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

[ragman1]

And learning scales can make one a machine, right? So perhaps learning scales should be avoided and disdained ...

Not at all, but I think you're being humorous

Or maybe, it's how one utilizes the tools of the instrument to create music ... far more basic to the entire sense of musicianship.

Exactly.

I've never seen a group gigging that is say a trumpet, t-bone, couple saxes, a guitar, bass, keyboard, drummer, that plays without any structure whatever

I've known some that do a fair imitation :-)

[ragman1]

Please can we avoid the discussion of 'should you play jazz only using triads.'

Oh, let's.

[christianm77]

I don't think it's 'wrong'. It gives the beginner a simple insight into 'jazz' sounds, how they're constructed, etc. But any system by definition has its limitations. To the more advanced player those limitations become apparent and they can move away from them.

I'm not sure if I was very clear in my wording in the post - I meant, it's not that the 7th chord system is wrong per se - (what does that even mean? It's only music theory.) it's more (as Matt and Henry pointed out) that educators sometimes make bad assumptions regarding the level of knowledge students have before moving into the four note chords.

I don't know why people would want to learn 'jazz harmony' before having a basic command of standard tonal harmony, but I suspect that it is related to the paradigm of jazz education that is preoccupied with note choice, and that jazz is primarily differentiated from classical music by dint of its note choices on chords - 'I have to play jazz notes to play jazz'.

Which to me misses the point of the music so completely it would be hilarious if it also wasn't so pernicious.

But much of this is trying to save students from the blind alleys and limitations of my own jazz education such as it is.

From a guitar point of view - triads do have the benefit of being simpler and more guitaristic. It's pretty hard to explain stacks of thirds without a player already having a thorough command of scales and/or some keyboard skills. But triads can come out of the cowboy chord shapes.

Cowboy chords + a bass note or a melody and you have a four note chord. See Jordan. He has this stuff pegged.

[christianm77]

Oh - and BTW - I am not saying Jazz can't use more complicated harmony - of any type. What I am saying is jazz can just as much be simple harmonically, and still be jazz.

Just as is the case with Western Art music, in fact, from Monteverdi through to Ravel and beyond...

[ragman1]

educators sometimes make bad assumptions regarding the level of knowledge students have before moving into the four note chords.

That's their look-out. It's their job not to make bad assumptions.

I don't know why people would want to learn 'jazz harmony' before having a basic command of standard tonal harmony

Do they? How many people start music from scratch with jazz? Even if they did they'd still have to go through all the basics first. For quite a long time too.

triads do have the benefit of being simpler and more guitaristic

Don't agree, they just look simpler... because, after all, there's only three little notes to each one so what could possibly go wrong?

[ragman1]

What I am saying is jazz can just as much be simple harmonically, and still be jazz

How simple?

[christianm77]

Do they? How many people start music from scratch with jazz? Even if they did they'd still have to go through all the basics first. For quite a long time too.

Well I tell you what, I didn't have a frickin' clue about tonal harmony when I started jazz. I was a rock/blues guy. The whole concept of harmony and changes and fitting the melody of one to the other was like gobbledegook to me.

And I find that I can assume many other guitar students have a similar background.

Pianists are usually much more au fait with this stuff. But even then, there's a difference between having played classical pieces, say, and understanding how to improvise and compose within the frame work of tonal harmony. In short you have to be a bit of a nerdy pianist haha....

My education in this stuff has been backwards - CST --> seventh chord harmony --> triads.

But then my playing has been: modal/fusion --> post-bop --> bop, swing & trad

I don't think I'm the only one lol.

[R Neil]

Not at all, but I think you're being humorous



Exactly.



I've known some that do a fair imitation :-)

Yep, a little dry humor there ... glad you caught it. I'll make a comment like that trying to liven up a video post processing forum and can often tell Colorist leaning brains from straight Editors. Colorists can typically realize some humor must have been intended.

Editor brains? Um ... I may have just started the Clone Wars ... !

It's all using tools in a way that helps each of us move forward isn't it, whether moving forward for anyone at their place is learning the bits and pieces of the craft, or assembling those pieces to make music.

Our youngest was diagnosed Autistic at around 4, and OHSU med staff was assuming low IQ. We were used to the humor constantly there in little Lars's attempts to communicate with anyone and didn't buy the low intelligence crap.

Often he appeared not to be paying attention ... but would "suddenly" be capable of ... or totally mastered ... something he hadn't said or done before. So my overly analytical brain studied Lars's learning.

He clearly was acquiring all the bits and pieces of anything said around him, but wouldn't do something until all the pieces "fit".

Take reading. One moment he'd recall all the letters, next moment no reaction to seeing T. "Auntie" Cherie, his brilliant Godmother decided the problem was letters were useless stupid squiggles without use to his brain so she sat his 5 years old body on her lap and typed simple stories about Lars's favorite beings ... older brother Nels and our dog Katy ... onto the computer screen.

Voila! You mean you can do cool things with those squiggles? He was reading away that afternoon.

Math ... from arithmetic through algebra, geometry, and trig ... he'd make fast movement then get hung up some place ... and struggle ... until suddenly one little piece slots in place and all those stored bits and pieces have order ... organization ... meaning ... and use.

We'd have to tell his teachers how to diagnose his learning process as it was very different than others. If he was stuck it wasn't useful to just repeat endlessly the instructions from where it seemed he was stuck. There was one little bit that could as easily be not covered yet or several steps behind where they were, and when he got that bit bingo!

So sitting with him to do a quick review along with a preview of coming attractions was needed. He graduated high school without accommodations in college bound classes, Physics Student of the Year, 3.9 GPA, we never ever had to remind him to do homework yet his homework was always done way ahead of time. And he stopped asking mom & dad math questions a long time ago. It's been 48 years since algebra II for me!

The arguments around here as to how to learn the fretboard ... which if any music books or systems are of use ... what's the underlying basis of jazz ... well, it all depends, doesn't it? We all learn differently, we all understand comments differently. What's useful for Lars is wasted time with Anna, and stupid approach to Jonathan.

Fine ... but we can be respectful of the differences. And learn about each other as we learn from each other.

Stumbling fingers still need love ...

[ragman1]

Pianists are usually much more au fait with this stuff

That was generally my whole argument on that other piano/guitar thread. There's a very good reason why they're more au fait with it. You have to be to play good piano.

[ragman1]

didn't buy the low intelligence crap.

Good. Complete nonsense. They should know better.

[christianm77]

How simple?

Well have you listened to much early jazz for a start?

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This is one of my favourites of the era, and there's nothing harmonically 'jazz' about it. The blues in the melody is pretty jazz, of course, but blues is not jazz necessarily.

The jazz feeling IMO comes from the New Orleans March feel and the way the notes are played, the treatment of rhythm.

That could be said for a lot of this early stuff.

Moving forward to Charlie Christian - the harmony in the accompaniment is very straight. Solos on a blues would often be just I IV V, with note choices largely familiar to rock and blues players. Here is an example.

Even for something like Sonny Rollins on St Thomas, to me, the melody and the harmony are pretty standard, based around bebop lines mostly which are themselves derived from triads, neighbour tones and diatonic scales - and the primary interest is coming from the rhythmic aspect. This is reflected in his compositions.

Of course if you want jazz with no harmony at all, go check out some drum solos. How about Antonio Sanchez's music for Birdman. What type of music is that?

[christianm77]

That was generally my whole argument on that other piano/guitar thread. There's a very good reason why they're more au fait with it. You have to be to play good piano.

Not necessarily. You don't need to know a thing about harmony or composition to play classical piano.

The pianists who are drawn to jazz are of course ones who are interested in making their own stuff up, so they get interested in where the notes come from.

[Vladan]

Well I tell you what, I didn't have a frickin' clue about tonal harmony when I started jazz. I was a rock/blues guy. The whole concept of harmony and changes and fitting the melody of one to the other was like gobbledegook to me..

When I read posts like this, I don't know what to think, I'm stunned!

I'd say it was impossible to play any kind of music, a simplest song, without being aware the melody fits underlying chords and they actually bare same notes.

That's why "serious" music suck nowdays. You have machines with instrumentalist chops, disguised as musicians, doing right moves over particular sounds, not because they think it was good sounding, or a good idea, but because somebody told them it was so and programmed them to do so.

If one should really be thaught to use 6th over blues, WTF is that one doing in music?

Wow!

VladanMovies BlogSpot

[christianm77]

When I read posts like this, I don't know what to think, I'm stunned!

I'd say it was impossible to play any kind of music, a simplest song, without being aware the melody fits underlying chords and they actually bare same notes.

That's why "serious" music suck nowdays. You have machines with instrumentalist chops, disguised as musicians, doing right moves over particular sounds, not because they think it was good sounding, or a good idea, but because somebody told them it was so and programmed them to do so.

If one should really be thaught to use 6th over blues, WTF is that one doing in music?

Wow!

VladanMovies BlogSpot

Well, I got better haha. We are after all, capable of learning stuff.

TBF I had only been playing the guitar for about 2 years by this point, and the blues scale was all I needed to play those Cream and Zeppelin tunes. (But I was already gigging.)

I honestly feel this is how a lot of rock players do it - what key is it in? Right I'll blow on that scale. Which is not to say that the best rock players don't play the changes.

Imagine the shock when Dave Cliff started talking about guide tones, targetting and arpeggios.

And then I went to the other class and the pianist talked about scales, and I thought - this sounds more like what I know, I'll go with that. So I was all about the modes after that. I only realised what an idiot I'd been five years later.

It is perhaps not unusual that I did not spring fully formed from a jazz egg.

[R Neil]

I'm not sure if I was very clear in my wording in the post - I meant, it's not that the 7th chord system is wrong per se - (what does that even mean? It's only music theory.) it's more (as Matt and Henry pointed out) that educators sometimes make bad assumptions regarding the level of knowledge students have before moving into the four note chords.

I don't know why people would want to learn 'jazz harmony' before having a basic command of standard tonal harmony, but I suspect that it is related to the paradigm of jazz education that is preoccupied with note choice, and that jazz is primarily differentiated from classical music by dint of its note choices on chords - 'I have to play jazz notes to play jazz'.

Which to me misses the point of the music so completely it would be hilarious if it also wasn't so pernicious.

But much of this is trying to save students from the blind alleys and limitations of my own jazz education such as it is.

From a guitar point of view - triads do have the benefit of being simpler and more guitaristic. It's pretty hard to explain stacks of thirds without a player already having a thorough command of scales and/or some keyboard skills. But triads can come out of the cowboy chord shapes.

Cowboy chords + a bass note or a melody and you have a four note chord. See Jordan. He has this stuff pegged.

So totally agree on the limitations imposed on ... the overview? ...big picture? ... of something like jazz by some perhaps pedantic individuals. "Jazz is X ... period."

I've been college trained in classical music, history theory and practice, and I couldn't make such a blanket statement on classical music either.

It would have to be a form of many bits of this: "it's like this, but not really; and some of this, but not really ... "

Jazz is all sorts of stuff to different people. A structure that gives an underlying appreciation of the generalized form is one thing, if viewed in the context of being simply a generalized form for discussion.

When applied such that it is seen as THE only proper way to view jazz ... that's rather odd to me and incredibly inflexible and narrowly focused. But there are people who need everything to be able to fit within narrow and tightly defined parameters.

They find me as irksome as I find them "narrow". I wish I could manage better social skills but unfortunately ... it comes through.

Stumbling fingers still need love ...

[Vladan]

Well, I got better haha. We are after all, capable of learning stuff.

TBF I had only been playing the guitar for about 2 years by this point, and the blues scale was all I needed to play those Cream and Zeppelin tunes. (But I was already gigging.)

I honestly feel this is how a lot of rock players do it - what key is it in? Right I'll blow on that scale. Which is not to say that the best rock players don't play the changes.

Imagine the shock when Dave Cliff started talking about guide tones, targetting and arpeggios.

And then I went to the other class and the pianist talked about scales, and I thought - this sounds more like what I know, I'll go with that. So I was all about the modes after that. I only realised what an idiot I'd been five years later.

It is perhaps not unusual that I did not spring fully formed from a jazz egg.

I was typing response, but discarded it and have decided to write "My method" book instead.

VladanMovies BlogSpot

[R Neil]

That was generally my whole argument on that other piano/guitar thread. There's a very good reason why they're more au fait with it. You have to be to play good piano.

Our daughter in law was both a trumpeter and the keyboardist of the high-school jazz band she and her now-husband were in, he was the bass. Their band teacher was in the Air Guard jazz band out of Fairchild Air Base near Spokane. D-in-law joined that primarily as pianist and they toured a few times a year.

She was a very fine pianist in high school but several years playing with that jazz/swing group, wow ... she rips through keys and modulations while just chatting away without even paying attention to what she's playing. Says after that, reading classical music for piano is easy.

Easy for some to say!

Stumbling fingers still need love ...

[R Neil]

Well I tell you what, I didn't have a frickin' clue about tonal harmony when I started jazz. I was a rock/blues guy. The whole concept of harmony and changes and fitting the melody of one to the other was like gobbledegook to me.

And I find that I can assume many other guitar students have a similar background.

Pianists are usually much more au fait with this stuff. But even then, there's a difference between having played classical pieces, say, and understanding how to improvise and compose within the frame work of tonal harmony. In short you have to be a bit of a nerdy pianist haha....

My education in this stuff has been backwards - CST --> seventh chord harmony --> triads.

But then my playing has been: modal/fusion --> post-bop --> bop, swing & trad

I don't think I'm the only one lol.

When I was younger and working in the music store or hanging there the local "pro" guitarists also hung there .. the guys that lived on their club gigs. Mostly rock or country, all could throw some blues in.

Most of them could play a ton of music in their style in any key and blaze away on a fretboard. They were knowledgeable, hot, and well ... a bit arrogant about their chops.

Will would start asking about or demonstrating modes, change cycles other than I vi7 VI V7 ... and they'd glaze over the whole face.

I think in the US you're background is not at all unusual.

Stumbling fingers still need love ...

[ragman1]

What I am saying is jazz can just as much be simple harmonically, and still be jazz

How simple?

Well have you listened to much early jazz for a start?

No, it's not lecture time. Of course early jazz was simpler. Early everything is simpler. I meant contemporary stuff. We were talking about triads.

[christianm77]

No, it's not lecture time. Of course early jazz was simpler.

Early everything is simpler. I meant contemporary stuff.

Well you asked me. I also reject the idea that earlier music is simpler, necessarily. It's just different. Is Bach simpler than Wagner?

Loads of triadic harmony in the jazz of the past 40 years...

I'm not even sure what we are discussing TBH.

[ragman1]

I'm not even sure what we are discussing TBH.

I'm glad that's settled! :-)