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Originally Posted by christianm77
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10-16-2020 04:37 PM
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I think the move from tonics being written in charts first as 6 and later 7s more often is just the charts being stupid. Major 6 is probably the most restful tonic jazz chord. In minor it sounds dissonant.
As far as the use.. you have to figure out which tones suit your use the most. For major, obviously a triad will sound the most restful but major 6 is pretty restful as well, even 6/9. Major 7 and major 9 sound more angular but work well for the tonic and still aren't too dissonant. It's when you add alterations that things really start sounding weird for the tonic chord.
Minor is more difficult. The only chord that really sounds authoritatively restful is a triad. Minor 6 and minor major 7 chords are both extremely dissonant, although they do imply a tonic chord. Minor 7 sounds jazzy and is mellow and restful but 'can' imply a subdominant or 2 chord. So it's really up to you which you think will work best for the tonic. I usually use minor 7 the most then a minor triad and last minor 6 or minor major 7 because they sound all spooky and I don't need to be sounding spooky constantly.
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Yeah it’s a specific sound. I think charts are often careless about this.
One doesn’t have to necessarily go to the history of the music; some are more interested in this than others, but part of becoming a musician is becoming sensitised to details and nuances in the music.
(And if you develop your ears the history is then just a matter of listening to the music.)
One should really be able to tell the difference in quality between a minor chord with and without a minor seventh... and many beautiful minor voicings don’t have a seventh or a sixth at all. The minor add9 voicing that was a favourite of Bill Evans and so on....
They all sound different. I think if anything the minor key is more this way than the major.
One of the reasons I dislike modern jazz theory is that it suggests all chords within a given chord/scale are interchangeable, and that isn’t true. Different chords - even different voicings and inversions of the same chord - have a very different emotional effect.
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Originally Posted by PMB
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Spring of 1953
Jack Wilkins passed a year ago today.....
Today, 09:40 PM in The Players