A word about the word 'dominant'.

[pamosmusic]

that's right, on tonic minor, you can almost always do major/minor 7 or minor 6, depending on the feel you want.

Uh oh. I can hear it coming already.

[Christian Miller]

What?

[PatrickJazzGuitar]

well a seventh chord also refers to any four note tertian chord. So it avoids confusion.

But where is the confusion?

C major 7
A minor 7
G7

See? No need to say 'dominant', which is the function. Or so said my teach,.

For example, the seventh chord on the second degree of the major scale is a minor seventh, the seventh chord built on the fifth is the dominant seventh

(although that is the correct use of dominant in that case)

"Dominant" refers to the function, not chord type. a G in the key of C, could function in the dominant (folk tunes, it's common), a G7sus could function in the dominant, a G13 could function in the dominant. Does anyone say 'G dominant 13? I don't. Now, I hear some business about 'secondary dominants' but they are usually just modulations, and until the 80s, I never heard the term 'secondary'. It was a modulated II V or a modulated V7

On the second degree, the function is the super tonic. The chord type, in the key of C could be either a Dm or a Dm7.

So, what my teach explained to me is that you have to be consistent in what you are talking about.

If you are naming 7th chords, then they are (key of c) Cmaj7, Dm7, etc.

If you are referring to function, then its tonic, super tonic, mediant, subdominant, etc

What he told me was to quit referring to a chord type (for example, G7) as it's function, G dominant 7. Technically speaking, he tells me, this is wrong. It's a thing that, in my observation, really didn't start spreading until the late 70s, 80s, etc.

Now, I don't really give a hoot, but since he told me this, it started bothering me. Now, I wish he never mentioned it so I wouldn't have started this thread.

[PatrickJazzGuitar]

Great thread, thanks Patrick. It's not boring, I'm always happy to read into the inference of the limitations and obvious contradictions of chord symbols.

No system is perfect and you can get some mileage from the quick labeling of triads but it's obvious that real musicians have to go beyond the chord symbols when connecting harmony and counterpoint.

I always got the sense that this is what Barry Harris meant with "movement".

Thanks. I have been to a few Joe Pass concerts, who always knows there are guitar players in the audience. He usually tosses us some stuff about how he thinks, musically. His idea was to simplify. If you are improvising in the key of C, any C, Em7, Am7 are basically just C, a II V is just V (or II). etc. Also, quit thinking in terms of chord names, and start thinking, like you say, harmonic movement, like how an arranger thinks when doing horn or string parts.

[pamosmusic]

What?

Oh come on.

You remember this spiral.

[AllanAllen]

But where is the confusion?
.

The confusion is with other people who are confused once they learn about the major 7th. I think the term is Straw men. Nobody in this thread is confused about G7 or Gmaj7. Except, maybe, you… this is just like the chorus thing. It’s got 2 names and one is redundant to guys who are religious to definitions, the other one we all use and don’t think about the redundancy because we’ve already moved onto playing a song together.

[pamosmusic]

Maybe it’s worth mentioning how rarely I even need to use the word “dominant” ….

1. Making fingering charts for students when the dominant chord type is in immediate proximity to other 7th chord types. In this case I take the OPs point and admit that the term is usually an expedient, even though it bothers me exactly zero.

2. In lots of situations, I prefer to refer to the mixolydian mode as the dominant scale. In which case the term is literally accurate because it is a synonym for the fifth position in a major key. ** And now that I’m thinking about it, that’s usually only when I’m referring to it in the abstract. In specific situations I would usually say something like “the F7 scale.” Though there are situations where that would require some more specificity.

In lessons if a student say plays Cmaj7 instead of C7, I don’t tell them to play the dominant voicing. Instead I usually say something like “I hear B natural but I should be hearing Bb”

In a performance situation, C6, CMaj7, and their derivatives are just “C” and Cmin7, Cmin6, and their derivatives are just “C minor.” C7 and its derivatives are just “C7.” A performer should be able to choose basic extensions based on context without any more prompting than that.

** mode names tend just to complicate things and I get into a modal sort of approach with the dominant chord wayyyyyyy earlier than others because of how early it becomes necessary to talk about playing over changes in a blues. In other contexts, you can usually just refer to chords in terms of their key center (ii-V to C) rather than by their mode names. So calling it the dominant scale means I can avoid the Greek for much much longer.

[Christian Miller]

But where is the confusion?

C major 7
A minor 7
G7

See? No need to say 'dominant', which is the function. Or so said my teach,.


"Dominant" refers to the function, not chord type. a G in the key of C, could function in the dominant (folk tunes, it's common), a G7sus could function in the dominant, a G13 could function in the dominant. Does anyone say 'G dominant 13? I don't. Now, I hear some business about 'secondary dominants' but they are usually just modulations, and until the 80s, I never heard the term 'secondary'. It was a modulated II V or a modulated V7

I believe Walter Piston’s highly influential and very widely used 1941 harmony textbook uses the term and I’m sure I could track down earlier usages. This is likely a case of different circles of musicians using different terms for the same thing. Also, terminology gradually becoming more standardised due to communications tech?

Re “modulating ii Vs” etc - I don’t like the term personally. Whether “secondary dominants” count as modulations is a matter of debate. I would say, no, not always. But I tend to prefer to look at harmony on the sentence rather than word level. It gets clunky otherwise in my opinion because these types of inflection occur so frequently in functional harmony that it seems a good idea to classify them separately to true modulations. (So Body and Soul’s A doesn’t modulate, while the B section does, for example.)

Admittedly this is a grey area

So in this view, Bb Bb7 Eb Ebm6 Bb does not incur a true modulation to Eb, but it does include a secondary dominant.

(In practice it the difference in terminology may not matter much.)

This is not a universally held view. I’ll park it there.

On the second degree, the function is the super tonic. The chord type, in the key of C could be either a Dm or a Dm7.

So, what my teach explained to me is that you have to be consistent in what you are talking about.

If you are naming 7th chords, then they are (key of c) Cmaj7, Dm7, etc.

If you are referring to function, then its tonic, super tonic, mediant, subdominant, etc

What he told me was to quit referring to a chord type (for example, G7) as it's function, G dominant 7. Technically speaking, he tells me, this is wrong. It's a thing that, in my observation, really didn't start spreading until the late 70s, 80s, etc.

Now, I don't really give a hoot, but since he told me this, it started bothering me. Now, I wish he never mentioned it so I wouldn't have started this thread.

The long and the short of it is that it’s convenient in jazz to specify the intervallic make up of a chord independent of function, so without saying ‘majorised V/V’ or some such.

you could say major minor seventh, but that’s not the term in general usage in jazz circles. The term in usage is dominant seventh, or dominant ninth, or whatever like it or lump it. Dominant, Altered Dominant, Lydian Dominant etc.

I suppose you could just say the chord symbol. That works, and it’s what I tend to do if only because it’s a lot less longwinded.

Now minor seventh - is that a chord or an interval? ;-)

Terminology’s a mess. And we haven’t even got into the absurdities of melodic mode names yet haha (why is it mixolydian b6 and yet lydian dominant? Arrrrrghhhhhhhhh)

[Woody Sound]

Dominant - The kind of woman I love.

[supersoul]

And I will never understand why you insist on calling the ground floor of a building the first floor. While we're at it!

I don't know why either, but I suspect it just is to make buildings sound bigger. Three is bigger than two + ground and bigger is always better. That's just my theory.

Americans also don't like 13th floors. Often it will go 11, 12, 14, 15. Because... Satan or witches or something. Although there are 13 stripes on the flag to represent the original 13 states, so we also like the number 13.

[A. Kingstone]

I don't know why either, but I suspect it just is to make buildings sound bigger. Three is bigger than two + ground and bigger is always better. That's just my theory.

Americans also don't like 13th floors. Often it will go 11, 12, 14, 15. Because... Satan or witches or something. Although there are 13 stripes on the flag to represent the original 13 states, so we also like the number 13.

I've always said I've got bad news for the superstitious living on the 14th floor.

[PatrickJazzGuitar]

The confusion is with other people who are confused once they learn about the major 7th. I think the term is Straw men. Nobody in this thread is confused about G7 or Gmaj7. Except, maybe, you… this is just like the chorus thing. It’s got 2 names and one is redundant to guys who are religious to definitions, the other one we all use and don’t think about the redundancy because we’ve already moved onto playing a song together.

Not confused at all.

[AllanAllen]

Not confused at all.

I guess I'm the one who's confused then... which is not surprising.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

And I will never understand why you insist on calling the ground floor of a building the first floor. While we're at it!

A-and why can't root position be the zeroth inversion?

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Dominant - The kind of woman I love.

This is why I don't turn off safe search.

[Christian Miller]

A-and why can't root position be the zeroth inversion?

Thats I always used to say.

Musos don’t like zero though.

[rintincop]

I suppose kudos could be offered to anyone who can induce a multi-page abstruse discussion by serving up an Emily Litella-ism. That is an achievement of sorts. But no.

My favorite post in this thread, I had forgotten Emily Litella.