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Hi everyone, I had a thought regarding the study of harmony when posting my analysis of Blue in Green. I think there are two basic schools of harmonic understanding in jazz:
Unifiers
Unifiers are interested in commonalities between tunes. For example, that progression in this song here, isn't that the same as the one in this song there, transposed to a different key? There's the same thing again with a change in the colour of the final chord and so on.
I see unifiers as observational thinkers. They are perhaps more interested in the 'butterfly collecting' or 'naturalist' side of theory - they might not question why something works, but are content to label the progression in question and practice it ready for when it might pop up in a song.
Musicians who think like this about harmony tend to know lots and lots of standard tunes. Many unifiers play chiefly straightahead, bop, trad and/or swing music and other historical styles.
Unifiers tend to be more conservative and interested in tradition for its own sake. That said, I strongly believe that harmonically Charlie Parker, perhaps surprisingly, was very much of this school, and bop players will always have a strong strain of this. Tradition does not preclude originality.
Unifiers can also tend see harmony as a means to an end - greater harmonic and rhythmic freedom to improvise within songs. Where unifiers are interested in harmony is within the context of a more traditional sense of beauty, but there are always exceptions.
Advantages
This is an approach that allows you to acquire new repertoire quickly, and is perhaps best learned through learning lots of standard songs. It's also good for your ears allowing you to busk tunes on the bandstand as chord progressions become
Disadvantages
The unfamiliar. Jazz harmony is 100 years old now, and many tunes in circulation don't fit the classic functional harmony approach. It is possible to make something unfamiliar into a part of unified approach through the study of an individual composer, but obviously, this takes time.
Much of the harmonic theory I post here is from this school. I guess I would say I am largely from this approach while hopefully aware of its limitations.
Good books/teachers exemplifying this approach include - A New Guide to Harmony with Lego Bricks (Cork), Hearing the Changes (Coker), Barry Harris.
Exceptionalists
Exceptionalists on the other hand look for the unusual and distinctive. They will single out tunes like Giant Steps, Very Early, Stella by Starlight, All the Things You Are, Solar and so on, often the basic repertoire of jazz education chosen - I suspect - because they represent unusual harmony. Exceptionalist repertoire tends to be modern, and instrumental.
As jazz harmonic practices diversified in the 60s, it's hard to find a common thread running between contemporary composers as you can with the songwriters of the 30s and 40s, although Chord Scale Theory is certainly one of them. As CST is mostly preoccupied with breaking harmony into vertical relationships, it's strength is in the way it can be instantly used - with sufficient experience and skill - to work on any chord progression that might come up without the player having to analyse the functions of the progression.
It also means that the way that the chords move might be very diverse, including all kinds of cycles and non functional relationships.
Players from the fusion and contemporary world tend to fall in this category. Given the gigs they play - maybe a lot of reading, a lot of originals, there's not necessarily much internalised song repertoire - this is no surprise. So for an Exceptionalist, playing I Thought About You might be equally as demanding, or easy, as playing 26-2, but they probably don't play standards enough for that to be a huge issue.
Exceptionalists tend to be interested in harmony for it's own sake, seeking new ways they can express themselves through innovative and beautiful progressions.
Exceptionalists tend to be theorists and 'technologists' - interested in what they can construct more than how they can understand from the past.
IMO, most guitar players fall into this category.
Advantages
A framework that allows you to play anything you see (albeit in a modern style harmonically.)
Disadvantages
Learning repertoire takes as long for everything. So most players of this ilk have smaller repertoires. The general weaknesses of CST have been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere.
It is my understanding that a lot modern jazz education is based on harmonic exceptionalism. This approach when applied to traditional repertoire can have interesting results.
This ain't no strawman
It's my belief that while musicians might lean one way or the other, most professionals have a mix of both. Many of my favourite modern players seem to understand both worlds to a high level. Obviously it's very hard for anyone to spend time playing a specific repertoire to remain a pure exceptionalist!
Also old tunes can be 'exceptionalist' - Limehouse Blues for example - so even if you play only swing repertoire or something, you have to be ready for some non standard harmony!
Personally I'm quite interested in the grey area between these extremes.
What do you reckon? Any use as a distinction? Or am I talking crap?
And which way do you lean?Last edited by christianm77; 10-30-2016 at 09:56 AM.
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10-30-2016 09:50 AM
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There are two kinds of people: 1)those who believe there are two kinds of people and 2)those who don't.
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Haha! Very good that sounds like a quote and if it isn't it should be.
Originally Posted by Stuart Elliott
But you have missed the bit where I said that I'm not referring to different kinds of people... I'm referring to two schools of thought. Not the same thing.
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I'm generally an A, until i encounter a tune that's better served by a B approach. LOTS of overlap, no "two camps" for me.
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Yeah I'm an A too and I love the major scale Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
and functional harmony , standards , tin pan ally , show tunes etc
then I try to play Shorter tunes and I have to
think more modal ...
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Same here. Although when I have to play an "exceptionalist" tune, I tend to sound pretty bad until I've had a chance to work on it a while. A lot of non-functional progressions are based on chords having common tones, or interesting color shifts, and it takes me a while sometimes to figure out what those are - especially when the written changes are not always great descriptors of what's actually going on. For example, the first four bars of "Windows" are given as B-7 in the Real Book. But there's a DMaj triad in the melody in the first bar, so it's actually more D/B in the first bar, and something more like A/B in the second bar (C# in the melody). That all fits into the basic B-7 sonority, but just comping on B-7 for four bars doesn't really carry the flavor. By contrast, a tune with a lot of II-V-Is is something I can generally sound at least competent on the first time through. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Well speaking of Wayne, you have Yes and No which is half and half.
But then of course if you play loads of modal vamps and non functional cycle based harmony that would become your thing, of course... A unifying approach is not necessarily the same thing as saying someone plays functional harmony. It's just that most people I know who look at harmony this modular, synactic kind of way tend to be standards players.
(The guy who's known for training people this way in the UK is Pete Churchill BTW. He is a singer/pianist which may have something to do with it. Legendary educator.)
Someone who plays all the Coltrane changes tunes is going to spot that progression right away and be able to hear it. Of course this progression itself is just a development of earlier common practice and derived from standards harmony (Have You Met Miss Jones.)
Someone who learns to play only Giant Steps and then goes to some totally different post-bop or modern tune like Moment's Notice, Inner Urge, James or Spain isn't going to see it in the same way.
On the other hand, the modern repertoire is a lot more diverse - there are many different approaches to harmony... But if you played a lot of say, Kenny Wheeler, you would probably start to see the commonalities between tunes a lot more. Haven't done it myself. (BTW some Kenny is quite functional IMO.)
But someone like Metheny, Joe Henderson, Shorter or even Bill Evans or Coltrane? I feel there's a lot of different harmonic ideas in their music over the years.
CST gives you a way getting through all this stuff, even though it's sometimes not the ideal approach (although sometimes, it it.)Last edited by christianm77; 10-30-2016 at 12:06 PM.
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Yeah. I love playing that tune. Originally Posted by christianm77
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I was asked to do a favor for the great classical guitarist Oscar Ghiglia, once. At some point, I got to have dinner with him and my teacher. That became an occasion to listen intensely to and hang on exactly what they were saying about music.
Oscar's big thing is the cardinal importance of the dominant V7- I relationship in tonal music. As well as tetrachords.
That reminds me that's not fundamentally different than what Barry Harris is saying with the 6th diminished relationship--it's a way from moving from the tension to resolution. Or what Peter Bernstein said in his master class about cycling back to the I. Or what Julian Lage once quipped about "blah blah blah blah ONE"
or recognzing that cycles are just short or long (i.e., delayed or extended-backcyling only delays the inevitable adding movement along the way ) ways of moving from tension to resolution.
for me, I'm not smart enough to delve through the weeds of harmonic minutiae. I need to understand essential and fundamental categories.Last edited by MarkRhodes; 10-30-2016 at 07:11 PM.
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This is a great topic. As an amateur who mostly plays American songbook standards, the unifying approach is my comfort zone. I mostly think chord tone targets when I'm playing rather than CST and I tend to avoid the highly "exceptionalist" tunes. However, I like tunes that occasionally take the harmony unexpected directions -- especially if there's a compelling melody that holds it all together. Dreamsville, for instance.
Last edited by KirkP; 10-30-2016 at 05:32 PM.
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It's a mixed salad bowl of approaches, not separate. Separate approach thinking would be the student who has a narrow book learned view and has not come to evolve and understand modern music concepts used over the past 50 years of jazz. Or maybe some elderly jazz players that steadfastly hang on to the pre 60's jazz before all of the cultural revolution.
Jazz represents freedom and harmony became freer in the 60's. Chords suddenly didn't have to progress according to any diatonic conventions. The Impressionist did that too.Last edited by rintincop; 10-31-2016 at 05:25 PM.
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I'm a bit of both. I have old harmonic grasp and approach of Unifier, but with limited repertoire of Exceptionalist
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The link between impressionism and jazz goes right back to the 1920s. There were certainly always tunes with wierd non functional progressions - just look at some the Django stuff. Here's another famous example: Originally Posted by rintincop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2_Ai8dgBko
As Conrad Cork points out in his article in Harmony with Lego Bricks, there was a trend towards genuinely complex chord progressions in pre-bop jazz. Most of this complexity got chucked out when Bird focussed his music around a small repertoire of stock swing jam session progressions (12 bar, Rhythm, Honeysuckle etc) and a few trendy tunes of the time - All the Things You Are, How High the Moon, Cherokee etc.
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They are great books - the Leggo book comes out of the concepts in John Eliots book right?
Another tricky customer is Cole Porter (who lived in Paris in the 1910's). Bird seemed to love his stuff, and it didnt fit the mould when you look at tunes like Just one of those things, I concentrate on you, or I get a kick out of you.
I still find "Just one of those things" one of the toughest tunes in any mould - changing key centres on a hairpin. and will throw anything I can,including whatever my ears can grab, chord scales, licks, quotes; whatever at it ...
Interestingly , speaking of Wayne, if I try and 'exceptionalise' the changes on a tune like ESP, it always sounds wrong -or at least contrived and silly. Waynes approach is much more expansive and, if Im understanding your meaning correctly, unifies the whole tune alot more with common tones and pentatonics etc..ESP is a weird one because its a derivative contrefact of a standard form - which tune is anyone's guess, but it could be 'but not for me' or "our love is here to stay' for example...crazy? Probably.
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Absolutely. It's a frickin' nightmare.I still find "Just one of those things" one of the toughest tunes in any mould - changing key centres on a hairpin. and will throw anything I can,including whatever my ears can grab, chord scales, licks, quotes; whatever at it ...
But - there's some classic Porter harmonic lego bricks that pop up in it - the descending from #IVm7b5 thing:
#IVm7 IVm IIIm bIII7 IIm7 V7 for instance
(Bm7b5 Bbm7 Am7 Ab7 Gm7 C7)
I need to take another look at that Wayne rep... been a few years...Interestingly , speaking of Wayne, if I try and 'exceptionalise' the changes on a tune like ESP, it always sounds wrong -or at least contrived and silly. Waynes approach is much more expansive and, if Im understanding your meaning correctly, unifies the whole tune alot more with common tones and pentatonics etc..ESP is a weird one because its a derivative contrefact of a standard form - which tune is anyone's guess, but it could be 'but not for me' or "our love is here to stay' for example...crazy? Probably.
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Type C: Bluesifiers, those who turn everything into blues, for better (Jimmy Smith) or worse (ahem, shuffles feet, stares at floor)
John
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