More chord stuff

[Jim Soloway]

Here's an other page that I've tossed together about chords. This time is the underlying mechanics that are used to calculate basic chords. I'd love some feedback on this material.

 

http://jimsoloway.com/lessons/chordconstruction.htm

[Tedster]

Jim...

 

Looks pretty detailed...I might use it as a teaching tool, if you don't mind. Might be a bit in-depth for beginners. I didn't read it completely thoroughly, but will give a more thoughtful response when I'm sober...

[Jim Soloway]

Originally posted by Tedster:

Jim...

 

Looks pretty detailed...I might use it as a teaching tool, if you don't mind. Might be a bit in-depth for beginners. I didn't read it completely thoroughly, but will give a more thoughtful response when I'm sober...

Feel free to use it. I'd be pleased to hear how it goes if you do. I'd really like to pull a bunch of this material together into a book. I've got a lot of information that I've never really put down on paper before and it's tuning out to be a lot more detailed than I had though when I started.

[Tedly Nightshade]

That's pretty dang intelligible.

What I find, though, is all of that is just too much information for one lesson, people's heads begin to spin.

That is the logical size of that chunk, though, so it's hard to see how to break it down into something more manageable.

Maybe start with triads and add sevenths in the next lesson?

Ted

[Jim Soloway]

Originally posted by Ted Nightshade:

That's pretty dang intelligible.

What I find, though, is all of that is just too much information for one lesson, people's heads begin to spin.

That is the logical size of that chunk, though, so it's hard to see how to break it down into something more manageable.

Maybe start with triads and add sevenths in the next lesson?

Ted

That may be a good idea. That way the 3rd and the 7th get split into two sessions. One of the problems I have is that this material has been part of my apprach to music for a very long time. To me it's all pretty much integrated and that makes it hard for me to seperate any of it. That's why I've posted it in a few places to get some input from people who can bring a different perspective. Thanks for the input.

[pauldil]

Good stuff, Jim. I agree that introducing triads first would make the material easier for a beginner to digest. Before covering seventh chords, my first guitar teacher made me memorize major/min/dim/aug chord spellings in every key for my first lesson, followed by 4 weeks of learning the 4 triad types all over the fretboard. At least for me, this made the seventh chords easier to understand, visualize, and hear.

 

Paul

[Tedly Nightshade]

" One of the problems I have is that this material has been part of my apprach to music for a very long time. To me it's all pretty much integrated and that makes it hard for me to seperate any of it. That's why I've posted it in a few places to get some input from people who can bring a different perspective. Thanks for the input. "

 

For me it's all just one complete thought, and it takes up almost no room in my skull. It is amazing how involved it seems to try to explain it.

Ted

[TurboDog]

Hey Jim,

 

I learned all this over time and thru trial and error. So to see it al put together makes sense, but still sounds a bit confusing.

 

If I was a beginner, I would want to see more daigrams. This information by itself would confuse a beginner, unless a teacher were there to go through each part in detail.

 

I had always thought that a major chord was simply a 1st, 3rd and 5th. A minor chord flattened the third. A seventh added a flattened seventh. A major 7th added a 7th. It sounds so easy just to know that.

 

I was reading through a piano lesson book once, and if I remember correctly, the 7th chords there were all maj7, not dominant or flattened 7ths. Do they do it defferent than we do?

[Jim Soloway]

Originally posted by TurboDog:

 

I was reading through a piano lesson book once, and if I remember correctly, the 7th chords there were all maj7, not dominant or flattened 7ths. Do they do it defferent than we do?

Just focusing on the 7th. I think you my have misunderstood what they meant. If all chords in one key come from the major scale of that key, the 7th with be defined by the distance between the root of the chord to the note 7 removed from root. So in the key of C you would have

 

I C-B

II D-C

III E-C

IV F-E

V G-F

VI A-B

VII B-A

 

The 7 is predefined by that relationship.

It's not like the 5 or the 9 where we can sharp or flat it by choice to create a tonal change. So the 7 is automaticall pre-defined as either 10 semi-tones or 11 depending on the chord. It doesn't matter what instrument is involved.

[pauldil]

Originally posted by Jim Soloway:

So in the key of C you would have

 

I C-B

II D-C

III E-C

IV F-E

V G-F

VI A-B

VII B-A

 

The III E-C should be E-D, no?

Paul

[Jim Soloway]

Originally posted by pauldil:

Originally posted by Jim Soloway:

So in the key of C you would have

 

I C-B

II D-C

III E-C

IV F-E

V G-F

VI A-B

VII B-A

 

The III E-C should be E-D, no?

Paul

Yes. I play much better than I type

[Tedly Nightshade]

"The 7 is predefined by that relationship.

It's not like the 5 or the 9 where we can sharp or flat it by choice to create a tonal change. So the 7 is automaticall pre-defined as either 10 semi-tones or 11 depending on the chord. It doesn't matter what instrument is involved. "

 

Oh yes we can.

How about, some C jam blues:

C7~~~ ~~~~ F7~~~C7~~~ G7~ F7~ C7~G7~

 

We *can* do this, can't we?

 

Ted

[Ziggy]

Jim,

 

All I can say is "thanks!" This has definitely provided a conceptual leap in my understanding of how chords are formed from the scales. It was very clear and well written. A couple of other areas that seem related to this that have always been confusing to me is chord substitutions and modes. Do you have any lessons on these subjects that build off of this one?

 

Again, Thanks

Zig

[Jim Soloway]

First an answer for Ted and then one for Ziggy.

 

Blues is a totally different creature with it's own rules and harmonic concepts that don't evolve from the major scale. In blues, the dominant is usually used for the I,IV,V and often the II as well. This material is very much "in development" and in fact I've only been working on it for a few days. There will ultimately be a seperate discussion on blues, so for now, just assume that blues simply isn't covered by this.

 

For Ziggy, I don't use modes in my playing, so there are a lot of people who can give you better information that I can. I will be getting into chord substitution in quite a bit of detail of the next few weeks, so just keep looking for more material as it comes up.

[Tedly Nightshade]

I just don't see the gain in making a rule that the 7th is somehow fixed, yet we can play with the 3rd and 5th for color. Why add that?

 

I see it as one continuum, blues and all. Something like Stormy Monday uses all the major scale based harmony hand in hand with the blues modes, which are really more like ragas than scales, and involve at least ten out of twelve pitches on a piano, and often others.

One idea: My theory prof in college taught first year theory with Beatles songs. He taught that Beatles harmony is classical harmony backwards: for instance IV-V-I is typical of classical, V-IV-I is typical of the Beatles.

The missing link?

 

I can tell you a little about chord substitutions, (Henry?), more about modes.

 

If you play a basic blues progression, you move around in jumps of fourths and fifths, between the roots of the chords.

Take a look at the C jam blues a couple posts back. All those dominant 7 chords.

Well to a certain perspective, the root and fifth of the chords are pretty white bread and not really the essence of the harmony, that pull that sets up and releases tension.

However, the major third and dominant 7 of the chord have that pure essence of tension and suggested motion. These notes are a tritone apart, three whole steps, in the case of a C7 chord, the notes E and Bflat.

Now check the next chord in the blues, the F7 chord. The active ingredient, the tritone, consists of the notes A and Eflat.

And for G7, the active ingredient is the tritone B and F.

 

So, the whole simple blues progression can be reduced to, in essence, these three tritones.

So you can move from E/Bflat, to A/Eflat, to E/Bflat again, to indicate C7, F7, C7. That's a lot of jumping around, maybe what you want, maybe not. If you want something more stepwise, invert the A/Eflat, and you have E/Bflat, Eflat/A, E/Bflat. Then for the turnaround, flip the B/F of the G7 chord, and you have F/B, Eflat/A, E/Bflat.

That's elegant. Try it on your axe, you can hear the whole tension and release, the motion of the blues progression just in these tritones crawling up and down a halfstep or step at a time.

 

Once you get that, you can flesh out the tritones of the chords, but you aren't limited to the original roots and fifths. Each tritone has two dominant chords that use that tritone for a pivot: The tritone E/Bflat could equally easily imply a C7 chord, (E=3rd, Bflat=7) or a F#7 chord (Bflat=3rd, E=7).

Go a tritone away from a dominant chord, the chord you go to has the same tritone, in effect the same pivot chord.

 

A lot of times the root is not played, as it's viewed by some as kind of obvious, and these tritone substitutions tend to sound a little clunky dragging the roots around. basically you have two ways to build the superstructure of 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths, you can consider the third to be the seventh of a substitute chord and build from there.

 

C dominant 9 would be C-E-G-Bflat-D, but you can substitute Gflat dominant 9, which would be Gflat-Bflat-Dflat-Fflat(ok, E)-Aflat. Goes down easier if you skip the root:

E-G-Bflat-D becomes Bflat-Dflat-Fflat(E)-Aflat.

Stick in where you would use a C dominant 9 chord and see what you think.

 

Not limited to the blues, by any means. A very common place to find a tritone substitution is a ii-V7-I progression. If this ii-V7-I was in the key of C (dm, G7, C) you can

substitute Dflat7 for G7, and you have a nice chromatic progression, dm, Dflat7, C.

Most useful.

 

Anybody who can make that any clearer, have at it.

 

--------

 

Modes are scales built on each step of a parent scale. If the parent scale is C major, the white keys on a piano, starting and ending on C, you can start and end on A instead, using the same notes in the C major scale, the white keys.

{I just bet A was originally the reference starting point. }

This A scale is a mode of the C major scale {or vice versa }, and likewise you can use all the same white key notes to make scales of D,E,F,G, and B.

Those are the modes of a C major scale.

 

At some crackpot period of the early catholic church, when the real story had been lost with the library at Alexandria, monks translated a bunch of classic Greek literature in a very halting and none too fluent fashion.

Somehow they came up with the idea that each mode of the major scale (at the time it didn't have all the connotations of triumphant V7-I! that we associate with the word "major" in later classical harmony) was from a different Grecian tribe, perhaps in much the same way the English wool barons decided that every Scots clan had their own kilt pattern. So they named these modes after various classical era Grecian tribes.

 

Here's the root notes of them white key scales, and the Greek names they tacked on:

 

C = Ionian (better known as "the major scale ")

D= Dorian

E= Phrygian

F= Lydian

G= Mixolydian

A= Aeolian

B= Locrian

 

Try these all out. Some of them are acquired tastes- I used to play away at the weird sounding ones (especially Locrian, what a great name) until they finally started to sound musical. Now the kinky ones are my favorites.

 

Any scale can have modes built on it in this way. The blues scale and major blues scale are modes of each other.

And want to know what's really kinky?

One of the ten main scales in classical Indian music is a mode of the blues scale- on the tritone. So play C blues scale and make the F# sound like the tonic. Wild.

Ted

[Jim Soloway]

Originally posted by Ted Nightshade:

I just don't see the gain in making a rule that the 7th is somehow fixed, yet we can play with the 3rd and 5th for color. Why add that?

It's just the arithmatic of the major scale. The 3rd is also fixed. The I-IV-V are major, the others are minor. The notes in a chord that can be altered for color are the 5 and 9 (# or b) and the 11 (# only).

 

From a practical standpoint, I think the reason these rules have stood so stongly is that the notes with are available for alteration don't change the fundamental nature of a chord where as the 3rd and 7th define that nature so altering them doesnt just change their color, it actually transforms them into something altogether different.

 

BTW, these are by no means my rules. You'll find this in virtually any book on harmony. To the best of my ability, I'm just summarizing well established theory. Interesting by the way that once you get to the II-V-I turn around, you also express it with only the V as a dominant 7.

[Tedly Nightshade]

To me there is nothing more radical you can do the character and function of a chord than alter the fifth. Which is why the half diminished chord sticks out so dramatically from the various minor and major chords built on the major scale. Don't it? A totally different animal.

 

I've always been frustrated by applying a historical approach based on Haydn's innovations to modern music. Still you have to start somewhere. It's weird to have parallel fifths ruled out from the get go, when the guitar music you're playing and listening to may be all parallel fifths. And so many parallel major chords are used these days, a basic acoustic guitar song may have several chords, all of which are major. Traditionally theory can't explain this, only outlaw it. Nonetheless it's the mother tongue for virtually everyone today.

"Smells like teen spirit" is super simple, not super sophisticated, but it's damned awkward to explain in relation to the major scale. Nonetheless, many many players can use their understanding of the relation of the major scale, it's modes, and the blues modes to solo fluently over such changes.

 

The best of luck with your teaching. You'll be informing and empowering players while I just raise thorny questions. Although I expect many of those questions will face the players immediately on playing the next song.

Ted

[Jim Soloway]

Perhaps the difference in our approaches stems from the fact that I have no idea what Smells Like Teen Spirit sounds like.

[Tedly Nightshade]

I don't know where you've been hiding, but I'm jealous.

It's a typical rock progression, E G A C.

 

I just feel that theory is only marginally useful when it does not cover everyday situations that you hear on idiot radio all the time, or half the songs in an average used record bin from the 60's.

A brick wall every student runs into, unless they refuse to play or acknowledge anything that doesn't fit the theory. Which is also an abrupt stop in the learning process.

Ted

[Jim Soloway]

I play chord melody jazz, swing and Brazilian. Most of the people who come to me for lessons do so because they are interested in learning how I play what I do and much of that music is well covered by conventional theory. If you're interested in hearing what and how I play, there are several sampels on my web site at www.jimsoloway.com

 

BTW, I haven't listened to rock radio since I stopped playing in rock bands in the late 70's. I spent most of the 80's trashing my life too badly to care and the 90's were spent recovering from the 80s.

[Tedly Nightshade]

I do love Brazilian music, and chord melody is a beautiful way to voice anything, in any style! Like a piano.

 

Unfortunately my connection is too slow to download much.

 

The best of luck with your students. Sounds like a cut above the usual crowd...

Ted

[Tedly Nightshade]

Hey Jim, ever heard Villa-Lobos for guitar?

If not, you're in for a big treat. He's like a Brazilian Debussy.

Ted

[Jim Soloway]

Originally posted by Ted Nightshade:

Hey Jim, ever heard Villa-Lobos for guitar?

If not, you're in for a big treat. He's like a Brazilian Debussy.

Ted

Wonderful music indeed. It amazes me the way Brazilian music is able to cross the line between jazz and classical as if it doesn't even exist. I find it truly inspiring.

[Dave da Dude]

Hey guys, thanks for all the GREAT info. I had already typed all this, but because I left out my name (I wasn't logged in, Myles can this be fixed?) I had to go "Back" and all my typing was lost.

 

But back to all the chord info. Just GREAT !!

 

My head is spinning, way too much to absorb right now, but I copied it into Word and I'll go over it later with guitar in-hand.

 

I remeber all this "stuff" from Intro to Music in college, but had forgotten all about it. My grandfather is probably rolling in his grave to hear that, he graduated from Syacuse with a major in music and taught ALL Wind instruments, not just brass or reed, all WIND instruments. He was very disappointed that I couldn't get a handle on the Coronet, but died happy having seen me playing my Martin for him. As a matter of fact, all my grandparents are probably stirring, my grandmother taught piano and my other grandfather taught piano too.

 

Sorry for the personal ramblings, just to repeat, thank you VERY much for taking the time for all this fantastic info. This will help me get back to guitar, right now I'm just playing around and building up my calluses.

 

BTW, Jim, I went to your site (or tried to), but my browser couldn't find it. Is your site down?

[Tedly Nightshade]

Great to hear about all the music in your family. Hope you can make some sense of it all.

ted

[pauldil]

Hey Jim, I'm looking forward to hearing your stuff, but the link to your web site isn't working.

 

Paul

[Jim Soloway]

My apologies to those who tried the link to my site. It didn't like the period at the end of the sentence after the address. I've fixed it or you can just click here www.jimsoloway.com

[Tedly Nightshade]

" It amazes me the way Brazilian music is able to cross the line between jazz and classical as if it doesn't even exist. I find it truly inspiring."

 

Me too! It's the missing link for sure.

Ted

[Skip_dup1]

Jim Soloway-

Cool info, mon. I did manage to copy it and I`m just looking over it now. I do have one thought so far, take it for what it`s worth. In referring to a dominant seventh chord, many beginners assume, as you said on page 2, that a seventh can be `major or dominant`. But the dominant is actually the V tone. The dominant seventh hinges upon the dominant (V) and the seventh (VII), but the seventh tone is not actually `dominant` or not. As you mention on page 3, the dominant chord begins on the V. Just thought it may cause a bit of confusion.

[Jim Soloway]

Originally posted by skip:

Jim Soloway-

Cool info, mon. I did manage to copy it and I`m just looking over it now. I do have one thought so far, take it for what it`s worth. In referring to a dominant seventh chord, many beginners assume, as you said on page 2, that a seventh can be `major or dominant`. But the dominant is actually the V tone. The dominant seventh hinges upon the dominant (V) and the seventh (VII), but the seventh tone is not actually `dominant` or not. As you mention on page 3, the dominant chord begins on the V. Just thought it may cause a bit of confusion.

Thanks for the input. I've been gathering responses for a few days and this week I'll start expanding and clarifying.