Why don't we have a triad symbol for notation?

[guestuserguestuser.com]

Here's an interesing site all about the mu chord! Including examples.

 

http://www.jmdl.com/howard/steelydan/mu-major_3.html#examples

 

As for it's basic meaning, it seems to me you have to decide whether you're discussing the right-hand voicing, or bass + right-hand voicing. So far, I've been thinking of this only in terms of the rh voicing. On the above site, they define it as triad plus 2, but then later on they talk about voicings and give an example of root in bass, and rh voicing of 2,3, and 5.

 

I guess it doesn't matter. The important thing is there's no 7 or other extension, and that it has a 2+3 in it. That is, if you play a C root, and in the r.h. play either D,E,G or C,D,E,G they both sound like mu chords. I listened to a few examples (I bought all the SD cd's that I didn't already have on sale once). I think I'm hearing both kinds of r.h. voicings in various places.

[Dave Horne]

Originally posted by d:

Originally posted by Dave Horne:

In Allen Forte's Tonal Harmony in Concept and Practice, he gives an example using Schubert's Die liebe Farbe. In this example, he shows a suspended 2nd (actually a 9th) resolving upward to the third of the chord.

 

I will assume that examples using traditional music will be accepted by popular and jazz musicians.

Ah, but the salient detail is not it's resolution but was that pitch held over from the prior harmony?

I'll grant that it may be an accepted classical use of the term for resolutions as well as "true" suspensions but my main point is that "suspension" is not applicable to just any note added added to a chord, else all extended chords would be suspensions!

d, I gave the example I did (the 2 - 3 resolution0 only because it was brought up by someone else. We tend to think of 4 - 3 suspensions as the only example and I gave another.

 

We can have 7 - 8, 2 - 1, 2 - 3, 4 - 3, 6 - 5 and combinations of them. (I suppose someone could find an example of 4 - 5, but if there's a half step involved, the half step resolution would probably take precedence.)

 

I think we can all agree that a suspension involves basically three harmonies. The initial harmony, the approach to the next harmony which will include one or more elements from the initial harmony, and the final resolution.