How Similar was Freddie Green's Comping to Bach Chorales Harmonically?

[Christian Miller]

Once you hear the one note thing though, it’s really obvious.

[mr. beaumont]

Once you hear the one note thing though, it’s really obvious.

It really is. It's a like a light going on in a dark room.

[James W]

Re: figured bass, people might like to check out this book: (even if it's Handel and not Bach)

Continuo Playing According to Handel: His Figured Bass Exercises (Oxford Early Music Series): His Figured Bass Exercises. With a Commentary: 12: Amazon.co.uk: Ledbetter, David: 9780193184336: Books

(Bit of a rip off though, was only 12 quid when I bought it!)

[Tal_175]

Argghhh!!!! Reeeee!!!!!! It hurts us!!!!

Not knowing chord symbols held Bach back big time. Poor soul struggled with harmony all his life not knowing that the answer was right In front of him the whole time.

[Tal_175]

On a more serious note, it's hard to deny that chord symbols are the glue that hold the jazz community together. Roman numeral analysis is the foundation to learning tunes in a key agnostic manner.

[Christian Miller]

On a more serious note, it's hard to deny that chord symbols are the glue that hold the jazz community together. Roman numeral analysis is the foundation to learning tunes in a key agnostic manner.

Yeah, I mean I could try to deny it, but I think that might be a stretch even for me haha

It’s just the way our music is (generally) organised. The method of organisation - substituting chord progressions - results in some very interesting and subtle differences from classical European harmony. It’s nice to get a deeper appreciation of what those are. (I’ve actually done a video on one of these key differences that I’ll be putting out tomorrow.) I call it layered tonality.

And actually, the realpolitik of trying to get people more interested in this ancient stuff is to write chord symbols, and that’s cool. Opening it up. You can’t expect people to get into it if there isn’t a way in.

otoh the counterpoint with the melody and building out from there thing is a great (and pretty well known) method of reharmonisation in jazz. It’s not a simple binary. And it’s very interesting to me how the old contrapuntal stuff manifests itself in jazz, because it’s all latent in the tunes we play…

I think the functional analysis can be good for baroque stuff actually. I reckon the secret is not to get too detailed with it. If you know that the Bach thing you are looking at is based on ii V I, even if there’s loads of other passing chords/bass notes in there, that will help you transpose it (and cut and paste it into a jazz context bwahahaha.) Putting a function on every chord I find less helpful. So many of the short chords are contrapuntal embellishments. They aren’t really functional in that way. Bit like jazz really…

But I’d recommend learning a bit of figures. First of all it’s a good impetus to get the diatonic intervals down on guitar, which is massively transferable, and second it’s really nice being able to access original sources. Bach’s son can be your teacher, sharing things he learned from his dad…