Bone to pick with my jazz piano teacher on the 13th chord.

[Jimmy Smith]

No you don’t.

I mean you can and we all do it, but it’s not an essential feature of jazz vocab.

A good example would be the first few bars of anthropology. Many Parker heads are surprisingly simple harmonically if you look at them closely and we tend to think of those as being both hip and jazzy. Extensions are used more as a special effect. Look how they are used in the first of A of confirmation for example.

(Often what people call extensions are the result of substituted triads and so on, but that’s another rant.)

But if you can’t sound hip on the basic notes, extensions won’t help.

and yes, it comes back to rhythm.

For me it's a good rule of thumb to use color tones. I have history playing either way. For piano especially, I like the sound of harmony with restraint and the use of triads. For organ, chords get muddy in the middle register, and it forces you to relearn being concise about your note choices. So I have base knowledge of how to play with basic harmony, but I think it's essential in jazz to use some color notes / extended harmony.

[Christian Miller]

For me it's a good rule of thumb to use color tones. I have history playing either way. For piano especially, I like the sound of harmony with restraint and the use of triads. For organ, chords get muddy in the middle register, and it forces you to relearn being concise about your note choices. So I have base knowledge of how to play with basic harmony, but I think it's essential in jazz to use some color notes / extended harmony.

Well I’m kind of talking more about lines (you did say chords, so not sure why I started on about that.)

it depends what you are doing really with chords.

[SoftwareGuy]

More common to not have the 11th in a 13th chord, but it's not illegal to include the 11th and it still is a 13th chord. The third and the 11th make a minor 9th which is pretty harsh, (some might say spicey).

Exactly what I was thinking.

[pingu]

G13
I think it is …..

Fmaj7/G(triad)
(sounds quite nice to me)

[bako]

Can't say what your teacher is saying but on piano there are more ways possible to configure these 7 notes than on guitar which generally only has 6 strings and 4 playing fingers.

G13 - GBDFACE

B>C b9 is very crunchy

C>B ma7 is airy

B>C m2 surrounded by other consonant intervals is nice

I suggest trying out the chord in as many note orderings as you can think of.
Form your own opinion based on exploration and experience.