How would you name this chord

[confidence]

On 9/10/2023 at 3:43 AM, Jazz+ said:

C# dim 7

This.

 

When I looked at it I immediately thought of bars 5-8 of Gershwin's original harmony in I Got Rhythm:

 

 

The C#dim7 makes perfect sense harmonically, as an intensifying passing chord between the C and the G/D. It's just that the melody is doing something completely unrelated. The key is that the melody is diatonic (and repeating what happened earlier) so it has its own melodic impulse from which the harmonic impulse momentarily departs. If you transcribed the OP excerpt the same way it would make the same sense, because you'd see that the melody is just five notes straight up the diatonic scale:

 

 

 

 

This kind of thing comes from the fact that the melodic and harmonic impulses in jazz are not always as integrated as they are in classical music. Mozart or Chopin conceived of every moment as a melodic-harmonic whole, so you can always arrive at an analysis that includes the melody within the harmony (notwithstanding the role of passing notes etc.) Jazz isn't really like that. Because its melodic processes are more obviously still rooted in the purely aural traditions of folk music, spirituals etc, and because they require the freedom of improvisation, they have a more partial and qualified relationship with its harmonic processes. You can tie yourself in knots trying to square that circle, but it often makes more sense just to acknowledge the original melodic-harmonic disconnect and then call each what they are.

 

Having said that, C#dim7 is also, in classical terms, just A7b9 with the root omitted, so that could work too.

 

 

 

 

[analogika]

1 hour ago, Theo Verelst said:

I think it's a good custom to take minimalism as the set rule for chord naming, so a Bdim M7 is exactly that, even if a A/Bb has tge same notes, here, the added lowered 9th should be in the octave above the main chord notes to get recognized as such. It is not just customary but also logical to distinguish between for instance a second and a nineth note, lowered or not.

 

Also, if prefer (since long) b10 over #9 because usually the harmonic function is that of a major or minor third, not a second.

 

T

the harmonically functional third of the dominant chord is the major 3rd. 
 

The #9 is merely an additional leading tone. 
 

Removing the major 3rd disables the chord, rendering it stale as a regular minor 7. Removing the #9 leaves the chord functionally intact. 

[Baldwin Funster]

On 9/10/2023 at 5:07 AM, AUSSIEKEYS said:

How would you name this chord?

 

I will name this chord "Bob"

 

Chordie

[Docbop]

This thread reminds me of talking to the old Jazz sax man I use to get to chat with.    Once it was mentioned that the old Jazz masters did not talk theory or music in general, if you asked them a question they would play you an answer.      There were multiple reasons for their silence but the old Jazz man said a part of it was people came from different schools of music or self taught players, so just playing an answer the people could hear it and hang whatever label they wanted on it based on how they learned. 

[jarrell]

C# dim 7 is a C# dim triad with a B flat.

 

C# dim maj 7 is a C# dim triad with a B sharp (or C natural).

 

To add additional upper partials to a diminished chord, you just use the other scale tones (actually the dim 7th a whole step up, D# dim 7th) for the 9th, 11th, 13th and 7th.

 

So my understanding (and I have seen) this as a C# dim b13 - a C# dim 7th with an A natural (and omitted 5th).

 

The bottom staff shows 1.) a standard 2 handed voicing, 2.) the voicing in question, obtained by dropping the 5th and doubling the root.

 

[AROIOS]

12 hours ago, confidence said:

...You can tie yourself in knots trying to square that circle, but it often makes more sense just to acknowledge the original melodic-harmonic disconnect and then call each what they are...

The progression below just popped into my mind, and the chord in question is without doubt producing a diminished sound in this context.
 

It echoes what you and CyberGene commented about the separation of melody and chord movements in Jazz, and not getting too hung up on incorporating the former in our notation.

[Al Quinn]

I see and hear it as a C# diminished 7th chord. Once in a diminished sonority there are so many ways of varying the notes of a voicing (i.e., by using any or even all notes of the diminished scale) that it becomes unwieldy and, IMHO, unproductive to name them. Functionally all these variations are the same.

[Theo Verelst]

Chords are chords, this piece shows no deep understanding of important Jazz idiom, or conservatory basic harmonic theory givens.

 

The hipper da hopping of certain style elements is not my thing, and I don't need to play these examples to know there're dissonant without much cause.

 

Did you get the score and the chords from Charlap, or did you do your own analysis ?

 

T

[MathOfInsects]

These discussions always go the same way. Someone asks the best name for something, and then half the responses are about how real musicians don't name things. That's silly. Of course they do. We name things to understand them, and never don't do this, with anything. Otherwise you'd have to just list 6 or 7 notes with every chord change and "leave it up to the player" to decide what they want to call that collection of notes. And you also couldn't call those notes by their names. Or even call them "notes."

 

It's goofy to pretend we don't name things. 

Some guy came up to the band at a gig a few weeks ago, and one of the guys asked his name, and the guy said, I swear to Spaghetti Monster, "It's whatever you want it to be. It's whatever you're feeling." I was like, "He's feeling like he wants you to tell him your f*cking name."

 

[PianoMan51]

Another Pastafarian rant! Let’s leave religion out of this. 😇