Basic jazz theory

[wrench45us]

the books I hop around in use every possible variation on notation so it does serve some purpose to at least be familiar with the variations.

I really do like the idea of the Berklee spelled out conventions. There's no extra mental step of translation

[nuffink]

If somebody fancies putting up a thread with the preferred (Berklee?) naming conventions I'll cheerfully stick to them.
It's never a bad idea to be speaking the same language.

[Sascha Franck]

Chord symbols are useful for jobbing musicians who are sight reading charts. But for analysis, they are a really poor substitute for notation, which, whatever its many flaws, is at least consistent and unambiguous.

Sorry for disturbing the thread, but I'm afraid I have to totally disagree.
When I say Cmaj7, I adress virtually *all* forms of Cmaj7 in a theoretic context. When writing down a Cmaj7 as notes, which one should I use for theoretical explanations? C-E-G-B? E-G-B-C?
IMO it doesn't make much sense to write down notes when dealing with theoretical relationships of chord progressions.

[herodotus]

Chord symbols are useful for jobbing musicians who are sight reading charts. But for analysis, they are a really poor substitute for notation, which, whatever its many flaws, is at least consistent and unambiguous.

Sorry for disturbing the thread, but I'm afraid I have to totally disagree.
When I say Cmaj7, I adress virtually *all* forms of Cmaj7 in a theoretic context. When writing down a Cmaj7 as notes, which one should I use for theoretical explanations? C-E-G-B? E-G-B-C?
IMO it doesn't make much sense to write down notes when dealing with theoretical relationships of chord progressions.

And yet Rameau, Schoenberg, Schenker, Hindemith, Walter Piston and about a thousand others all have done just that when writing their theory text books.

I don't want to derail this thread either, and if this continues I will start a new one, but you will just about never see a classic theory text go any length of time without using notation. In fact, roman numeral chord symbols were originally designed to be used along with notation, to analyze music, not instead of notation.

The only time I have seen chord symbols used without notation in a theoretical context is when they are accompanied by figured bass, and even then examples in notation followed immediately after.

If you want to write c major 'in the abstract' the standard procedure is to write it in root position with whole notes or half notes using the great staff:



These 'vertical columns' are the meat and bones of classic harmonic theory texts.

[Sascha Franck]

These 'vertical columns' are the meat and bones of classic harmonic theory texts.

Ok. But you have been reading the topic, I assume...

[herodotus]

And in case it isn't obvious, I am mostly kidding.

I mean, I do hate chord symbols, but I realize that most people are fine with them. And I am fine with that.

It is merely that I am both interested in, and not that familiar with, the subject matter of postwar jazz and its theory, and I find myself thwarted by chord symbols, which are completely non-intuitive to me.

Like I said, bitchy, not really serious.

[JumpingJackFlash]

There have been a few complaints about notation recently (and I fully admit that my own posts have sometimes been less than clear in this regard). I guess it's just another one of those things where everyone has their own way of doing things, no one system is perfect in every situation.

Maybe, if we all agree to use one system, that might alleviate confusion for newbies? - This will require all of us (Sascha, Nuffink, Herodotus, Toxikator, myself et al.) to agree on doing things one particular way. I don't know if it's possible for us all to agree, but I am willing to discuss the matter. The agreed upon system could then be explained in a sticky, and we could edit our previous posts accordingly.

Some of the advantages and disadvantages of the different systems, in my opinion, are as follows:

Letters (C, D, E, F etc.): - Unambiguous, which is good, but the main problem I have with these is what happens when you need to speak generically, for example to refer to a dominant-tonic progression; do you keep every example in C major? - This is obviously not ideal because people will be less able to translate the chords into different keys.

Roman Numerals (I, II, III etc.) - These have the advantage that they can apply to any key, or even several keys at once. For example, we can talk about V-I, and most people understand it. This is fine for diatonic triads, but what happens when get chromatic chords? - Then these get more complicated.

Notation - This has the advantage of being unambiguous. However, it can almost be too much; as someone already said, you have to specify the voicings of the chord. - Again, keeping everything to root-position, close-position chords might mean people aren't able to translate the examples well into other situations. Also, on a forum like this, notation is incredibly cumbersome, and many people might not be able (or couldn't be bothered) to read it anyway.

There are also other problems such as how to distinguish between major, minor, diminished and augmented chords. - Do you use upper-case for chords with a major 3rd and lower-case for chords with a minor 3rd? - Not a bad idea in theory, but again what happens when you want to speak generally, for something that can work in both major and minor keys? - In a recent post, I got really annoyed by having to write every example out twice. For example talking about IV-V-I, or iv-V-i.

The alternative is to write min or simply m for minor chords. - This is better, but it looks weird in connection with Roman Numerals. Could you then write the min in brackets when it can either apply or not? - For example IV(min)-V-I(min) ? - Or does that look confusing?

What about diminished and augmented chords? - What about the different types of sevenths? - For the life of me, I still can't manage to post the Delta triangle symbol for major-seventh chords. - It just doesn't work for some reason. (Can anyone else do this with Safari on a Mac?) Plus these can get confusing anyway.

And what about inversions? - The alternatives as I see are either:

a,b,c for root-position, 1st inversion, 2nd inversion. - I like these, they are easy to type and easy to read. Doesn't work when you have a chromatic or non-harmony note in the bass though.

/bass - Putting the bass note after a slash. - Unambiguous, but again suffering from the problem of specificity. - You can't talk generally anymore about any key.

Figured bass - Can work well, but do newbies understand it? - You can add # or b before the figure to specify chromatic notes. You have to have a known bass though. The problem with this on KvR is that it isn't easy to write.


Anyone have any ideas? - Maybe we have to specify one system for classical music and one for jazz? - Or at least, one for primarily diatonic music, and one for more chromatic music??

It would be interesting to hear the viewpoints of people with limited musical training. - What notation system do you prefer?

Oh, and for anyone looking for examples of the different chords, sevenths etc. See my post on Scales, Modes and Chords.