Chord Rules for Jazz?

[Enkerli]

Hi all!
Might be missing the obvious:

• Didn't someone create Chord Rules for some typical progressions commonly used in Jazz?

Thinking about ii-V-I, of course (actually, ii7-V7-I∆7… along with iim7b5-V7alt) and other movement in fourths. Also tritone substitutions. And other substitutions. Straightforward stuff. Pulled together.
Shouldn’t be too hard. Might as well create my own. Just might avoid “reinventing the wheel” if others have worked on this (which sounds likely).

Recently got RapComp, after mulling it over for years. Sounds like it might have a large part of my dream featureset for Jazz-infused musicking. In fact, my other big purchase from the recent sales was a subscription to Open Studio (Jazz). There’s a complementarity, there. I’d like to apply through RC5 some of the lessons I’ll be learning through OSJ. A big part of it would be to build my “Jazz vocabulary” through performance on an isomorphic grid instrument (the Exquis, which uses hex keys) and to constitute my own phrase database within RapidComposer.

The Chord Rules could be part of that. Maybe a small part. (Half-diminished?) Still, it could help orient my RC5 instance towards Jazz-inspired music.

(As you might expect, I did ask gpt-4o to create Chord Rules which would fit my specs. Either my prompt wasn’t clear enough or the LLM doesn’t have enough data on Jazz harmony because the results were really far from Jazz.)

[haphap]

+1

[musicdevelopments]

Hi Enkerli,

thanks for posting! It sounds very interesting what you want to do with RapidComposer.
As far as I know no jazz rules have been created yet. It was also my first idea to ask gpt4o, so I tried it. For some reason gpt4o did not follow the instructions about the required reply format. On the other hand gpt4o-mini did. After some editing, I created a few rules for a starting point. You may use the attached rules (which probably need LOTS of adjustments), but you may decide that it is easier to start from scratch...

Please let us know if you finished the jazz rules. I think lots of users would be interested. Feel free to e-mail me if you have questions.

Thanks!
Attila

[BluGenes]

Just unzip the file and copy it to the ProgressionRules folder for RC.. On windows that is located at "C:\Users\Public\Documents\RapidComposerV5\ProgressionRules".. should be something similar for Mac file location too...

[Enkerli]

Hi Enkerli,

thanks for posting! It sounds very interesting what you want to do with RapidComposer.
As far as I know no jazz rules have been created yet. It was also my first idea to ask gpt4o, so I tried it. For some reason gpt4o did not follow the instructions about the required reply format. On the other hand gpt4o-mini did. After some editing, I created a few rules for a starting point. You may use the attached rules (which probably need LOTS of adjustments), but you may decide that it is easier to start from scratch...

Please let us know if you finished the jazz rules. I think lots of users would be interested. Feel free to e-mail me if you have questions.

Thanks!
Attila

Thanks a whole lot, Attila! I’ll try those. At first blush, they do sound much closer to what I had in mind than those built from triads.
(Also, BluGenes, thanks for the hint for file location might have searched for a while. Almost put the file in Progressions instead of ProgressionRules.)

Since I’m in no way a jazz theory expert, it might take me a while to finish those up. At the same time, even if they’re not close to what we’d get from standards, it’ll be fun to experiment.
And I’m glad these rules accept nondiatonic chords, since that’s a big part of how Jazz reharm works.

(Among the many things I need to figure out, in my Jazz-happy use of RC5, is how I can get chords to imply scales, as per chord/scale relationships. While I realize that such relationships may not be the end-all/be-all of Jazz improv, it’s the type of thing which may work really well in software.)

So, thanks again for these starting rules. They’ll help me along the way.
(Part of the reason I was convinced those already existed is that I had noticed an earlier message thanking a user for something similar. As I’m deep in RC5 learning, I can easily mix several things together.)

[Enkerli]

The type of thing I’d like to encode with such “rules”.


AFAICT, one case is about having bVIdim7 go to V7, which then goes to I (or I∆7). Another is through IVdim7 going to V7. Then IIdim7. And, finally, VIIdim7.
So I just have to add rules to go to bVIdim7, IVdim7, IIdim7, and VIIdim7. And for these to go to V7.
Right?

[BluGenes]

You can build the progression to test it and then select those chords in the progression and add them to the currently open rules.. just another quick way of building your rules..

[Enkerli]

Ha! Feels like I’m getting somewhere.
Used the video included in What's a Chord Substitution? 5 Essential Chord Substitutions, which is a more useful resource than I expected.

Made every chord substitution into a “rule”, validating by cranking up the expectedness of the given transition and generating the same progression after every sub. It worked. And, after weighing things a bit, I’m getting a pretty decent generator.

LJS_JazzRules.rcCPRL.zip

I’ll add the other fully diminished subs with their associated dominant sevenths and maybe a couple of other things (like, using Autumn Leaves and Rhythm Changes… might even throw some modal interchange in there, if not some sus chords for Modal Jazz…).

I mean, it’s far from complete. The “best” way to make it complete would be to create (or access) a database of all the chord transitions found in Jazz pieces and weigh everything. That’d require a considerable amount of work… if it’s not done already.

Maybe the people behind “Dig That Lick”?

[Enkerli]

You can build the progression to test it and then select those chords in the progression and add them to the currently open rules.. just another quick way of building your rules..

Oh, interesting!

Noticed your post after doing the one from Learn Jazz Standards. Will do some this way.

In fact… I’m thinking of ways to collect data from multiple progressions and adding all of those with weights. Chances are that there’s a humongous number of chord transitions used in Jazz context though some are way more frequent than others.
That’s part of the insight I’ve gained from the LJS version. Even with these few rules, it sounds like “standard Jazz” (the kind of Jazz prog you’d get in the Real Book).

At the same time, I’m guessing that it’d be useful to have different sets for Jazz genres like Modal Jazz and such. (Voicings are a whole other issue. Will need to learn how to create proper voicings as the existing ones don’t really fit the kind of Jazz arranging practices I’m learning.)

And maybe it’s something I could patch together outside of RC5. While my Plugdata/Max/Lua/Python/JavaScript skills aren’t that great, it could be a fun exercise. Especially if we can share such “transformative-generational grammar rules” among Jazz-savvy people.

[Enkerli]

And this sounds promising:
https://github.com/mikeoliphant/JazzStandards

It’s a collection of JSON versions of leadsheets from iReal Pro.

Using this as a dataset, it’d be possible to create a full histogram of all chord transitions used in those standards. The trick would likely be to convert everything to functional notation (e.g. bIII7 instead of Bb7 in G).

[Enkerli]

And this sounds promising:
https://github.com/mikeoliphant/JazzStandards

It’s a collection of JSON versions of leadsheets from iReal Pro.

Using this as a dataset, it’d be possible to create a full histogram of all chord transitions used in those standards. The trick would likely be to convert everything to functional notation (e.g. bIII7 instead of Bb7 in G).

Thanks to Google Colab (Jupyter with pandas, music21, etc.), I’m almost done with that conversion.

Some thoughts…
* Useful to keep in mind that several substitutions come from practice and aren’t transcribed as such.
* It’d be useful/important to get first and last chord per phrase. Maybe not that easy.
* Because these leadsheets use sections with endings (A (MainSegment, Ending 1, MainSegment, Ending 2), B (MainSegment, Ending 1, MainSegment, Ending 2)…), there’s some weirdness involved. In Jazz standards, it might even be useful to distinguish A sections from B sections.
* Not clear to me if it’d be useful to keep information about barlines and chord duration.
* Somewhat surprising: some pieces don’t include Key… because they’re in C major. If the Key is only a note, it’s major.
* I do need to figure out what music21 expects as a chord notation as “Cmaj7” doesn’t work.
* The more I think about it, the clearer it is that I should have a separate corpus for Modal Jazz, with quartal/quintal harmonies. It might be small, which is fine with me.
* Could be difficult to track actual modulations to new tonalities and modes. In a way, Jazz approaches tend to blur the boundaries between those, especially in leadsheets.
* I’m not too clear on ways to identify turnarounds and such.

I’ve been in touch with a dev+designer who has dreams similar to mine. These “chord rules” could make their way into a web resource.
In my case, I’ll likely use them in RapComp for practical tests. “Does this progression sound Jazzy enough?”

[lulukom]

I am very glad that there is a user here who has taken up jazz work on RC .

[Enkerli]

I am very glad that there is a user here who has taken up jazz work on RC .

Are you do some Jazz yourself? My knowledge of Jazz Theory is rather limited. And it’s always fun to work with others. Especially in a genre based in collaborative improvisation.

[lulukom]

I can't call myself a jazzman, but I've studied some jazz theories all my life and now I'm bored working with progressions unless they're 7 or higher ))

[Enkerli]

I can't call myself a jazzman, but I've studied some jazz theories all my life and now I'm bored working with progressions unless they're 7 or higher ))

Same affliction for me!
One of Adam Neely’s relatively recent videos was poking fun at people like us (including Neely himself). Somehow, triads feel too limited. Although, they can work well in ensemble music, especially singing. And working through extensions is an important part of Jazz harmony.

Something I’m realizing, as well, is that part of my reaction comes from open voicings. Not just inversions. The kinds of switches between voices which help so much with voiceleading and decrease the dissonance of tension notes. Including those Collier-style chords with large numbers of notes.

So, let’s Jazz Up RapComp!