Some questions about dominant chords

[rNeil]

My wife and I have now 40+ years as pro portrait photographers, working a wall portraits trade. Images needed to be very interesting and beautiful to view in 30x40 inch or bigger prints. Sold for up to a couple grand for a print. And yea, that has been our entire household income.

Yea, we needed to know the rules of composition and tone, proportions and relationships. Emotions expressed in positioning and lighting and surroundings.

In great detail.

And also when, how, and why to adhere to most of them, but vary or shatter one, to make a more interesting and intriguing image.

Same thing applies to music. It's part of the intense and deep knowledge base required to excel at any craft or art form.

And some very, very few people "get" this almost intuitively. More of us have some parts intuitively and can learn so much more. (And some ... oh well ...)

I've taught a lot of people over the years. And could pretty quickly tell which people I taught Rules to, and which people ... could learn guideposts ... and use them ... modify or interpret them ... or choose to discard one now and then.

I refused to teach Rules to those who could ... see. Sometimes to their great frustrations. Or waste our time teaching Guidelines to those who could only create under Rules.

I know some very fine professional actors, amazing talents, and have performed lead roles on Broadway or the Met Opera. And they can also teach acting and expressive singing.

As noted above, to those who have the ability to learn their respective crafts.

Sadly, though I dearly always wanted to act, and have been in numerous productions as a major character in college and since ... I always knew why I got my role:

The director didn't gave a "good" option, but knew I could learn a part reliably and enable the others to get on with the show.

Never bad enough to get bad ink, never good enough to get mentioned for a review positively. As much a nonentity for reviewers as anyone else attending.

So I know both what it's like to be able to be highly performant at a craft, and ... what it's like to be a very, very disappointed block of wood.

And I ain't never going to be your favorite jazz soloist either on trombone or guitar. Sigh.

But oh I love to play that guitar ...

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

[christianm77]

Again, depends on the context. In Blue Bossa there's a Bb that lands solidly on a G7, just like that. But it sounds good.

Attachment 63849

Holy shit, didn't I literally cite this example about two pages back or am I going mad? (EDIT: it was another thread)

You did it better & clearer though. Nice graphic.

The melody is clearly C natural minor, Dorham not thinking notes on chords. You can find a lot more examples like that.

Yer Cst guys would say #9 b9 therefore G altered, of course. I think it's fairly clear Dorham wasn't thinking of the altered scale when he wrote that tune.

[christianm77]

My wife and I have now 40+ years as pro portrait photographers, working a wall portraits trade. Images needed to be very interesting and beautiful to view in 30x40 inch or bigger prints. Sold for up to a couple grand for a print. And yea, that has been our entire household income.

Yea, we needed to know the rules of composition and tone, proportions and relationships. Emotions expressed in positioning and lighting and surroundings.

In great detail.

And also when, how, and why to adhere to most of them, but vary or shatter one, to make a more interesting and intriguing image.

Same thing applies to music. It's part of the intense and deep knowledge base required to excel at any craft or art form.

And some very, very few people "get" this almost intuitively. More of us have some parts intuitively and can learn so much more. (And some ... oh well ...)

I've taught a lot of people over the years. And could pretty quickly tell which people I taught Rules to, and which people ... could learn guideposts ... and use them ... modify or interpret them ... or choose to discard one now and then.

I refused to teach Rules to those who could ... see. Sometimes to their great frustrations. Or waste our time teaching Guidelines to those who could only create under Rules.

I know some very fine professional actors, amazing talents, and have performed lead roles on Broadway or the Met Opera. And they can also teach acting and expressive singing.

As noted above, to those who have the ability to learn their respective crafts.

Sadly, though I dearly always wanted to act, and have been in numerous productions as a major character in college and since ... I always knew why I got my role:

The director didn't gave a "good" option, but knew I could learn a part reliably and enable the others to get on with the show.

Never bad enough to get bad ink, never good enough to get mentioned for a review positively. As much a nonentity for reviewers as anyone else attending.

So I know both what it's like to be able to be highly performant at a craft, and ... what it's like to be a very, very disappointed block of wood.

And I ain't never going to be your favorite jazz soloist either on trombone or guitar. Sigh.

But oh I love to play that guitar ...

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

What you said reminds me of the thoughts of this chap, do you know of him?

Michael Polanyi - Wikipedia

Who said (among other things) 'we know more than we can tell'

Interestingly, he was a scientist. But his ideas come up in arts education.

He argued most scientific discoveries come from intuition. Connoisseurship (e.g. of wine, or music, or art - or photography) comes from intuitive, personal knowledge that cannot be written down. Tacit or 'hidden' knowledge.

[ragman1]

Holy shit, didn't I literally cite this example about two pages back or am I going mad?

Dunno, thought of it all by myself :-)

[John A.]

... Just to emphasize one last thing that still nags me. Putting improvisation aside for a bit...

Ah, there's your problem. Improvisation can't be put aside in a discussion of what chord symbols imply, because there is always, if not improvisation, some sort of interpretation and construction of harmony going on when people play jazz. A lead sheet is not a score, it's a framework. You can decide that when certain things happen in the melody, a vanilla dom7 sounds better, but that doesn't mean there's a rule you're supposed to play an unaltered dom7 in that context. If you take it more rigidly than that you're missing the whole idea of jazz.

John

[grahambop]

Stella by Starlight is an interesting tune to consider. The second bar is usually played as an A7 altered but it is not a V7 to the following chord (Cm). So I guess it is a kind of delayed resolution or something, but I will leave that to the theory experts!

[christianm77]

Well as we all know, it's a II-V sub for a Io7/bIIIo7 (Em7b5 A7b9 subbing in for Bbo7/Dbo7),

Dbo7 Cm7 F7 pretty common... But... to start on Dbo7 unusual.

Also Dbo7 Cm7 - is not a typical dominant type resolution, more bridging chord

Db E G Bb
C Eb G Bb

Two common tones, right, two a semitone above? Put that between a Bb6/D and a Cm7, and you have a very smooth connection:

D F G Bb
Db E G Bb
C Eb G Bb

No-one studies diminished harmony these days so people blather on about 'non-functional' ii-V's.... There's a few examples of them knocking around.

[ragman1]

Stella by Starlight is an interesting tune to consider. The second bar is usually played as an A7 altered

Only to A7b9. That's okay, you can have an unresolved, or a series of, minor ii-V's as well as major ones. In fact, that's exactly what happens at the end of the tune.

[grahambop]

Only to A7b9. That's okay, you can have an unresolved, or a series of, minor ii-V's as well as major ones. In fact, that's exactly what happens at the end of the tune.

Flat 9 is still ‘altered’ in my book. But I often play it as A7#5 anyway. The dominants at the end are back-cycling, i.e. they all act as the V to the next chord, I don’t exactly see that as ‘unresolved’. But that’s just how I think of it.

[ragman1]

Stella goes Em7b5 - A7b9 - Cm7 - F7 - Fm7 - Bb7 - Eb. If that minor ii-V is reverted back to its relative major (Gm7-C7) then it's a simple series of V's going down the cycle: C7-F7-Bb7-Eb.

I think they're all 'unresolved' except the Bb7 at the end. By unresolved I don't mean they don't sound good one after the other, I mean the C7 and F7 aren't followed by their 1 chord. But any player can alter the chords how they want. There's no law against it :-)

You know all this!

[benrosow]

That Blue Bossa example Bb melody note in the G7 chord falls so strongly that I'd be playing a G7#9 most times for that bar. The Real Book lead sheet doesn't call out the #9, which IMO shows restraint on the part of the transcriber to let the player figure it out. Play a simple lower register 1-maj3-b7 voicing where the major 3rd doesn't clash with the melody instrument and you'll still be right in the pocket with the band. There's a Maj 3 almost an octave below the #9 which makes the dom7#9 sound (think the Hendrix Purple Haze chord).

Now the key to this example (and it's great simple example) is that when the melody of Blue Bossa continues after landing on the G7 chord with the Bb (or A#) note (a #9), the next melody note is an Ab: yup, a b9. So the melody goes #9 to b9, a classic altered G dominant scenario in Cm. The improvisor has several good scale choices at this point and it's worth exploring them to discover for one's self how they fit and don't fit (translation: how they SOUND) with the Cm chord to follow. 1) C natural minor scale fits the melody perfectly...too perfectly for most modern players, but playing inside ain't a bad thing, just ask Stephane Grappelli. 2) G half-whole diminished is a 1st choice "go to" for lots of players in this situation, just ask Robben Ford. I can't get what he gets out of it, but he's Robben Ford. I've been working the diminished scale for a few years and it still sounds formulaic for me but I'll get there some day. 3) G altered scale (G# melodic minor ascending) ticks the # & b 9th boxes for the chord and throws in the maj3, #11, b13, & b7...in short, everything you need to sound like a card carrying jazz player.

I like option 3 because it's interesting sounding and can resolve cleverly once one has developed it, I can throw it in for a cheap modern jazz vibe ("that ain't cooking, you just threw in a bunch of garlic"), it's more tonal that a diminished scale, and I have developed a whole mess of licks off of that scale to such an extent that I can even make it sound good with a slinky strung Telecaster in a country band.

So that couple of measures in Blue Bossa was a study place for me where I learned a lot in a small sandbox. It's a great tune to work out all the suggestions in this thread.

Cheers.

[benrosow]

Richard Feynman said that his best innovations came when he was playing around, not from when he was trying to develop something.

[christianm77]

That Blue Bossa example Bb melody note in the G7 chord falls so strongly that I'd be playing a G7#9 most times for that bar. The Real Book lead sheet doesn't call out the #9, which IMO shows restraint on the part of the transcriber to let the player figure it out. Play a simple lower register 1-maj3-b7 voicing where the major 3rd doesn't clash with the melody instrument and you'll still be right in the pocket with the band. There's a Maj 3 almost an octave below the #9 which makes the dom7#9 sound (think the Hendrix Purple Haze chord).

Now the key to this example (and it's great simple example) is that when the melody of Blue Bossa continues after landing on the G7 chord with the Bb (or A#) note (a #9), the next melody note is an Ab: yup, a b9. So the melody goes #9 to b9, a classic altered G dominant scenario in Cm. The improvisor has several good scale choices at this point and it's worth exploring them to discover for one's self how they fit and don't fit (translation: how they SOUND) with the Cm chord to follow. 1) C natural minor scale fits the melody perfectly...too perfectly for most modern players, but playing inside ain't a bad thing, just ask Stephane Grappelli. 2) G half-whole diminished is a 1st choice "go to" for lots of players in this situation, just ask Robben Ford. I can't get what he gets out of it, but he's Robben Ford. I've been working the diminished scale for a few years and it still sounds formulaic for me but I'll get there some day. 3) G altered scale (G# melodic minor ascending) ticks the # & b 9th boxes for the chord and throws in the maj3, #11, b13, & b7...in short, everything you need to sound like a card carrying jazz player.

I like option 3 because it's interesting sounding and can resolve cleverly once one has developed it, I can throw it in for a cheap modern jazz vibe ("that ain't cooking, you just threw in a bunch of garlic"), it's more tonal that a diminished scale, and I have developed a whole mess of licks off of that scale to such an extent that I can even make it sound good with a slinky strung Telecaster in a country band.

So that couple of measures in Blue Bossa was a study place for me where I learned a lot in a small sandbox. It's a great tune to work out all the suggestions in this thread.

Cheers.

Yeah I think the dividing line as you say is whether you choose to play over each chord or create a line over the changes. The suggestion that me and ragman made is that Dorham clearly wasn’t thinking chordally here.... I mean I think he wrote the melody first and if you study the melody in isolation it’s a really good one.

The option you haven’t listed is perhaps the most common for the era. The minor key itself on Cm includes 3 separate scales that can be interchanged to create flowing melodies. Now if you use the natural 7th you create more harmonically dynamic lines that suggest chordal movement without necessarily trying to map every chord.

Anyway I’d need to transcribe what the cats do on it....

This I think is the principle technique of minor key playing up until the cst era...

This might be hard for modern day player to get their head around but I honestly think players - even pianists - thought of the accompanying chords and melodic line as two separate things for a long time. There’s quite a bit of evidence to suggest this...

[grahambop]

Stella goes Em7b5 - A7b9 - Cm7 - F7 - Fm7 - Bb7 - Eb. If that minor ii-V is reverted back to its relative major (Gm7-C7) then it's a simple series of V's going down the cycle: C7-F7-Bb7-Eb.

I think they're all 'unresolved' except the Bb7 at the end. By unresolved I don't mean they don't sound good one after the other, I mean the C7 and F7 aren't followed by their 1 chord. But any player can alter the chords how they want. There's no law against it :-)

You know all this!

These are the chords at the beginning, but I thought you said the chords at the end of the tune were unresolved.

[ragman1]

These are the chords at the beginning, but I thought you said the chords at the end of the tune were unresolved.

Both. At the start, the Eø-A7b9 doesn't resolve to Dm.

Of the three descending minor ii-V series at the end, none of them resolve to their 1 chord. Or rather they resolve to the right 'root' but a m7b5 chord. I'm not sure that qualifies. But there may be different versions.

Eø - A7b9 - Dø - G7b9
Cø - F7b9 - BbM7 - %

[grahambop]

Of the three descending minor ii-V series at the end, none of them resolve to their 1 chord. Or rather they resolve to the right 'root' but a m7b5 chord. I'm not sure that qualifies.

To me, if it is a V in relation to what follows, that qualifies as resolving, for the purposes of guiding whether the chords can be altered. The exact quality of the ‘I’ chord does not matter.

Same as the rhythm changes bridge.

[ragman1]

To me, if it is a V in relation to what follows, that qualifies as resolving, for the purposes of guiding whether the chords can be altered. The exact quality of the ‘I’ chord does not matter.

Same as the rhythm changes bridge.

Okay, probably right. If it sounds okay, it's right :-)

[grahambop]

Okay, probably right. If it sounds okay, it's right :-)

To be honest I didn’t have a clue about this dominants stuff when I got into jazz, my understanding sort of evolved over time. But I think the distinction Emily Remler made in one of her videos (between ‘static’ and ‘resolving’ dominants) was very helpful, it clarified things a lot.

[emanresu]

In Stella, when it finally goes to Dm7, before that I would keep the A7 clean. Not only because the melody notes but also any alteration would feel "just because" for me there. Just feel.. no theory involved

[christianm77]

[QUOTE]one of the few rules: do not ever play a dom13 chord into minor. [\QUOTE]

Lol. No it’s not.

I think that might be a rule for playing pseudo music.

Plenty of examples of this happening in jazz... Cannonball, Charlie Christian, Wes....

Peter Bernstein really likes 13b9 into minor.

I must really sit down and properly get into these sounds. They are super hip.

[grahambop]

I do this a lot on a tune like Invitation, i.e. put a rootless 13b9 between those descending minor chords, sounds cool. Pretty sure I got this from listening to Peter Bernstein.

e.g. Bm, E13b9, Am.

7x777x
x5666x
5x555x

[grahambop]

I’ll also play Dm7b5, G13b9, Cm7.

I like the cool voice leading from the 13b9 to the min7, that’s what makes it work for me.

[christianm77]

Off the top of me head

Wes plays C dominant/mix on the C7 chord in caravan....

That’s a fairly pronounced one lol.

I think both takes of I Found a New Baby with Charlie Christian/Benny Goodman feature him playing F#s on the A7 (song is in Dm/F.) I remember going ‘uh?’ when I transcribed that.

I remember seeing something in Cannonballs solo on Milestones - need to get back to you. Basically he plays Am7 D7 into Gm, superimposes a II-V-I on the G Dorian.

(Probably everyone plays b13 into minor now cos that’s the way they were taught when they played pseudo music at jazz school. Me too. BORING!)

[christianm77]

I do this a lot on a tune like Invitation, i.e. put a rootless 13b9 between those descending minor chords, sounds cool. Pretty sure I got this from listening to Peter Bernstein.

e.g. Bm, E13b9, Am.

7x777x
x5666x
5x555x

That’s a classic Pete move....

Here’s how he does a turnaround Rhythm Changes - the first chord is the upbeat

11 x 11 11 9 x
10 x 10 10 10 x
9 x 9 9 7 x
8 x 8 8 8 x
x 6 7 7 7 x
6 x 5 5 6
But really it’s all just a riff on a descending second inversion major triad with a bit of contrary motion added in

[cosmic gumbo]

For me, dom7 is about dissonance/tension. Minor 2nd intervals happen, your ear needs to deal with it in jazz.