PolyTonal/PolyHarmonic Magic Chord

[AROIOS]

 

Just came across a very interesting chord shared by @Dave Ferris a while ago: LH- G, F, B; RH- E, Ab, Bb, Eb

At first glance (listen), it sounded a lot like the 13(11) chord half a step lower (Gb13 in this case). But a bit of noodling around quickly revealed its amazing versatility. This thing connects to 8 of the 12 possible maj7 chords smoothly! (attached below is my attempt at those 8 "ii-V-I"s, all using this chord as "V")

 

Thank you, Dave, for sharing it. This is the first time I came across anything this flexible in tonality. Folks, have you seen anything similar? Cheers!

 

 

[JamPro]

Hmmm....."magic chord".  Did David play it?  Did it please the Lord? 

[CyberGene]

If you only play:

G - F - B - E - Ab

 

That’s a fairly typical (if not the most common) voicing of the G7b9 chord in jazz. As is known, the most common scale for 7b9 chords is the diminished (half-step-whole-step) scale:

 

G Ab Bb B C# D E F

 

So, adding the Bb is part of the diminished harmony too. And it’s only the Eb on top that kind of messes it up but I guess it’s forgiven for top notes to be anything 😀 (don’t have better explanation/approximation)

 

P.S. Frankly though, sounds too bloated and artificial to me, at least in these examples you’ve provided. I guess in another context it might be less exaggerated. 

[stoken6]

I saw G-F-B/Ab-Bb-Eb and thought "that's classic altered dominant". But the additional E adds an extra colo(u)r. (If we're going to analyse, it implies #5 and nat13, rather than b13).

 

2 hours ago, CyberGene said:

the most common scale for 7b9 chords is the diminished (half-step-whole-step) scale:

 

G Ab Bb B C# D E F

Yes, and similarly the most common scale for 7b9b13 (and #11 and #9, etc.) chords is the altered scale (melodic minor starting a half-step above, in this case Ab melodic minor):

G Ab Bb B* Db Eb F (*Cb I know)

 

This chord kind of straddles both tonalities.

 

Cheers, Mike.

 

 

[CyberGene]

13 minutes ago, stoken6 said:

Yes, and similarly the most common scale for 7b9b13 (and #11 and #9, etc.) chords is the altered scale (melodic minor starting a half-step above, in this case Ab melodic minor):

G Ab Bb B* Db Eb F (*Cb I know)

 

This chord kind of straddles both tonalities.

Can’t agree more! I have actually thought a lot about how these two chords/scales overlap a lot and where they differ (D Eb E) can still be played each over the “other” chord and still sound OK, kind of like be-bop semitone approaches/outlines. Besides, I’ve noticed that heavily altered dominant chords like these two allow for almost anything to be played on top and still sound convincing, provided it’s played convincingly 😉

[linwood]

LH G F and then arp B E G# Bb Eb G A D F# Ab Db F

[AROIOS]

8 hours ago, CyberGene said:

If you only play:

G - F - B - E - Ab

That’s a fairly typical (if not the most common) voicing of the G7b9 chord in jazz...

That's only a fraction of the reason this chord is so interesting. Our brains automatically suggests what we want to hear, depending on the context the chord is in.

At the bare minimum, it ambiguates the G13 sound of the lower structure and the Gb13 sound of the upper. That's why I put Cmaj7 and Bmaj7 at the beginning of the demo sheet.
 

8 hours ago, CyberGene said:

...the most common scale for 7b9 chords is the diminished (half-step-whole-step) scale:

G Ab Bb B C# D E F
 

So, adding the Bb is part of the diminished harmony too. And it’s only the Eb on top that kind of messes it up but I guess it’s forgiven for top notes to be anything 😀 (don’t have better explanation/approximation)

 

P.S. Frankly though, sounds too bloated and artificial to me, at least in these examples you’ve provided. I guess in another context it might be less exaggerated. 

I also thought about the scale(s) the "magic chord" would fit in at first. But none of the usual suspects works without some shoehorning. Eb doesn't fit in G Diminished as we both noticed; and E doesn't fit in G Altered (Super Locrian).
 

I said "bare minimum" above, because it gets better. 😃 What the "magic chord" also ambiguates, are these chords: Ab9#5, E7b5(nat7), D#11b9, Db9#5b5#9, C7alt, B13(nat7), Bb11b5, and potentially a couple more.
 

Btw, these hip chords often work better on electric pianos. It might sound "bloated and artificial" on acoustic.

Cheers.

[AROIOS]

4 hours ago, linwood said:

LH G F and then arp B E G# Bb Eb G A D F# Ab Db F

Love this sound! It's right on the edge of level of hipness I can handle. I'm gonna name it the Linwood scale.

[AROIOS]

4 hours ago, Dave Ferris said:

 Wow zombie thread. I sort of see where you are going with this but just regarding your written examples. Man I'd lose all those sharps. No offense but you're making it look a lot harder then it is to read. No one writes like that unless you're a non-jazz, total legit person. Also divide the notes in the RH and LH. Your first chord for example- C#m9- put the B in the LH/bass clef. Same with the Dm7 in bar 3, the C should go in the LH/bass clef.

 

Also you should shoot for less doubling in your voicings. Makes for a cleaner and more clear sound.

Bar 4, the C Maj.9 - take out the B in the RH and put that lower B in bass clef. So it's LH- C,B/ RH- E,G,D. You don't need all those notes, it just clutters things up. When you are voicing chords in higher registers, doubling can add a nice effect, but in middle and lower registers it muddies things up, generally speaking. Unless you are doing block chord Shearing type voicings.

 

One more thing, I guess it's your computer program, but when you have notes with accidentals written in those close intervals, in some of your examples , it's difficult to discern what's an accidental and what isn't.

 

Just trying to help and make your writing more translatable to real world conditions.

Thanks for the advice, Dave. Those progressions are from all kinds of keys, so I left them at C major and the score was auto-generated by the DAW. Sorry for the visual mess.

[linwood]

12 tone. Everything is available. Go nuts.

[Docbop]

30 minutes ago, linwood said:

12 tone. Everything is available. Go nuts.

Saw a Jacob Collier video awhile ago and he played a chord with all twelve tones.   Spanned the piano from bottom to top to space all the notes out to sound cool.

[David R]

I love sounds that aren’t easily defined by standard tonal theory. There’s an excerpt from Shostakovich’s 15th Symphony that blew my mind when I first heard it, two chords (high winds-low brass)

1st chord: Bb (below middle C)-E-G#-C-G-D (C9 but with both nat5 and #5)

2nd chord: B-D#-F-A-C#-E (like a Bm11b5 but with the major 3rd)

 

Hermeto Pascoal is also brilliant at this. A favourite chord of his is something like this:

A-F#-C#-D#-G#-Cnat (Dbmaj7 & Amaj7 together, sort of?)

[AROIOS]

3 hours ago, David R said:

I love sounds that aren’t easily defined by standard tonal theory. There’s an excerpt from Shostakovich’s 15th Symphony that blew my mind when I first heard it, two chords (high winds-low brass)

1st chord: Bb (below middle C)-E-G#-C-G-D (C9 but with both nat5 and #5)

2nd chord: B-D#-F-A-C#-E (like a Bm11b5 but with the major 3rd)

 

Hermeto Pascoal is also brilliant at this. A favourite chord of his is something like this:

A-F#-C#-D#-G#-Cnat (Dbmaj7 & Amaj7 together, sort of?)

The first one sounds like a polychord combining the sound of E7alt and Bb13; the second one the sound of DmMaj9 and B7.
 

I can handle the first one in isolation, the second one is just too hip for my ears. It's getting in the realm of twelve tone scale Linwood and Docbop mentioned.
 

I'm usually all for spicing things up. For this particular progression though, I would water it down to a Bb13-DmMaj9 (most likely in reverse order) for my personal use cases.

Thanks for sharing it!