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SongTrellis |
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The chord progressions for standard tunes and most jazz tunes follow very well-known, almost standardized, routes in their transitions from chord to chord. The major harmonic cliches are ii-V-I sequences in major (eg. Cmi7-F7-BbMA7) and in minor (eg. Dmi7(b5)-G7(b9)-Cmi), chains of 7th chords whose roots descend by perfect 5th intervals (eg. (A7-D7-G7-C7), sometimes preceded by mi7ths that descend a prefect 5th (eg. Emi7-A7-Ami7-D7-Dmi7-G7mi7-C7). These are treated as modules that are transposed to other keys and pasted in front of other transposed sequences whose goal is to lead you to a particular chordal goal, usually a particular major chord or minor chord that you hear as a home sound that your ear continually returns to. There are hundreds of other well-worn routes beyond well known excursions like vimi7-iimi7-V7-I, I-IVMA7-V7-I or a sequence of 7th chords sliding down by half step. After you've listened to a few hundred varied tunes bred for Hollywood or Broadway performance, your ears have probably travelled 95% of the possible routes. Think of these as roads, highways or railroads through the fields, forests and mountains of possible harmonic sensation. The blues seems to be infinitely adaptable and shouldn't be disparaged as a cliche, but the most common blues progressions are extremely well known in all possible keys and are well-travelled like this or this.. Wayne Shorter, along with his mentor John Coltrane, his colleagues Herbie Hancock, Booby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan and saxophone competitor Joe Henderson, liked to hike off-road and find their own trails through the harmonic countryside. The folks from earlier generations who gave them best example on how to whack their own trails through harmony were Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. The chords types that provided the most-heard vocabulary of standards and early jazz tunes were the mi7, the 7th, the MA7 and 6, the dim (diminished), the mi7(b5) (the half-diminished), and the 7(#5), 7(b9) and mi6. For blues played by jazzmen, the sounds of the 7(#9) and 7(#11) chords became important. There are other types of chord that related to harmony derived from the sound of the melodic minor scale like the MA7(#11), MA7(#5), sus7(b9), 7Alt or mi(MA7). 7th chords can also be extended (additional pitches added to it) or altered (one of the standard pitches in the 7th chord spelling moved a half step up or down) to produce sounds with different, even exotic flavors. Try the 7(b5), 7(b5b9), 7(b9b13), 7(#9 13), 7(b9#11), 7(#9#11), 9(#11), 9(b13), 7(b13), 7(13), 7(b9 13), 7(9 13), 7(#9 13), or 7(#11 13) for size. This list isn't exhaustive, there are many other extensions. and alterations Most chords were built as stacks of alternating alternating major and minor thirds. You could instead build your chords using stacks of perfect and augmented 4th intervals which gives rise to chord forms like the 7sus, 9sus, m11, MA7sus. : Bebop players tended to use chords from this expanded chord vocabulary to substitute for the standard sounding chords in the harmony for fleeting effects, kind of like veering off road and running on the shoulder or in the ditch beside the highway for a second, or taking a side channel down a river on a canoe trip to vary the feeling of, or to add to the thrill of a trip. Thelonious Monk, especially, began to start and end his trips from these unusual harmonic locations in the tunes that he wrote. For examples, listen to the changes for Monk's Dream, Ugly Beauty, Jackie-ing, or Think Of One. Shorter and the cohort that followed Monk, having learned from his example, thought of these alternate harmonies as places that you could visit for awhile and explore. And they found novel ways to travel between these wilder sounding places in harmony. On the standard chord highways, where the chord roots descend most often by a perfect fifth (ie. the roots of successive chords follow the cycle B E A D G C F Bb Eb Ab Db Gb), you frequently find that one or two pitches from the preceding chord in a progression are held stationary in the next chord while two or three pitches from the preceding chord in the sequence slide down by minor 2nd or major 2nd to pitches in the next chord. This ability to slide between adjacent chord pitches using small steps is one of the hints that tells your ear that two chords are related to each other. Shorter slides from chord to chord much more frequently by changing the roots between neighboring chords by minor 2nd or major second ascending or descending, instead of using the descending prefect fifth root motion. He was also willing to try chord root motions of major and minor 3rd ascending, perfect fifth ascending and tritone motions betwen roots, all the while changing chord types using his expanded chord palette. All of these varied root motions produce a more varied, more colorful sounding, harmonic sensation. When Shorter travels cross-country through harmony this way, hiking away from the great harmonic highways, he finds sonic connections between chords that your ears might not be familiar with. In Shorter's harmony , you might hear that from a previous chord EVERY pitch slides down to a destination a minor 2nd or major 2nd up or down in the next chord, or you could hear only one or two pitches held constant while while all the other chord tones (there might be 5 or six of them) slide to new targets. Shorter's harmonies leave fewer notes fixed across changes of harmony. If your piano accompanist is extremely knowledgeable like Herbie Hancock or McCoy Tyner, the harmony played, despite it's greater sonic complexity, will make perfect sense to your ears and will sound inevitable once you hear Shorter's melodic invention as composer or improvisor on top of it all. In future postingss, I will try to direct your attention to the harmony of three or four of Shorter's tunes and let you hear how some of his harmonic discoveries work. There are responses to this message:
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Last update: Sunday, December 23, 2007 at 8:53 PM. |
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