---5--4--3--------------------------------------
---5--4--2--------------------------------------
---3--3--2--------------------------------------
---5--4--3--------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
Last edited by JonnyPac; 12-29-2011 at 09:55 PM.
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And what about going into the V7? Isn't the ii7 the strongest way?
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Not sure what you mean. Progressions really don't dictate the voicings too much- voice leading does. Personal preferences do as well.
Originally Posted by jster
If anything maj7 chords resolve less because the leading tone is preserved instead of the stable root.
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Well, I may be talking nonsense, so don't take me too seriously. But I thought that if we just stick to triads, then the cycle progression sounds good because of the strength of the resolutions from chord to chord: I→IV→viio→iii→vi→ii→V→I. The ii→V→I is so common because it is the end bit of the cycle. Nothing leads into the V as well as the ii. Then I thought that if you were to move to the next level of complexity, four note chords, the 7's would give you the strongest resolutions, such as the tritone at the end, but almost as strong at the other stages. 6ths can't do the job I thought. Originally Posted by JonnyPac
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Sorry, I probably mean iib7. Originally Posted by JonnyPac
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Ah, you're talking intervals within the chords... Keep it simple! ii V7 I's are jazz's most common progressions. Tritone subs look like iim7 bII7 I. In either case, we digress. There is not a b7th in maj7 chords, which we can replace with 6th or 6/9 chords. Usung the 6th in the dominant ends up being a 13th chord, not a 6th (because the tritone 3 and b7 need to stay like you are suggesting). ...that is in functional progressions. I play 6th and 6/9 chords in place of 7th chords if I want to de-emphasize the functionality. Dig?
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Thanks for your time. I get about 80% of what you are saying. But I am not sure why you mention tritone substitution. I was just talking about tritone resolution and yeah it is preserved in the tritone substitution. But my main hypothesis was just that 7th chords are more popular with songwriters because they give stronger progressions. So, look in the key of C. The cycle progression tells us that the Em7 goes nicely into the Am7. That is (E, G, B, D) going into (A, C, E, G). Two notes stay the same (E, G) and the B goes up a half step to the C (strongest single note resolution) and the D goes down a whole step to the C (third strongest single note resolution); so this is actually the next best thing to a tritone resolution (tritone resolution is made up of one half step up and one half step down). 6ths wouldn't be able to cut it. SO, 7ths give us stronger progressions. Hence they are more popular with writers of popular song, as opposed to jazz players.
Last edited by jster; 12-29-2011 at 10:28 PM.
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I think it's purely stylistic- a color choice. again, don't assume maj7 are more common than 6th or 6/9 chords. If function was #1 in jazz, it would resemble classical a lot more (or so I think).
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I believe you and thank you for your time. It would come down to what kind of sample we choose, but that would be a different discussion. Originally Posted by JonnyPac
I guess I'd next want to ask how jazz theory goes beyond classical theory, but I'll save that for another day! Hope you guys are getting some snow.
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As Jonny pointed out, the Major 6 chord was the "go to" major chord color in pre-bop jazz.
The Major 7 was considered to be a slightly dissonant sound that resolved to the Major 6. The thinking behind that was if the Root and Seven are stacked as close as possible the resulting interval is a minor second which was considered dissonant. The Root and Sixth stacked close yielded a minor third which was considered consonant.
Johnny Smith, in his Guitar Method book, taught that the Major 7 should resolve to the Major 6 and that's also why all those Major 7 to Major 6 chord exercises are in the Mickey Baker Jazz Guitar Method. It was common practice in swing jazz.
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The main reason for a choice between maj7 and 6 is to do with the melody.
If the melody note is the chord root, then a 6 chord is preferred. This is to avoid a minor 2nd (or worse a minor 9th) between a high melody note and a maj7 below. If the melody note is anything but the root, then a maj7 chord is usually fine.
A 6 chord does also sound a little more resolved than a maj7, as a final chord. And - re monk's post - I'd certainly trust Mr Smith and Mr Baker as jazz authorities! To classical ears, however, I suspect a maj7 would resolve up to the tonic, not down to the 6th.
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Yes, 7ths make circle progressions stronger - but I'd say they were much more a jazz thing than a pop thing. The standard contemporary pop/rock chord type is the triad - 7ths are not that common. 7th chords are the standard form in jazz - which is where the more advanced pop songwriters would have got them. (Of course, jazz "standards" were once the pop songs of their day.) Originally Posted by jster
I think of 7ths as "greasing the machinery" of the circle progression - ie a progression where roots move down in 5ths or up in 4ths. If we just use triads - Em-Am-Dm-G-C - we only have the aural "logic" of the root movement (a fall of a 5th has a natural "momentum", or "gravitational" pull). There is some voice-leading between other chord tones, but not always very strong. (Half-step moves such as B-C between Em and Am are strong; whole step moves either way are not.)
Adding 7ths both adds a little tension to each chord, and also provides more links and voice leading options between the chords. 7ths on each chord mean a shared tone with the previous chord - a kind of suspension, which helps to "chain" the chords as a logical-sounding sequence.
But mostly it's what happens on the Dm and G that is significant. The C on Dm pulls down to B on the G (and back up to C of course), while the F on the G pulls down to E on the C. (Keeping a maj7 on the C means it sounds a little less resolved than either the triad or a C6.)
You would have to introduce secondary dominants to make the forward momentum even stronger - which introduces leading tones to each subsequent chord root. (Eg, E to Am gives a G#-A move.)
Secondary dominants don't actually need 7ths, but of course it will help to add them:
E7-(Am7)-A7-(Dm7)-D7-G7-C.
The minors could be omitted, leaving the dominants to act on each other: 3rds go down to 7ths, and 7ths go down to 3rds. This is the strongest possible forward drive.
Well, not quite the strongest. If we alternate with tritone subs, it's stronger - but also somewhat crude:
E7-Eb7-D7-Db7-C.
- there's not really any charm about a sequence like that!
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Nice posts. I dig it all.
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Thanks JonR. I've been writing the thing out and reading what you wrote. Damn, I never realized that the if you resolve a G7 to a Cmaj7 that damned B sticking around weakens the resolution as you say. That is so weird I feel like there must be a math error! Hehe. I will have some more questions soon, but for now I just want to ask (always naively, never rhetorically): Do you really want to explain the cycle by root motion more than by the whole step (and half step) movements? Isn't the G moving up to the A more what we are hearing than gravity pulling the E to the A? I was taught that the strongest resolution was half step up, second strongest half step down, third strongest, whole step up, fourth strongest, whole step down. Now yeah, the half steps are much stronger than the full steps, but don't we want to say that the full steps are stronger than fifths?? I mean if you just play an E note, do you feel it wants to go to A more than G wants to go to A??
I am trying to work out where the notes go. Sometimes they stay the same. But sometimes they move. And sometimes they both stay the same and move. And it's not always obvious where they move. (Is it going up a whole step, or down a whole step? If you do it without 7ths, it looks one way, with 7ths, it looks the other.) I somehow thought it would be easy to go through the cycle with our without 7ths and say where every note came from. The tritone resolution sounds great, thought I understood it. The cycle sounds great, figured it would be easy to explain on the same principles. It sounds so logical, there must be an elegant explanation me thought!! But like that B in the tritone resolution, we can say it moves to C, but if we are going to Cmaj7, then it moves to C and doesn't move to C (remaining as B, ie as the 7th)! So it is both moving and not moving at the same time! I better call Zeno! I'm not happy about this. Is this the subject of voice leading? I thought that was all about keeping the chords nice and dense as you moved from one to the next. I got a book on voice leading but it is in another country. It looked like it was all about fingerings rather than theory. And how would that answer the question of this B anyway?! Argh.
(I should have been clearer. All I meant by "popular music" were the jazz standards.)Last edited by jster; 01-01-2012 at 11:52 PM.
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Good question. The fall of a 5th is a kind of "coming home" effect. It's true it can be quite subtle, often obscured by those half or whole step "voice leading" moves". You need to play chord roots only to really hear the effect clearly. Eg, E-A-D-G-C - doesn't matter whether you go down a 5th or up a 4th, the sequence still sounds like it has a relentless forward logic. And it can, of course carry on through the whole cycle of 5ths: F-Bb-Eb-Ab-Db-Gb/F#-B-E. Originally Posted by jster
The theoretical (acoustic) explanation is that the 5th is the first overtone of a note after the octave. IOW, E is an overtone of A (and not vice versa). So in following E with A, you are kind of following the harmonic series down, to a hypothetical bottom, a resolution of everything, where all notes stack on a fundamental "root", as overtones of it. If a tonic has already been established, then that's your final bottom note - otherwise you have a potentially endless cycle of 5ths.... (Classical music pieces always - it seems - have to end with a tonic at its lowest position, to make it really final; and it's usually preceded with a 5th above.)
Yes, more or less. Originally Posted by jster
Think of each note in a chord as one "voice", as if your chord is a choir. (as a guitarist, each string can be one singer.)
The rule they try to follow is that each singer wants to move his/her note the shortest distance possible when changing chords. If they can stay on the same note, great. A half-step is also great, and so is a whole-step, but if there's a choice then a half-step is better. Whole step moves can often be in either direction, and either is fine. (In classical SATB harmony, you sometimes need to avoid doubling, or at least to make sure that you have the requisite tones in the chord, such as root and 3rd at least. That can govern which way a voice moves.)
The chords don't have to be "dense", if you mean "close-voiced". You can have wide intervals in the chords ("open voicing"). And in fact, voices can sometimes jump more than a scale step, especially for certain dramatic effects. But as accompaniment, smooth subtle moves are usually best. Originally Posted by jster
Well, theory (abstract) does tend to end up as technique (practice)... Originally Posted by jster
Well, a maj7 chord has a kind of inbuilt lack of resolution - that's part of its charm: an element of mystery or melancholy. When resolving from G7 to Cmaj7, you may have to resign yourself to a lower B moving up to C. Or try a G7sus4, so the C comes down to B? (In a cheeky reversal of orthodoxy Originally Posted by jster
) (Or maybe a G9-Cmaj7, so A goes up to B? doesn't work as well for me...)
Another way of looking at the apparent jazz obsession with "maj7" is that - as a chord symbol - it may not mean you have to actually play the maj7: it's just telling you that chord is not a dom7! Ie, it would have a maj7 in the scale when improvising.
If you want a firmer final cadence, I would simply not use a maj7 as last chord (it's a bit of a cliche anyway). Use a 6, or a 6/9, or an add9. (G13>C69 or Cadd9 works nicely.)
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