Conceptual problems created by using seventh chords as a basic unit of jazz harmony

**Vladan** · 01-20-2017, 01:33 PM

Re Trumpets Sound on Sound Piano and Guitar

In a sense it's easier to play piano in that "integrated " way, because the range is wide, left hand and right hand, if sufficiently appart don't have to "listen" to each other, at all. Sound is loud and you can clearly identify "low" against "high". It's enough to take care not to bang with both hands at exactly the same moment. Of course, meaningful mastery is much harder, but in principle, you can pas anything on piano as "free".
Playing close voicings, rhythm in left - melody in right, does not allow for nonsense. You have to know what you are doing, as well as to have some ear. In wide free approach, you do not have to have any of the 2, you can pass as good and interesting with some sense for rythm, nothing more.

Guitar is not of that luck. Anywhere you play it it is neither hi, or low, it's just guitar sound. Solo performance, chord melody thing, is bit more open, but it's much easier to have clams and unpleasant rubbings than on piano. Even playing concrete and specific drop voicings will sound bad and overly tense, if not accessed with care. On guitar, you have to have both the groove and voice lead to sound half good for anything longer than 30 seconds.

Again I don't say masters are fakers, but nature is such.

VladanMovies BlogSpot

**Hep To The Jive** · 01-20-2017, 01:49 PM

I agree with OP in most ways, except maybe about the blues. 6/9th chord as tonic might work, but DO NOT play IV, V chords any other than dom 7- that's just sounds bad and not bluesy at all! I hope that's understood.

In minor blues i and iv can be min 6th, no problem.

All this business about major and minor triads with 6th preference over maj 7, I'm in! Maj 7 chords is most pretentious thing you can play. Use them, but very sparingly. 6ths, 6/9ths are always default chords for me. I was also playing imin7 as default chord for years, but I got hip to imin6 lately, and that's so much better!

One thing though, as primarily a Hot Jazz player, I do recognize if you find yourself playing more contemporary jazz tunes, all bets are off. Bring on your maj7, min 7 with all altered tones you can impose on any chord- harsher the better, it's just what's good for the style.

**christianm77** · 01-20-2017, 02:10 PM

Originally Posted by R Neil

Perhaps a fair description of jazz would be based on the basis of the interaction of triads and tension?

Even in modern opera there are quartal chord structures and vocal lines, mixed with all variants of 6th, 7th, and "denser" chords.

The same happens in newer classical instrumental music.

That doesn't mean it sounds at all like jazz. So it isn't simply the types of chords used, is it?

To me there's a very different "feel" to the use (stacking, combinations. whatever) of triads and of tension within both the harmony and solo lines within jazz performers.

The notes are technically very similar. The practical use of them is very different.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

Stumbling fingers still need love ...

Urrgggh. I wouldn't use any harmonic classification of jazz at all. But yes. Kinda?

Jazz harmony does have a different feel to classical, because it's not - here look I wrote a thing - it's more putting a thing on another thing, even when you write you own tunes and blow on them. There's a freedom there. Louis playing his 7's and so on the simple chords of the song. It's not harmony in that classical sense.

So much comes from melody on chords. These '7#9' chords, those IVm6 arpeggios on V7 chords, the altered scale, those 'upper structure subs.' Steve Coleman uses the term Invisible Paths, which I like. It's not vertical harmony, it's getting from A to B via another route.

That's what I mean by horizontal jazz harmony as opposed to vertical.

Take Lester playing IV IVm on IV #IVo7 - common practice on many records for many players. He's thinking not - oh here is a #ivo7 chord, I'll play on that. He's thinking - I was on IV now I go back to I.

But of course the big difference, the really big difference between a Bach line on a secondary dominant and Charlie Parker doing the exactly the same thing is rhythm.

It's all rhythm.

BTW I'm heavily influenced by that Conrad Cork article. I don't agree with everything he says, but I agree with most of it.

**christianm77** · 01-20-2017, 02:31 PM

Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive

I agree with OP in most ways, except maybe about the blues. 6/9th chord as tonic might work, but DO NOT play IV, V chords any other than dom 7- that's just sounds bad and not bluesy at all! I hope that's understood.

I often play 6th chords on IV. Sounds good to me, and leaves it up to the soloist what they do here.

But yes, dom 7 on IV. Almost always for Bird actually. Blues scale here is very common.

Rhythm changes, Confirmation etc always IV7. He was a Kansas city blues guy.

All this business about major and minor triads with 6th preference over maj 7, I'm in! Maj 7 chords is most pretentious thing you can play.

You wanna bet haha? Let me work up my modal intervallic cluster voicings.

I hate it when people over use that sort of thing in standards. It sounds ridiculous. Lage Lund might know 3 million voicings, but he also knows their place.

Rant ends.

Anyway maj7 in swing (and bop IMO). There are two appropriate contexts.

1) You resolve to the 6
2) The 7th is in the top voice and part of a chord melody thing.

Middle voiced maj7s in major 7th chords are far too lounge.

It's easier to say 'don't play maj7's' to those starting out in swing after modern jazz.

Use them, but very sparingly. 6ths, 6/9ths are always default chords for me. I was also playing imin7 as default chord for years, but I got hip to imin6 lately, and that's so much better!

Be careful about over using Im6 in early jazz styles.

I got a right bollocking about using one on a iii chord. Often the minor triad is really the best option.

I tend to use minor triads a lot in swing stuff now unless I feel I really want that m6 sound. Or I'm playing straight up Gypsy Jazz stuff in which case I deploy them with gay abandon.

One thing though, as primarily a Hot Jazz player, I do recognize if you find yourself playing more contemporary jazz tunes, all bets are off. Bring on your maj7, min 7 with all altered tones you can impose on any chord- harsher the better, it's just what's good for the style.

And yet often the best approach to a difficult non functional chord progression with lots of rapid changes is to outline it with triads.

In terms of longer duration chords - well use CST, triad superpositions, etc. But I am talking about beginner stuff here. Improvise on a Blues that type of thing.

**goldenwave77** · 01-20-2017, 02:40 PM

[QUOTE=christianm77;732665]

That said I know some musicians who regard what they were taught at jazz college as big pile of steaming... nonsense. *shrugs* There are good teachers out there, and not everyone teaches the same stuff.[/QUOTE]

I was looking at the Songwriters Hall of Fame website the other day. Very interesting. Most people know a dozen famous GASB writers (Berlin, Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Jimmy Van Heusen, Jerome Kern, Hoagy Carmichael, Harold Arlen, etc.). I wasn't ready to find almost 400 people listed in their Hall of Fame. It was a big industry. I started reading through the capsule bios. Startling to see how many of them did very little after 1955 (Elvis) and 1965 (the Beatles). Granted, you have Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb and some others, but nowhere near the variety and volume of stuff from 1900-1955.

(There is a whole, separate part of their site devoted to rock n' roll people.)

It is unintentionally hilarious how every capsule bio tries to make each recipient the modern day incarnation of a heavenly muse. One imagines old-time song pluggers, publicists, and writers, all jostling and elbowing each other aside for attention and sales.

And yes, a lot of their stuff was trite or hokey, the "moon, June, swoon" school of songwriting, but there was undeniably a lot of good well-written stuff that could be used by jazz musicians. Not only was it good material to start with, but it was known from shows, movies, radio, and early television. And if a jazz player took a hokey ballad and made it their own, well Sonny Rollins playing "Surrey With The Fringe on the Top" was a lot cooler than the show tune version.

Not true, for the most part, if the jazz guy takes the rock n' roll tune, which is "edgier", and probably simpler, musically. Jazz it up, and it often sounds contrived. Oh, musicians might like it but the general public? Generally not.

After the Swing Era ended, and bebop had its brief era of popularity, the public fell away from jazz. And this was as true of Black America, as the broader mainstream White culture. Earl Bostic made a LOT of records, and kept very busy, and had a number of good, to great, jazz musicians playing for him. And Bostic was no slouch, either, on the alto sax, though his stuff for sale was middle of the road, R & B, "I play the melody (only) stuff." The careers of great black Blues artists also went into decline. Reputedly Muddy Waters was painting the offices of Chess Records to pay back money he owed against advances, unsupported by declining record sales. Black Church music, which is essentially what Ray Charles' stuff is, and which formed the basis for a lot of MoTown stuff, had enduring popularity.

And so....against this backdrop, when jazz musicians started electrifying, departing from the 32 bar form, and writing long, through-composed instrumental works, it's not surprising that few of them are played today, or are remembered. The popularity of fusion stuff, and the supposed unpopularity of former mainstream jazz, is a little misleading. Mainstream jazz leveraged off of many songs already being recorded, played, and sung by a whole gaggle of performers. (I saw a rerun of an old Jack Benny TV show the other day, and saw Frankie Avalon, who looks, like all the world, like a young Frank Sinatra. And he wasn't half-bad, either, as a singer.)

Then post-60's, jazz enters the University World, and it has this new freedom, but has to make its way, for the first time from Ground Zero, to play its newly composed stuff to an unsophisticated public. There are a few success stories here and there. But there is defensiveness which surrounds the academically-trained jazz musicians, I think. They are not products of a grass roots system of talent hunting, but go off to be trained, and try to emerge (one hopes), as fully formed products. But unlike the classical people, there is no real benchmark to assess how well people play. (You can go to the Chopin or Van Cliburn competition every yr. and be pretty sure people there are good---there is standardized repertoire, and enough competition to ensure that.)

And just as with every endeavor, there is jargon and mystification and turf battles, with real stakes...jobs, products to be sold, and understanding to be peddled.

Against this superstructure of training, there is a lack of grass roots support, in this country anyway.

In a nutshell, Tin Pan Alley supported itself through Broadway, the movies, musical revues, vaudeville, and sales of sheet music, to a somewhat musically literate public. I think people were more active as amateur musicians, than today where they tend to be consumers of music.

The digital specter, has led to wholesale destruction of property rights, or their possibility, for many musical forms, and that has led to our current sad state.

**Jonzo** · 01-20-2017, 02:46 PM

Originally Posted by christianm77

Not being a Berklee graduate myself I can't say for sure, but it seems everyone who has graduated from music college finds a way of applying some of the huge heap of information to develop their own voice.

After all, Pat Metheny and Lage Lund, for example, who are big triad guys were at Berklee. Pat taught there of course.

That said I know some musicians who regard what they were taught at jazz college as big pile of steaming... nonsense. *shrugs* There are good teachers out there, and not everyone teaches the same stuff.

I thought Lage Lund was Julliard. Did he go to Berklee too, or am I mistaken?

**christianm77** · 01-20-2017, 02:50 PM

Thanks for your forensic analysis goldenwave. I completely agree.

Over here, the big thing seems to be eclecticism and fusion (not Jan Hammer, I mean fusions of various world music traditions with a jazz sensibility.) I am involved in this a bit. Easier to get gigs doing this.

**christianm77** · 01-20-2017, 02:51 PM

Originally Posted by Jonzo

I thought Lage Lund was Julliard. Did he go to Berklee too, or am I mistaken?

Yeah, B first?

**Hep To The Jive** · 01-20-2017, 04:08 PM

Originally Posted by christianm77

Be careful about over using Im6 in early jazz styles.

I got a right bollocking about using one on a iii chord. Often the minor triad is really the best option.

I tend to use minor triads a lot in swing stuff now unless I feel I really want that m6 sound. Or I'm playing straight up Gypsy Jazz stuff in which case I deploy them with gay abandon.

I guess if we are talking Prohibition jazz... I can play a simple minor chord triad and don't feel embarrassed, it's prolly better that way anyway. In swing tunes I do like min6 sound, but never on iii, and rarely on ii. For those I still use min7 as default and everyone seems happy.

Gypsy jazz, yeah, only I tend to change the default shapes to scpecifically Gypsy shapes, which cover 2,3,4,5 strings. I dunno, that's what I saw the hardcore Gypsy guys using instead of drop 'something number' shapes.

**christianm77** · 01-20-2017, 04:16 PM

Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive

I guess if we are talking Prohibition jazz... I can play a simple minor chord triad and don't feel embarrassed, it's prolly better that way anyway. In swing tunes I do like min6 sound, but never on iii, and rarely on ii. For those I still use min7 as default and everyone seems happy.

I think you can play a simple minor triad in any style of music and not feel embarrassed.

Gypsy jazz, yeah, only I tend to change the default shapes to scpecifically Gypsy shapes, which cover 2,3,4,5 strings. I dunno, that's what I saw the hardcore Gypsy guys using instead of drop 'something number' shapes.

Yeah GJ harmony is pretty basic and raw. Lots of clashes and so on with the melody and the bass. It's a bit of a mess TBH, but that's part of the style.

**Reg** · 01-20-2017, 06:07 PM

I like this discussion... no right or wrong, but definitely very different results.

If the discussion is about using 7th chords, (comping or soloing), as basic harmonic reference for understanding and being able to perform jazz. We're not really talking about beginners, right.

The basic reason for using 7th chords... is because they do have more harmonic references, which cover much more of typical jazz harmonic functions. Triads just don't cover, even when using different organizations and calling everything else embellishments etc... If you begin to understand modal implications, modal interchange and the resulting possibilities of function, (the organization for chordal movement), anyway...

triads are great and obviously part of very basic musical understanding of music. And can become a cool tool for creating new sounding and possible different organizational approach for defining function, or even just embellishments of existing.

But you might be missing much of what creates jazz harmony without being aware of 7th chords.

At some point you need to get past basic single chord concepts. As Christian said.... generally when performing jazz, the lead line or melody like figures on top of what changes your playing is what playing in a jazz style is about. I also always comp from the top note down. That doesn't mean I'm not aware of root motion, but root motion is just one element of creating chord movement or function when performing in a jazz style.

And chords become Chord patterns. The same lead line can happen on top of different chord patterns with different functional results.

Generally... when comping you create function or harmonic movement using chord patterns with reference to a tonal center, (or Tonal Target) . The same chord pattern or series of chords can have different functions depending on the context... There is the Macro and Micro versions of analysis and and all the stuff between. When you begin to understand music, the basis or reference for all things is maj/min functional harmony. That understanding of function can become very vanilla when performing jazz. Not wrong or bad... Jazz tend to expand organizational aspects of function or movement. Some of that comes from use of 7th chords for basic language reference for harmonic movement.

Yea... who really cares. I'll post some comping concepts and approaches.... which use 7th chords as basic language for comping as references. I'll start a new thread in the comping section for posts.

**ragman1** · 01-20-2017, 06:07 PM

On this page

Minor Blues | Jazz Guitar Chord Progressions

There are eleven - repeat eleven - varieties of minor blues... and not a m6 in sight.

Discuss :-)

**christianm77** · 01-20-2017, 06:12 PM

Originally Posted by ragman1

On this page

Minor Blues | Jazz Guitar Chord Progressions

There are eleven - repeat eleven - varieties of minor blues... and not a m6 in sight.

Discuss :-)

TBH I'd rather listen carefully to records than read this type of stuff on the internet. These are all examples filtered through the listening, education and playing style of the person who wrote it. No disrespect intended to the author, of course. I doubt he intends it to be definitive, just a selection of options.

What is definitive? Well you have 100 years of jazz music out there to check out and two flappy things attached to the side of your head. What an adventure!

I don't really use this type of material any more, though it can be useful. Personally, I think at some point you have to put the books aside, check out the music itself and learn from the source.

It was doing this which led me to my understanding such as it is.

I'll try and dig out some examples of comping practice through the decades on minor key stuff. Probably be unscientific but might be fun, and I'm sure I'll learn something.

**ragman1** · 01-20-2017, 06:26 PM

Originally Posted by christianm77

this type of stuff on the internet

Better see Dirk about it!

I agree about the flappy things though

Oh, about the use of 13ths etc, I just found this, again on this site

Jazz Blues Guitar Chords - Comping Exercise for a Blues in G

**matt.guitarteacher** · 01-20-2017, 06:29 PM

Originally Posted by christianm77

What is definitive? Well you have 100 years of jazz music out there to check out and two flappy things attached to the side of your head. What an adventure!

:-)

**christianm77** · 01-20-2017, 06:43 PM

Originally Posted by Reg

I like this discussion... no right or wrong, but definitely very different results.

If the discussion is about using 7th chords, (comping or soloing), as basic harmonic reference for understanding and being able to perform jazz. We're not really talking about beginners, right.

Well I'm talking about people who can basically play, but can't improvise through changes - so beginners at jazz, but intermediate even advanced (as in graduate guitar institute etc) players. Triads form an essential skeleton or framework - resolution points. Seventh chords are I think are a little more cumbersome.

I wish I'd worked on triads a little earlier - I started with the seventh chords. But triads are easy on guitar - related to chord shapes we all know early on. Familiar. Not intimidating. This is a good thing for the teacher.

Anyway, you can have this out with Jordan! Both of you are marvellous players albeit with totally different styles.

Your style is (to my ears) pure post Wes blue note post-bop - as a result you play a lot of extended tertial structures, at least to my ears. In this style, seventh chords are the basic currency, dim7 chords sound old fashioned and b7's sit nice on minors.

Jordan is coming at it from a more contemporary perspective, where US triads are a common approach. Triads are very popular with contemporary and post-fusion players.

As you know I've come out of playing a lot of 40s stuff - that amazing crossover period between Bop and Swing. Lester Young, Charlie Christian and Parker have been a heavy area of study for me, more so than Cedar Walton or even Clifford Brown. It's a slightly different dialect. But I've also checked out Wes, and I play much more modern stuff, too, right up to and including Fusion and Middle Eastern fusion stuff. I transcribe people like Kurt Rosenwinkel, Lage Lund and Adam Rogers, too.

In practice I mix and match a whole bunch of approaches. Last month I did a video about playing scales in stacks of thirds, for example. I practice a lot of intervallic stuff through chord scales and so on. But I've been playing for years.

The basic reason for using 7th chords... is because they do have more harmonic references, which cover much more of typical jazz harmonic functions. Triads just don't cover, even when using different organizations and calling everything else embellishments etc... If you begin to understand modal implications, modal interchange and the resulting possibilities of function, (the organization for chordal movement), anyway...

I have problems with this in so much as triads feature heavily in so many musician's playing. Again, I don't really understand your theoretical approach, but I do know what your playing sounds like to me, and how I would analyse it. This might be at variance to how you yourself think of it. Which is part of the fun.

triads are great and obviously part of very basic musical understanding of music. And can become a cool tool for creating new sounding and possible different organizational approach for defining function, or even just embellishments of existing.

But you might be missing much of what creates jazz harmony without being aware of 7th chords.

I think it really depends on your perspective of course. But I see no problem with starting with triads and introducing added notes, including sevenths at a later point.

At some point you need to get past basic single chord concepts. As Christian said.... generally when performing jazz, the lead line or melody like figures on top of what changes your playing is what playing in a jazz style is about. I also always comp from the top note down. That doesn't mean I'm not aware of root motion, but root motion is just one element of creating chord movement or function when performing in a jazz style.

And chords become Chord patterns. The same lead line can happen on top of different chord patterns with different functional results.

Generally... when comping you create function or harmonic movement using chord patterns with reference to a tonal center, (or Tonal Target) . The same chord pattern or series of chords can have different functions depending on the context... There is the Macro and Micro versions of analysis and and all the stuff between. When you begin to understand music, the basis or reference for all things is maj/min functional harmony. That understanding of function can become very vanilla when performing jazz. Not wrong or bad... Jazz tend to expand organizational aspects of function or movement. Some of that comes from use of 7th chords for basic language reference for harmonic movement.

Again the J word is useless in this situation because of it's vagueness. What you mean by 'Jazz' is I think 'Post Bop Common Practice' - this is what the Berklee approach teaches in part because it was designed in response to it, but also because that's how most of the musicians of the past 40 or so years learned.

Also I should really dig a bit deeper into your videos to get a better grounding in what you are talking about.

Yea... who really cares. I'll post some comping concepts and approaches.... which use 7th chords as basic language for comping as references. I'll start a new thread in the comping section for posts.

Well I care because I want straightforward bite size tasks to assign to my students :-)

**christianm77** · 01-20-2017, 06:53 PM

Originally Posted by ragman1

Better see Dirk about it!

I agree about the flappy things though

Oh, about the use of 13ths etc, I just found this, again on this site

Jazz Blues Guitar Chords - Comping Exercise for a Blues in G

Look I don't mean to be nasty, but I don't really care about this type of article, and I don't think you should either TBH. It's just stuff for people who are getting it together.

In matter of fact, as soon as I looked at those voicings I was like - oh yeah. I do use them. But not all the time. I don't even think of them as 13ths. I think guide tones + top line melody note.

This is not to me about what some bloke says on the internet, however well qualified and skilled as a player. (Apologies to Dirk etc, but I'm sure they'd understand what I mean.) This is about getting into the music itself and finding things that you like, and an approach to systematising this info that might be of interest to others.

The wealth of theory info out there helps this process, but at the same time I have found the best way of cutting through all the info overload is to carefully examine the music that you love and try and understand a bit about how it works.

(The same goes ultimately for masterclass vids and so on, although I am admittedly addicted to them. Have you noticed the way no two masterclass vids are exactly the same? Overlap to be sure, but every player has their own take on it. It's wonderful. Some of them - like Peter B - always seems to have new things to say every video or masterclass.)

What do your ears tell you? Whose comping do you enjoy? What do you notice about the way they play? What voicings do they play?

**matt.guitarteacher** · 01-20-2017, 07:23 PM

Much of this conversation feels like it's about a couple of different things, or maybe I'm misunderstanding.

Much of it seems to be more about what we actually may PLAY - specific voicings, specific approaches to improvising over a given chord in the beginning , etc. versus other thoughts on organizational framework for theory etc.

For things like the article linked above, 7ths are very good for simple disambiguation and really laying out some basic differences between dominant chords, major7, minor7 etc. I mean, if you're doing the Mickey Baker thing, you're covering the seven resolving to six pretty early anyway, right ? :-)

I think the "this is what I actually play" part of it doesn't really have to be so far removed or seen as a separate concept necessarily. One is application, and another is more nuts and bolts. 6/9's And other voicings are probably more common defaults in practice band straight- up major7s , but I wouldn't fault anyone for starting their necessarily. Anyway, always interested.

**matt.guitarteacher** · 01-20-2017, 07:28 PM

To give Mickey Baker a little credit, by the way, that major seven major six etc. thing immediately gets you hearing a very fundamental aspect of jazz: guide tone lead lines. Mickey had it down. You really lose that if you go all 7ths. Or at the very least, you have to know more chords to make it work. :-)

**henryrobinett** · 01-20-2017, 07:29 PM

Of course the 7th forms the basic chordal unit. Of course. But there's even MORE basic. And if you can't improvise or comp around changes with just the sounds of triads, applicable mostly to pop music, rock and some gospel, you've missed some stuff.

**matt.guitarteacher** · 01-20-2017, 07:31 PM

Originally Posted by henryrobinett

Of course the 7th forms the basic chordal unit. Of course. But there's even MORE basic. And if you can't improvise or comp around changes with just the sounds of triads, applicable mostly to pop music, rock and some gospel, you've missed some stuff.

I think that a lot of people who AREN'T saying that, and beginning with seventh chords etc., would maybe assume that those bases should've already been covered. That assumption itself is probably the flaw.

**christianm77** · 01-20-2017, 07:37 PM

Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher

Much of this conversation feels like it's about a couple of different things, or maybe I'm misunderstanding.

I think you are right there

Much of it seems to be more about what we actually may PLAY - specific voicings, specific approaches to improvising over a given chord in the beginning , etc. versus other thoughts on organizational framework for theory etc.

For things like the article linked above, 7ths are very good for simple disambiguation and really laying out some basic differences between dominant chords, major7, minor7 etc. I mean, if you're doing the Mickey Baker thing, you're covering the seven resolving to six pretty early anyway, right ? :-)

What is a Mickey Baker? :-) I know not of this thing you speak.

Seriously, 7-6 resolutions have been around since the 18th century at least. There's no reason why we can't teach triads and 7-6 type resolutions afterwards.

I agree that they are important to bop... well tonal harmony full stop. In fact, in music history a descending diatonic bassline with 7-6 harmony over the top is the origin of the cycle fourth progression. The two are closely related.

I shall do a weeeedeeeoo on it at some point.

I think the "this is what I actually play" part of it doesn't really have to be so far removed or seen as a separate concept necessarily. One is application, and another is more nuts and bolts. 6/9's And other voicings are probably more common defaults in practice band straight- up major7s , but I wouldn't fault anyone for starting their necessarily. Anyway, always interested.

Well that's kind of the point. Why get into Concept that doesn't even relate to the guitar (we can't even play close voiced sevenths on the guitar - well Monder can but he is a wizard) when we can get into some voicings that might actually sound good.

Of course if I practice all my drops like a good boy, even the ones that sound bad to me, I will be rewarded in the next life.

**PMB** · 01-20-2017, 07:38 PM

Originally Posted by goldenwave77

Don't Maj6 chords sound more resolved?!

I'm looking at a lead sheet for Body and Soul and the 1st 8 bars are given as Ebm7 Bb7b9; Ebm9 Ab 13; Db Maj7 Gb 7; Fm7 E dim; Eb m7/Db; Cm7b5 F7#5#9; Bb m7 Eb7 Eb m7 Ab7; Db 6 Bb 7;

The Db Maj 7 in bar 3 is in the middle of a phrase. If you play Db Maj 6, it just like stops it dead, at least to my ear.

Conversely the Db Maj 6 in bar 8, is the end of the phrase, and it sounds conclusive.

The 7th in the Maj 7 chord is almost like a springboard into the next chord or phrase...I think you can lengthen your lead lines with Maj 7 chords, more easily.

Interesting case. Until that first Db comes along, we're more likely to think that the tune is in Eb minor as it opens with that chord and immediately moves to its own dominant (Bb7) and back again. On the other hand, the Db chord in bar 8 is not only more prepared harmonically, it also has the tonic in the melody. For those reasons, the 6th is a more obvious choice (although guys like Kreisberg and Lund regularly play 3rd inversion major 7th chords against melodic root notes). As Reg points out, comping melodically is a top-down affair (remember that drop voicings were basically conceived as an arranger's method for fleshing out melodies).

**henryrobinett** · 01-20-2017, 07:47 PM

Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher

I think that a lot of people who AREN'T saying that, and beginning with seventh chords etc., would maybe assume that those bases should've already been covered. That assumption itself is probably the flaw.

That assumption is definitely a flaw.

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