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  1. #51

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    Cherokee is just

    1 b7 6 b6 5 #4 4 3

    So the three accidentals are the most common you will find in the key…

    Anyway, there’s some interesting crossovers with things like the Guidonian hexachord system and so on which I think would bore the bollocks of everyone haha. But the #4 is a very natural part of the overall tonality (as is of course b7), and there is no such thing as diatonic, functional music; even basic harmonisations in 18th century music include these accidentals .

    In practice, the near keys- I, IV, V, ii, and vi etc all function as little sub keys. That’s well understood in modern functional harmony. You can see how they are described in melodies not just with accidentals but also how they emphasise certain notes within the scale. My Shining Hour is a nice example.

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  3. #52

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    that is really helpful Christian - certainly, without going into any of the history in the way that you have - I have a strong sense that the sharp 11 is part of the 'original' sound. This feeling - along with the importance of II7 (which is usually a 13 chord - often with a flat five) and flatV half-dim - make me sceptical that the conception of a key we get through the diatonic system is unchallengeable.

    this is my very vague and tentative idea that a key is really a stand off between these two sounds (Cmaj7sharp11/Fmaj7sharp11 or their minor equivalents Am9/Dm9)

    or at any rate this is a better conception of a key to take to the American Songbook....

  4. #53

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    [QUOTE=Groyniad;1167084]Nunes is not hitting the sweet spot because he isn't starting with maj sharp 11 chords

    When you do that you get a II7 chord - which is crucial

    In C major:

    Group 1: C maj sharp 11 / Am / D7 / Em / F sharp min7 flat 5 (this last one is Am6 with its root on the sixth - and the Am6 is the D7)

    Group 2: F maj 7 sharp 11 - Dm7 - G7 - Am - B min7 flat 5 (G7 = Dm6 and Dm6 with its root on the sixth is B min 7 flat 5) }QUOTE

    In Warren's system, the chords within a type are freely interchangeable. It really works. You can freely mix and match. He did it all the time. The same thing is true with melodic minor chords per Mark Levine. That's what makes these two bits of theory so useful -- they're very simple to learn and apply.

    But, I'm not quite convinced that, if the chart says Cmaj7#11, you can freely substitute Am. If you play Am instead of Cmaj7#11, you lose the lydian flavor. Same problem with Em. If you get to bar 5 of Inner Urge, will that substitution really work? (In the usual key, that would be a Dm where the RB chart says Fmaj7b5). I don't think I'd do that. Or if it's group 2 can I really use a Dm7 there? The chord quality in the tune is defined by that B - should I play a C in my chord?
    Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 12-24-2021 at 12:22 AM.

  5. #54

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    So if it says Am I can play anything?

  6. #55

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    Quote Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
    So if it says Am I can play anything?
    Per Warren:

    If you're in G tonal center and the chord is Am7 it's a Type II and you can play Cmaj7, D7, Em7 or F#m7b5.

    Am can also occur in the key of F where it's Type I.

    In the key of C, Am can be either type.

    Again, this is based on what I recall from Warren.

    If it's a tonic minor, like Am6 or Aminmaj, any chord from Amelmin will work, per Mark Levine. So that's Bsusb9, Cmaj7#5 etc.

  7. #56

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    I'm not sure about whether I and IV are better thought of - in this non-diatonic 7 chord picture - as simple maj 7 or as maj 7 sharp 11

    - what I'm suggesting that WN is not (as far as I can tell by what you're telling me about him) is that the harmonic closeness of the two types of chord in a tonality makes it genuinely unclear whether one is playing e.g. a major sound or a minor sound (C maj or Am or Em), a dominant sound or a minor sound (G7 or D melodic-min 6 or Dm7). In particular musical situations it might be obvious that it is e.g. Dm7 rather than D melodic minor 6 that is being played - but in general 'the sound' could be thought of combining these different aspects (and so no longer as this or that kind of minor...)

    If the sound you are dealing with is both major and minor, both minor and dominant, both melodic m 6 and dominant, both min 7 flat 5 and major etc. - then this sound is no longer one you can conceive as major or minor or dominant or m6 or min 7 flat 5. it is - as Christian put it - an 'uber' sound.

    my proposal is that there are two of these Uber-sounds in any given key: C maj/F maj or Am/Dm

    and the point - which I'm happy to hear someone emphasising - is that this bit of heavy-sounding theory can deliver huge practical benefits.

    I'm particularly interested in the idea that - because of movability and the challenges of being able to play everything in endlessly different fingerings - this approach is particularly helpful for guitarists who want to blow solos over songbook tunes. maybe it makes more sense of horn players to learn 18 different scales and arpeggio types....

  8. #57

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    Quote Originally Posted by Groyniad
    I'm not sure about whether I and IV are better thought of - in this non-diatonic 7 chord picture - as simple maj 7 or as maj 7 sharp 11

    - what I'm suggesting that WN is not (as far as I can tell by what you're telling me about him) is that the harmonic closeness of the two types of chord in a tonality makes it genuinely unclear whether one is playing e.g. a major sound or a minor sound (C maj or Am or Em), a dominant sound or a minor sound (G7 or D melodic-min 6 or Dm7). In particular musical situations it might be obvious that it is e.g. Dm7 rather than D melodic minor 6 that is being played - but in general 'the sound' could be thought of combining these different aspects (and so no longer as this or that kind of minor...)

    If the sound you are dealing with is both major and minor, both minor and dominant, both melodic m 6 and dominant, both min 7 flat 5 and major etc. - then this sound is no longer one you can conceive as major or minor or dominant or m6 or min 7 flat 5. it is - as Christian put it - an 'uber' sound.

    my proposal is that there are two of these Uber-sounds in any given key: C maj/F maj or Am/Dm

    and the point - which I'm happy to hear someone emphasising - is that this bit of heavy-sounding theory can deliver huge practical benefits.

    I'm particularly interested in the idea that - because of movability and the challenges of being able to play everything in endlessly different fingerings - this approach is particularly helpful for guitarists who want to blow solos over songbook tunes. maybe it makes more sense of horn players to learn 18 different scales and arpeggio types....
    Warren taught certain concepts and he used them in his own playing. I doubt that he'd have rejected alternative approaches. He just had his.

    Warren taught that there are two kinds of chords, as I explained. He used them interchangeably. Fmaj7 was a Type II. He did not substitute it for Cmaj7. He would, in the key of C, use Am7 against Dm7. I never got far enough with him to know how he'd work with Fmaj7#11 in the key of C.

    One lesson I recall had him playing against iii VI ii V in a loop. He would, for example, each of the Type I chords against the iii, each of the type II against II and V. I can't recall exactly how he handled VI.

    The part I probably should have emphasized more is that Warren played GASB standards. I can't recall him doing tunes that didn't have clear enough tonal centers. I don't recall studying anything like a Wayne Shorter tune with Warren.

    Warren also mentioned that there were 5 sounds in jazz. I know that major and melodic minor were two of them. My memory is hazy on the others, but I think they were natural minor, diminished and whole tone. I'm aware that there are good reasons to see this as an oversimplification. Unfortunately, I don't recall ever getting into those additional sounds while I studied with him, which was a couple of years. So, I don't really know how he approached the theory. I do know this, though. He could play, off the cuff, a brilliant chord melody on anything -- then if you asked him to play it again so that you could cop the chords, he'd play a completely different one, equally brilliant. The point of that is that he had big ears.

  9. #58

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    no conceptual scheme or method of description captures everything there is to be captured - that might be a principle to work with!

    so how to chose between different schemes?

    one scheme could simplify more than another, but be MUCH more useable, and one might minimise simplification, but in doing so generate so many different rules and principles that it was useless as a theoretical framework (conceptual scheme) for improvisation (might work better for very careful composition for example)

    I'm not even bothering with diminished and whole tone sounds for example (well not yet) - because mapping everything out on the neck and in my musical mind on the principle that there are two sounds (say - maj and melodic minor) is a compelling project, and has not yet revealed itself to me as unacceptably simplistic (that is as failing to capture musical phenomena I'm intent on capturing).

    fascinating to hear about WN's approach - thanks rp

  10. #59

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    if you think the two uber sounds are minor

    then the two major sounds (I and IV) are certainly maj 7 sharp 11 sounds

    when you unpack the harmony of ii by separating out the four sets of nested triads in ii:

    1-3-5 // 3-5-7 // 5-7-11 // 7-11-13

    the maj 6th of ii is the flat 5 or sharp eleven of its relative major chord

    so if you use the minor sound to access the major sound you will be accessing a maj 7 sharp 11 sound

    Garrison Fewell claims that this is what lots of Wes' lines show that he did (namely - get Bb maj out of Gm)

    this might make you want to say - putting aside diminished sounds and whole tone sounds perhaps:

    songbook jazz has two fundamental sounds 'straight' minor and 'melodic' minor (please DON"T ask what 'straight minor' means here - that question only makes sense if we are using the diatonic scheme to which I am trying to sketch an alternative. - it means ii if you really want to press the question - but not ii as you know it as a component of a diatonic picture)

  11. #60

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    Quote Originally Posted by Groyniad
    if you think the two uber sounds are minor

    then the two major sounds (I and IV) are certainly maj 7 sharp 11 sounds

    when you unpack the harmony of ii by separating out the four sets of nested triads in ii:

    1-3-5 // 3-5-7 // 5-7-11 // 7-11-13

    the maj 6th of ii is the flat 5 or sharp eleven of its relative major chord

    so if you use the minor sound to access the major sound you will be accessing a maj 7 sharp 11 sound

    Garrison Fewell claims that this is what lots of Wes' lines show that he did (namely - get Bb maj out of Gm)

    this might make you want to say - putting aside diminished sounds and whole tone sounds perhaps:

    songbook jazz has two fundamental sounds 'straight' minor and 'melodic' minor (please DON"T ask what 'straight minor' means here - that question only makes sense if we are using the diatonic scheme to which I am trying to sketch an alternative. - it means ii if you really want to press the question - but not ii as you know it as a component of a diatonic picture)
    have a listen to what the cats played on the original cut of Nica’s dream on those two m(maj)7 chords. Or Wes for that matter. It’s interesting how much overlap there is and how free they are in their minor usage over chords that you might think from a literal reading of present jazz theory; for instance the major seventh in those chords having to be honoured in the lines. None of the bop or post bop masters seem to have been overly concerned by this type of consideration.

    I do think you have it backwards historically in your terminology; looking in terms of the development melodic/harmonic minor is ‘straight minor’ (I call it true minor) and the change came with modal minor in the 60s, or Dorian (what I sometimes call ‘fake minor’’ haha). Modal minor can be understood as treating a vi or Im chord like a ii chord. Play ii V language on a Im and you have Wes/Benson minor vamp playing. it’s a 60s vibe. But Wes (and everyone) still combined with melodic minor, even whole tone.

    But it’s less about the scale and more the emphasis; there’s plenty of Dorian scales on tonic minor chords in swing era jazz for instance. But, players until the 60s did not by and large emphasise the b7 in minor, and I think that part of the reason for this is it makes a major triad with the b3 and 5 and the ear is drawn to that.

    OTOH that’s perfectly normal for a ii chord in pre modal jazz, Barry Harris would think of it as a IV6 chord of course….

    whereas in old school (what I call ‘true minor’) you avoid that tonality, you have a major triad on V but augmented triads are more common.

    To me the presence of clear major tonality on bIII dilutes the sound of the minor, makes it sound kind of major. So even if you think minor 7 you still hear major… and that’s what gives you that floating, modal, post bop/60s tonality. Hence ‘fake minor’, right? Turning minor chords into related major chords effectively.

    In practice the important thing is to hear this distinction in sounds; a lot of players don’t. Full disclosure, Peter Bernstein told me off for playing Gm7 on Autumn Leaves haha. This is like the first thing you learn when learning Gypsy jazz coming from a modern jazz background, but it’s also true of bop as well.

    So going back to your picture I think you see the same minor built on ii and vi relating to different chords? With Lydian as well I would say this would edge you into post bop harmony taken at face value. Pre-60s players made more of a distinction.

    Any theory acts best as a general guideline; adult music making is about specifics and that’s a matter for intuition and experience as much as anything else and I am skeptical of any theory that aims both at a general and granular/specific explanation of what goes on in music (too much of that in jazz edu if you ask me) because there’s just too much, so I think these kinds of generalised ideas are useful.
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-26-2021 at 06:52 PM.

  12. #61

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    Quote Originally Posted by Groyniad
    if yo

    the maj 6th of ii is the flat 5 or sharp eleven of its relative major chord

    so if you use the minor sound to access the major sound you will be accessing a maj 7 sharp 11 sound
    I often find myself struggling to understand theoretical propositions.

    I'd appreciate any help you can offer.

    If I understand the brief quote above, in, say, Cmajor, the ii is Dm (Dm6 or Dm7, or either?) and the major 6 of Dm is B.

    The relative major of Dm is F, so that B is a major 6th.

    I don't quite follow how we started in Cmajor to arrive at the ii chord and then we're in F for the rest of the point.

    I certainly do follow that Fmaj7#11 has notes from Cmajor.

    When you say use a minor sound to access a major sound, you get maj7#11, is the following what you mean?

    You're using Dm6 to get a major sound, as if the bassist plays an F and you play D F A B. You still need an E and a C, though. What have I misunderstood?

    Apparently, I'm not following this reasoning. I'd like to though so I'd appreciate any help. If it works for you, I find it way easier to comprehend things that are written in specific keys rather than roman numerals. And, an example from a song would be greatly appreciated.

  13. #62

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    I often find myself struggling to understand theoretical propositions.

    I'd appreciate any help you can offer.

    If I understand the brief quote above, in, say, Cmajor, the ii is Dm (Dm6 or Dm7, or either?) and the major 6 of Dm is B.

    The relative major of Dm is F, so that B is a major 6th.

    I don't quite follow how we started in Cmajor to arrive at the ii chord and then we're in F for the rest of the point.

    I certainly do follow that Fmaj7#11 has notes from Cmajor.

    When you say use a minor sound to access a major sound, you get maj7#11, is the following what you mean?

    You're using Dm6 to get a major sound, as if the bassist plays an F and you play D F A B. You still need an E and a C, though. What have I misunderstood?

    Apparently, I'm not following this reasoning. I'd like to though so I'd appreciate any help. If it works for you, I find it way easier to comprehend things that are written in specific keys rather than roman numerals. And, an example from a song would be greatly appreciated.

    These are just fantastic issues and super-astute questions I think.

    You need to forgive me because I don't do note-names - I know some notes on the neck but for me it is all numbers.

    On top of that - I'm so focused on practicalities that there are areas in the overall conceptual/theoretical/descriptive picture/scheme that I'm not fully clear on - and I don't mind that much (at least not yet).

    The big point comes out of your WN references as well as my tentative suggestions about what a key is:

    in a key - you just have I and ii/V - everything else is a derivative of these two basic sounds.

    the rest is an elaboration of this idea - (the utility of which, for improvisers, ought to be obvious).

    This is not reductive or over-simplistic - because we can understand/hear all the other (diatonic) sounds as derivatives (inversions/extensions?) either of I or of ii/V (so we're not getting rid of all that colour, we're just thinking of e.g iii as I in first inversion....)

    This is already HUGELY simplifying because

    1. iii; vi; vii; IV disappear completely and you just have to deal with I and ii/V

    2. ii/V is being handled as a unity - as a single harmonic phenomenon.

    But it is not yet the seriously exciting simplifying feature.

    that comes when you appreciate that I AND ii/V are just the same sound starting in different places!!!!!!!!!!! (I'm not just gushing here the point is to emphasise that this is the bit that's crucial and super-exciting.)

    ii is minor and V is dominant so how the hell can I be the same sound as ii and V just starting on a different degree of the home-scale??(C,D,E,F,G,A,B in C maj. - this series is not being questioned!!!)

    this is how: (big Roman numerals mean 'major/dominant', small mean minor)

    I is vi (Cmaj is Am) - or vi is I (Am is Cmaj)

    ii is IV or IV is ii (Barry prefers to think of ii as IV6)

    so you can (e.g.) get I by playing vi and you get ii by playing ii (so we have two deployments of one sound giving us both I and ii/V)

    BUT WHAT ABOUT V?

    well you can either just forget about V and treat it as ii (e.g. Wes shows this) or you can use ii melodic minor 6 for it (Bird shows this - AND he shows that you can do the Wes thing too...). I like to think that the melodies of song-book tunes would show both things too - but I haven't done the work on this.

    of course you can also play altered dominant sounds - and to do this you use mm sounds off (relative to tonic C) F (backdoor progression) G sharp (7sharp5flat9). This is the complicating dimension - the bit that requires a new sound that is not maj/min/dom but melodic minor.

    so we have MORE than taken care of good old V. it has now become (in C) either Dm7 or D mm 6 or F mm 6 or G sharp mm 6 (!!!) - and we can relax into the lovely idea that a good deal of the fundamental dominant-vibe is taken care of by using the same minor or major sound we use to capture the sound furthest from V in a key, namely I.

    So - as an improviser - you have gone from thinking you need to be combining (abstracting from altered dominants) seven different sounds (only one of which is remotely easy to handle) to thinking you have to combine a major sound off I with a major sound off IV (a minor sound off vi with a minor sound off ii).

    (AND!!! this was the one sound in the diatonic series that IS easy to handle - yippeeee!!!!).

    --------

    That is the basic picture - a key is really just two sounds - (spiced by melodic minors off ii/IV/sharpV).

    One of the coolest details is this

    you get II7 chords a lot in the songbook. E.g. Indiana/Donna Lee - A train - Cherokee

    In C: if we think of C as a C maj 7 sharp 11 then C maj 7 with its root on the sharp 11 is (first inversion) D13...

    Try playing a nice C major idea and then strum a C maj 7 chord: now play the same idea and strum a D7 (D9/D13) chord....

    But why should we think of C maj as C maj sharp 11?

    Well because that is how people play it (again I bet it turns up in actual songbook melodies not just in cool solos).

    But we could think more theoretically: we could say that C major is 'really' Am in first inversion - and a big feature of Am (in C) is that its 6th note is the flat five of C (sharp 11). That 6th note is non-negotiable as a part of Am (in C) and it makes the sharp 11 of C maj a part of the C maj sound.

    As soon as we have that in there then we can get e.g. D7 out of C maj. (The best thing here is just to play a bunch of C maj 7 ideas and then re-hear them over D7) - this shows you that there must be the most intimate connection between II7 and I.

    The sound we CAN'T get out of I is ii - that is why I think a key is a stand-off between 2 sounds. Is this because - without 'suspending' C - we can't get F into it - and we can't have a ii sound (in C) without an F. (that's as far as I can go with actual note names!).

    I should do a chatty video with the guitar on all this.

  14. #63

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    have a listen to what the cats played on the original cut of Nica’s dream on those two m(maj)7 chords. Or Wes for that matter. It’s interesting how much overlap there is and how free they are in their minor usage over chords that you might think from a literal reading of present jazz theory; for instance the major seventh in those chords having to be honoured in the lines. None of the bop or post bop masters seem to have been overly concerned by this type of consideration.

    I do think you have it backwards historically in your terminology; looking in terms of the development melodic/harmonic minor is ‘straight minor’ (I call it true minor) and the change came with modal minor in the 60s, or Dorian (what I sometimes call ‘fake minor’’ haha). Modal minor can be understood as treating a vi or Im chord like a ii chord. Play ii V language on a Im and you have Wes/Benson minor vamp playing. it’s a 60s vibe. But Wes (and everyone) still combined with melodic minor, even whole tone.

    But it’s less about the scale and more the emphasis; there’s plenty of Dorian scales on tonic minor chords in swing era jazz for instance. But, players until the 60s did not by and large emphasise the b7 in minor, and I think that part of the reason for this is it makes a major triad with the b3 and 5 and the ear is drawn to that.

    OTOH that’s perfectly normal for a ii chord in pre modal jazz, Barry Harris would think of it as a IV6 chord of course….

    whereas in old school (what I call ‘true minor’) you avoid that tonality, you have a major triad on V but augmented triads are more common.

    To me the presence of clear major tonality on bIII dilutes the sound of the minor, makes it sound kind of major. So even if you think minor 7 you still hear major… and that’s what gives you that floating, modal, post bop/60s tonality. Hence ‘fake minor’, right? Turning minor chords into related major chords effectively.

    In practice the important thing is to hear this distinction in sounds; a lot of players don’t. Full disclosure, Peter Bernstein told me off for playing Gm7 on Autumn Leaves haha. This is like the first thing you learn when learning Gypsy jazz coming from a modern jazz background, but it’s also true of bop as well.

    So going back to your picture I think you see the same minor built on ii and vi relating to different chords? With Lydian as well I would say this would edge you into post bop harmony taken at face value. Pre-60s players made more of a distinction.

    Any theory acts best as a general guideline; adult music making is about specifics and that’s a matter for intuition and experience as much as anything else and I am skeptical of any theory that aims both at a general and granular/specific explanation of what goes on in music (too much of that in jazz edu if you ask me) because there’s just too much, so I think these kinds of generalised ideas are useful.

    I don't disagree with any of this - I like the correction about terminology. Discovering mm seemed to me like discovering the real minor... and the records bear this out I bet.

    I really like you're general point at the end too. I agree that it is a bad idea to try to derive all the details from an over-arching theoretical scheme. (That is almost as much of a distraction as recording software - and it is bound to be reductive and musically stifling.) I think 'rules of thumb' are the way to go..

    Not sure what you mean by 'I think you see the same minor built on ii and vi relating to different chords.' :

    I think (in C) Am6 with a sharp 7 is D7 just as much as Am7 with a flat 7 is - I bet you could come up with some sort of explanation here - but I don't much care. I think your sketch of the history of these things is spot on - but I'm no musicologist.

    The tentative suggestion is that a key is two maj 7 sharp 11 chords off I and IV - or two minor chords off ii and vi.

    On this picture, you can think of Am in C EITHER as the first inversion of F maj - in which case it is Am7, or as the relative minor of C in which case it is Amm6.... (the music suggests that it is fun thinking of it now in one way, now in another.)

  15. #64

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    Quote Originally Posted by Groyniad
    These are just fantastic issues and super-astute questions I think.

    You need to forgive me because I don't do note-na.
    Thank you for the detailed explanation. I think I followed all but the very end.

    I think that my conceptual approach covers most of the same ground. Here are the fundamental ideas, designed to be as simple as possible.

    1. Warren's two Types of chords, explained earlier in this thread. All chords within a type are interchangeable.

    2. The application of Warren's idea is to music with an identifiable tonal center.

    3. Mark Levine's notion that all chords generated by melodic minor are the same chord. Or, if you prefer, interchangeable.

    4. The idea that you can superimpose a line based on one chord against a different chord being played right at the same time by a comping instrument.
    I think these are best learned one sound at a time. So you pick chord x against chord y and find tunes and practice, practice until you have introjected it and it's part of your musicality. At that point you can conjure it at will. Then, move on to another.

    Some examples of these superimpositions follow just to make sure the idea is clear.

    So, in Warren's music you might hear (Type I) Em7 played against Cmaj7. Or, (Type II) Fmaj7 played against Dm7. Because those chords are all interchangeable.

    Beyond that, you can apply tritone subs for dominants. So, the chart says A7 and you think (and play) on Eb7. And, that includes all the substitutes for Eb7. One of them, for example, is Bbm (per Warren, based on the key of Ab, in which Eb7 is the V7). If you play Bbm(add9) you get the "melodic minor a half step up from the dominant" sound. This has its limits. If you play Bbm7, for example, it has an Ab, which will be tough to make sound good against A7.

    Another thing you can do is play in the key of the V against the original key, at least for Type I. So, if the chord is Cmaj7, you play as if it was Gmaj7. The difference is the F vs F# and it gives you a lydian sound. You can then experiment with other Type I in key of G, i.e., Bm7, Dmaj (sixth in this case?) and Em7.

    So it's two basic sounds, to be learned en masse and then superimpositions to be learned one at a time.

  16. #65

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    Quote Originally Posted by Groyniad
    that is really helpful Christian - certainly, without going into any of the history in the way that you have - I have a strong sense that the sharp 11 is part of the 'original' sound. This feeling - along with the importance of II7 (which is usually a 13 chord - often with a flat five) and flatV half-dim - make me sceptical that the conception of a key we get through the diatonic system is unchallengeable.

    .
    This is such an interesting thread and appears to be entering onto George Russell's Lydian Chromatic territory, which is often demonised as incomprehensible - but not I suspect to Christian and Groyniad

    In the key of C, the II7 could be a D7#11 over which a Lydian Dominant scale could be used. The flatV half-dim would be F#m7b5 the root of which is the leading note of G (the V of C).

    (I've also found that harmonising folk tunes using a Lydian approach, produces some very attractive results).

  17. #66

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    The II7 sound is so wonderful it just has to be a clue that the familiar diatonic picture is at least incomplete. I can imagine it produces lots of cool sounds if used in re-harmonisations. fascinating to hear you’ve had success with it in a folk context.

    I am not at all familiar with the concept of Lydian chromatic - what I’m trying to set out here has emerged for me through practice motivated by Barry Harris and then garrison Fewell.
    Last edited by Groyniad; 12-27-2021 at 10:19 AM.

  18. #67

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    It was supposed to be the minimum.

  19. #68

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    is this the idea?:

    lets try this for an experiment: lets think that the basic sound is not I but II7 (or this in first inversion which is flatV half-diminished)

    in C that means we're not thinking of II7 as a crazy anomaly - we're thinking it is the basic sound around which all the others are organised...(remember, II7 is I heard from a groovy angle). How?

    I is vi (vi is I) and we can think of vi as a minor chord built on the fifth degree of a dominant sound (in G vi - Em7 - is a minor sound built off the fifth of A7).

    Now it is irresistible to notice that vi m6 ('melodic minor 6' as I want to call it- 'true' minor as Christian and perhaps P. Bernstein call it) captures even more of the A7 sound than vi m7. (Christian's explanation of why this deserves to be called a true minor is very insightful I think).

    (There are other ways to motivate the move away from diatonic sounds represented by playing a true-minor (mm6) on the vi'th degree. I just claimed you have to try it because it captures the best bits of II7 - but also:

    1. it makes the minor sound which is 'relative' to the major MORE minor (see Christian on the way the triads work in the two minor sounds)
    2. it captures the lovely sharp 11 sound on the I chord - the m6 note of Em is the sharp II of G maj.

    So we have this pivot at vi, between m7 and m6....and this could be thought of as the crux of the tonal centre/key (this pivot between vi m7 and vi m6).

    in G, this gives us A7 flat-five 6/9 (A train) and C sharp half-diminished.

    (Also (!!) if we start with vi m7 it gives us VII alt dom as the dominant of the half-dim chord which is the first inversion of II7. This alt-dom chord (F sharp 7alt in G) is just the five of G's iii chord.

    think (in G) progressions that do this: C sharp half-dim - B7alt / Em7 - it is just a ii V into iii. )

    now these are some of the most engaging sounds in the songbook - they make it tick, so to speak. (I'm sure they're in Bach too - but I really don't know. many of his 'lines' are so long they have to start this far away from I so they have enough room. i.e. C sharp half-dim - B7 alt / Bm7 E7/ Am7 D7 - G)

    if we think of a mm6 chord on vi - this gives us II7 with a 6 and a 9 and a flat V (my favourite sound without a doubt)

    I like the idea that this is the home sound around which the others are organised....

    --------

    but it means we need another one of these in the key otherwise we can't get anywhere near ii and V

    we have to explain this change in G

    A 7 A7 - A m7/D7 - G - as well as the fundamental harmonic significance of ii-V-I

    and for that we have to explain where ii and V come from

    we harvest these by hearing the key from IV rather than from I.

    Now - straight away - if we pivot between the two versions of the relative minor of IV (in G this is Am) we get : Am7 - Am6. And - hold onto your hats - this just IS ii V in G.

    Note that this makes your STANDARD V sound in a key into a flat V sound - and I like that idea a great deal. (if the normal V sound is really the melodic minor version of the relative minor of the IV chord - then normal V has a flatted fifth because that is the sharp seven note of the melodic minor built off its fifth degree)

    I'm convinced. These lovely sounds should not be thought of as anomalies in a diatonic system - they are clues that the diatonic system is importantly wrong.

  20. #69

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    The last bit is just - how do we explain alt dom. chords without deserting our basic approach (which has only one uber maj/min II7 sound in in).

    its about chromaticism

    the alt dom sound in C is either Db7 - C or Bb7-C

    Db7 should really be seen from its fifth degree as a melodic minor sound - Abmm6

    but what about the backdoor - how is that chromatic?

    because it is chromatic into iii in just the way that the tritone sub is chromatic into I - you go down half a step to resolve

    it is because Db9 is really and truly Ab melodic minor sixth in disguise (not much disguise mind) that we can get rid of alt-doms (which are unfriendly beasts) and replace them with melodic minors (which are the friendliest cats at the harmony-party)

  21. #70

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    Quote Originally Posted by Groyniad
    The last bit is just - how do we explain alt dom. chords without deserting our basic approach (which has only one uber maj/min II7 sound in in).

    its about chromaticism

    the alt dom sound in C is either Db7 - C or Bb7-C

    Db7 should really be seen from its fifth degree as a melodic minor sound - Abmm6

    but what about the backdoor - how is that chromatic?

    because it is chromatic into iii in just the way that the tritone sub is chromatic into I - you go down half a step to resolve

    it is because Db9 is really and truly Ab melodic minor sixth in disguise (not much disguise mind) that we can get rid of alt-doms (which are unfriendly beasts) and replace them with melodic minors (which are the friendliest cats at the harmony-party)
    Certainly true for the kind of ‘applied thinking’ we’ve been talking about. But there is another perspective.

    so why does Mike Stern insist on not handling altered dominants that way but always thinking from the root?

    Barry would sub m6 up a half step of course; ‘tritone’s minor’ but it is an interesting contradiction between educators. Barry was hearing lines, which is boppy - maybe - while Stern is hearing more harmonically, as a composite sound, which is more chord scaley.

    it’s an interesting one; I’m not certain thinking and hearing are the same things.

    TBH I don’t think the altered scale is really comparable to the other melodic minor modes - for instance it doesn’t work as a tertial structure on a 7b5 chord and the chord scale needs a lot of re-spelling to work in that context.

    More important if you play the special sauce melodic minor notes (like 7) on the altered dominant that bring out the upper structure sounds on any other application, you instead get the most ‘boring’ (or most obvious) notes on V7alt; so 7 becomes the 1, 13 becomes b7 and so on. The basic m6 is a better choice here which isn’t actually so true on 7#11 or whatever; if your aim is to bring out the sound of the chord.

    devil is in the details. This is where I think you start to need a more specific theory of upper structure harmony than even CST offers. I like Stephon harris’s approach, because it teaches us to hear this stuff the right way up so to speak. But that’s another thread, and not that relevant to learning to play bop.
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-27-2021 at 04:09 PM.

  22. #71

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    Anyway Grahambop it would probably make more sense as to why this is ‘less theory’ if you give a concrete example of a tune and how you would go about it.

    I would say A train as

    Am7, Am6, Dm7 Dm6 Am7

    for example?

  23. #72

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    Anyway Grahambop it would probably make more sense as to why this is ‘less theory’ if you give a concrete example of a tune and how you would go about it.

    I would say A train as

    Am7, Am6, Dm7 Dm6 Am7

    for example?
    Have you been at the sherry again Christian? I assume this was probably aimed at Groyniad rather than me...

    Not that I mind, I myself have consumed far too much wine and mince pies in the last few days.

  24. #73

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    Have you been at the sherry again Christian? I assume this was probably aimed at Groyniad rather than me...

    Not that I mind, I myself have consumed far too much wine and mince pies in the last few days.
    Haha maybe not enough sherry

  25. #74

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    I find the theoretical discussions lean towards the incomprehensible (for me, maybe not for others), typically, it seems, because of ambiguity in the terms or keys being described. Which is why I like to see examples in a specific key, hopefully with minimal sharps or flats.

    Or maybe they are simply for people with more theoretical background than I have.

    Examples from tunes, hopefully with clips, would be helpful.

    I end up thinking, if you know the notes in the chords you use, and the tonal center you're in at the moment, you can flat the 5th, or adjust some other note(s), without thinking about which melodic minor, built on which degree, of which roman numeral, produces the same result.

    It ends up that there are 4 or 5 notes in the chord and, usually, a couple of notes that you're probably going to avoid (like major 7 against a dominant chord). And there are some consonant extensions that are like chord tones.

    You're playing with what's left, usually alterations to the fifth and/or ninth. Is that really too much to handle by ear?

  26. #75

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    I

    You're playing with what's left, usually alterations to the fifth and/or ninth. Is that really too much to handle by ear?
    Personally, I love the theoretical discussion much as in the way I love reading about Mathematics or Physics while not being a Mathematician or Physicist; I have to remind myself that although I enjoy it and may think I understand it, I really don't understand it. However, it does help me to realise that on a practical level, maybe it does come down to alterations to the fifth and ninth, if only because I don't have time to think about theory when I'm playing. I think it was Julian Lage said, 'blah, blah, blah, tonic'