I'm "learning" jazz, right now more hearing different chords and voicings, cause idk wtf the author is talking about when he says stuff like this:

but that's an example of an exercise I actually like the way it sounds.*#

I found an example of the crap of my kiddy days, in itchy suits listening to something in the background that I wish would stop, but never did:

And I noticed it's just pentatonic solos (no, not just cause it's labelled!) over a chord progression. WTF! When I played electric guitar, I really liked the riffs using the blues scales (but don't be too mean, if I forgot stuff, I've not played electric guitar since 1994 in grad school...and it was to replace women, and it did the opposite, they bothered me even with the scruffiest beard possible).

I thought the crappy jazz stuff was from stuff like this using similar chords to pop tunes (which I find crappy too...well, familiar to the point of sonic boredom.)

But, I found the first example like a time machine in a flash, taking me back to being too hot, no way to scratch, nothing to do (couldn't get dirty!) and the clock never moved...

My question to anyone who dares take the challenge: wtf is going on? Idk how to even start to learn wtf the author is doing for at least the chords/progression^ but I did hear, wtf I don't want to do immediately! How can I like pentatonic scales on the guitar (they also felt good to play, if that isn't weird) and completely loathe them on the piano when used for crappy jazz?


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Now, I don't remember hearing these chords often, but they were really pleasing to me...but after struggling to play this myself, my ear got used to the different sound in less than an hour.
#I know what a 3rd is, a Maj7 is just a one semitone higher addition of the 7th chord (think Maj 3rd instead of a min 3rd), a */F just means an F base, a 9th/11th can be an octave higher/lower to shove it into fingerable range or whatever...I mean idk htf you choose to get from one chord to the other...or how this whole mess is evolves...
^3 chord progression, with a delay by repeating two chords to the tonic to the end, so it's not like complicated that way, but idk how he's choosing leading tones and stuff...unless it is as stiff and stuffy as the music theory tutorials, and it's by rote?

 

Last edited: Jun 10, 2016

First of all, you asked 2 questions not 1. Second that first pic with the list of chords is just him complicating a simple idea. Chords, like words in a language, have synonyms. It's as simple as that. Case in point, if you list the notes in the Fm9 and the Abmaj7/F they're the exact same notes.

Only you can answer the question as to why you like something or not. It would be like if were to ask you, "why i like american cheese on my sandwiches and not cheddar." It's an absurd question to ask anyone other than person in the mirror. I can tell you though, why i don't like using pentatonic scales. Because it's a rock music-cop out, to my ears. I prefer to be modal when i can, but when the changes happen so fast or its rock tune with no change in tonal center i find myself forced to play pentatonic.

PS: I'm learning piano right now just as you are. My goal is to be able tackle classical piano pieces in roughly the same amount of time it takes me to learn those virtuoso-progressive metal songs.

 

@Funk U Well, the guy in the mirror hasn't spoken to me in like 4 years, and second, only until recently I went from playing music to trying to compose music. Given that, holy crap, that's still way harder than the step from listening to music to performing music.

I don't think I'd have trouble finding consensus on ketchup sauce pizza from Georgia being bad... so it's possible to ask about aesthetics/subjective measures and have common ground. I come from an idiot savant, counting edges even when I don't want to, mathematics, kinesthetic lead system little brain, so to me, music has a texture that evolves, and organization (still maddeningly opaque to me consciously) no different than me running my hand over a woman's shoulder, or across the top of hedges while I walk beside them, but unlike before where I always had a gf or wife to translate jeff english to ppl english, I'm trying to capture my problem and communicate in a foreign language...I apologize.

 

Playing around with different chord voicing's is a wonderful and exhilarating experience

 

Last edited: Jun 10, 2016

You're correct, but at that point would you following the consensus or just eat pizza with ketchup cuz you find it delicious? I would do the latter.

And like @Zenarcist said, those charts you posted are just a voicing exercise.

Except music is extremely different, with far more nuance, then a woman's shoulder or hedges. For example, take a C chord in the key of C, that invokes a different response to the listener than a C chord in the key of C#. However, if you were to close your eyes and run your hand across 5 women's shoulders they would all feel like shoulders, as opposed to knees. The only difference would be the scale of the shoulders. Likewise, a hedge, is a hedge, is a hedge. But if you took the same exact chord and change keys, you wouldn't be able to recognize that same chord.

 

@Zenarcist To me inversions of chords can change it's emotive feel too, so fk me, that seems another complication I'd rather not have.

I used voicing exercises with purpose. I'm trying to understand the "jazz style." So I thought I'd start with contrived, "easier" to understand ideas. I'm trying to understand why he chose which transition and which voicings.

I thought about it a little more, while I wasn't thinking about it and this is my current understanding of my incompetence:

I think I have to at least know cold:

• What key is it?
• What are the notes of that key?
• What notes are the intervals 3rds, 5ths, 7ths 9ths, 11ths (my prob is min/maj starts to add up) then note degree when ur shoving them octave up/down 1<->8, 2<->7, 3<->6,4<->5
• What is the relative and parallel minors (why, I forgot...other than parallel minor uses different notes than the original key...)
• What is the "acceptable" chord progressions for that key and equivalences (there are times you can use 2 chords in a sequence interchangeably, but I flamed out trying to understand why in another tutorial)

Then maybe I can understand better what's going on...idk.



On the other hand, no, a shoulder or hedge is not always the same. When a woman is in a different mood, it feels different (well, to me). Almost day to day the hedges feel different to me. Maybe you can think of it as saying snow is snow to an Eskimo, and they'd say, no way.

Hard to explain, maybe like this: As an undergrad I used to train hard, and I used to hang out at various college clubs. One day I said, I'll trade any girl that would loosen my hamstrings (I did squats that day, and they were bothering me) a back rub. One girl accepted. She made believe, or idk at the time my muscles were really hard so it felt like she wasn't doing much. Then I reciprocated. I was instantly intrigued. Her body was different, she was Greek (I asked after) and had no subcutaneous fat (fat above the muscle, but under/in the skin) but she did have intramuscular fat, like a prime grade steak. It felt quite awesome. So for whatever reason, it's easy for me to feel the differences in tone of muscles and stuff so I worked away. When I finished, she said the back rub wasn't enough, could I do more? I didn't care, so I continued, did her legs and behind and arms. When I looked up, the club room was empty! I never saw that girl again, either btw, which sucked. I can only assume ppl thought that was not a backrub, but it was to me! A shoulder is not a shoulder is not a shoulder.

In music, I have "composed" music on the guitar, but I never wrote it down. Over the years, I noticed it change a little in general tone, and day to day based on my mood, I play it different too. When I finally noticed that, it was the first time I understood the idea that a specific toon isn't ever "finished." It must have been reasonably competent, cause a guy that does gigs while not a medic in bars and small clubs, asked me what band's song was I playing. I said, I think I made it up, but it's probably just something I don't remember hearing. Toons are more a snapshot of an idea in a specific mood. So maybe even the same song isn't the same song, isn't the same song. (yikes.)

 

Jeff,you are trying too much too soon.
Right now you are like a loose chicken,dont take this wrong,i admire your desire for learning,but you need to chill down and start with the basics,master the basics first and then move on to the next step.
You are really making it harder for yourself.
You need to warm up before you can sprint.

 

@Von_Steyr Well, idk what the basics/beginning is, really.

Remember, this is as much Art and Music Therapy as anything else, so for it to be effective I have to saturate me little brain. I don't mind being confused for months...once in one of those companies that went belly up in the World Financial Center after aircraft hit the Twin Towers, I used to read medical texts, cause, I fk'd up, so I couldn't go to medical school, but I could read their textbooks...so I had a textbook and a medical dictionary right next to it and one of the 6' tall, darked haired men that looked like they came from the same mother came over and said, what are you doing? I said reading medical textbooks, and I've been confused for like 3 months...he just made a face and turned and walked away. (I was a temp executive secretary, and made a LOT of money doing nothing, all day...when Word Perfect was the standard...anyone remember that?) But, one day, I knew the confusion would clear to understanding. Medical textbooks was the first time I saw anyone say, "well, we really don't know wtf is going on, but given this, this and that, we do this, because that's the best we can do now." Like ah ha! Finally, I'm being communicated with as a peer, fk man.

So, what do you mean basics? I know how to read music, and rhythm (though I did learn a couple of days ago the G treble stave is wrapped around the g line of the 5 lines that make up the staff! No shite! And the f for the bass stave...but I was just testing my assumptions, that maybe as a clarinetist reading piano grand staff, I may not have been taught something...not really.

I think knowing all the diatonic scales is now "basic" knowledge, cause without that, you can't make chords. Without chords, you can't play with them (inversions), make progressions, change key, make melody over those progressions (I haven't even got to making melody, I forgot but one guy said "motive" once in reference to melody, and I went, oh fk, gdi melody is deep too!?)

So now, I think knowing the circle of 5ths is basic cause it's the least dissonant way to change keys, and figure out relative minor and key sharps/flats...even chord progressions, but I'm not convinced what I saw about that is useful or not yet.

It took me 3 weeks to look at the bass stave and go ok, that would be a "d" treble clef, but 3 notes down is..., now I just see the right note, how, I have no clue, because I'm reading identical symbols to mean different things based only on a symbol all the way to the left of the page...so I'm hoping it'll take 3 more weeks to understand/memorize the circle of 5ths, then another 3 weeks to understand how to make chords, another 3 weeks later to read chords as notes like a clarinetist (I now see the relative harmonic spacing on the stave of 3rds, 5ths, 7ths, etc., but reading lots of chords slows me way down still, cause I can't go Fm7 and my fingers know what that means, and if it's an inversion....ya right...)

So now I think it's possible knowing all the notes of a specific scale by degrees so I can form common chords may be "basic" knowledge.

So what do you mean by basic?

 

Well whatever mood that woman is in, if you closed your eyes and touched her knee vs her shoulder or her eyeball. The shoulder would always feel (to the touch) like a shoulder, her eyeball would feel like her eyeball, and her knee will always feel like a knee. In the global sense of body parts. But you are clearly assigning differences in things, based on how you/they feel towards them emotionally.Which doesn't change it's form. And point of view is not what you need know to understand the basics of the function and form of the subject matter, which is in this case music.

Why is I agree with @Von_Steyr. You are trying to hard, intellectually speaking. Thus making simple beginning steps more complicated then they need be. Stop worrying or thinking about the subtle nuances of things and just focus on their function and form.

Yes it is. That's why people can change the key of their songs for whatever reason, and you and I can still recognize the song. For example, i learned "Easy", By Lionel Richie from the original recording in which was in A, he now plays it live in the key of G. I had no problem recognizing the song or transposing in rel time while i played along with him. That's the basics. Hearing that he changed keys and be able to do it myself without skipping a beat.

Also, i can tell by most of your posts, your mind is cluttered with things that don't pertain to the subject. For example, a lot of your posts in a given thread you put these little stories that have nothing to with music or the topic being discussed. We don't need your backstory to give you information. No criticism here, just an observation.

Plus, i think your confused about the purpose of the music theory itself. It's not information to tell you what to play when in your compositions. It's just to give you all the options available at that moment in time. It's up to you choose where to go next. It's in making those choices that makes someone a composer/songwriter not how much music theory they know. Not all English majors are novelists. A novelists becomes one by making the decisions needed to finish a novel.

Basically, you are getting it. You just underestimate yourself, and overestimate what the knowledge your trying to gain is intended to do.

 

@Funk U Idk, but I think recognizing key and transposing on the fly is studio musician level, and hard to do, no? On guitar, I used to play along with pop songs, but I had to guess a lot in the beginning, slowly narrowing down the chords they used by ear (only strumming though, I couldn't just hear a lick and then reproduce it...)

I think of the scale of a key as the letters, the chords as the words, the chord progression as the paragraphs, and the composition as a collection of paragraphs, like a short story or poem, no? I'm studying music theory just to decipher the freakin language that's opaque to me now.

What is the min knowledge necessary to do what you describe as a play along guy, which I thought is what studio musicians do...?

Oh, and for now, how do I find examples of historically accurate jazz? I'm not looking forward to sifting through 2,000 hrs of crap...and then finding, that wasn't canonical jazz anyways!

 

Everything is hard if you don't know how to do it. And is easy when you do. You're second statement is just describing the beginning stages of music learning, which is the same across the board for everyone. I had the same problem when I first started, before i went to music school, ear training exercises and music theory solved that problem eventually. But hearing changes by ear is an ear training thing, specifically. Which I did for a year straight outside of the classroom if that gives you a better time frame of the work involved.

What your are learning is what is necessary, that's all there is, you just don't know how to do it yet. You're mistaking your inability to do the functions your already learning as a lack of the "right knowledge." This type of question gives me the impression you are looking for shortcuts to get to the end result, but there's no silver bullet. It's just a repetition thing.

If i were you, i wouldn't search through random songs looking for random songs. I would search for jazz artists I like and learn their catalogue of songs. On guitar i would learn whole albums at a time. Or as many songs on the album I could find tabs/charts for. If you really wanna know were any given artist is coming from, musically, you have to dive into multiple songs from them.

 

@Funk U k, tyvm.

 

Jeff i meant,dont try to learn everything at once,especially since youre also into producing your own music.
I admire your energy and the will to learn,you are an interesting guy.

 

To get your head around this stuff just keep things simple. I suggest learning all the added chords and inversions in the Key of C where the notes on the piano are numbered as follows :-

c=1, d=2, e=3, f=4, g=5, a=6, b=7, and think in relative terms, i.e. I-ii-iii-IV-V-vi-vii°





Therefore, a C major tonic (I) chord consists of (c,e,g) or (1,3,5).

The 1st inversion based on the 3rd would be (e,g,c) or (3,5,1).

The 2nd inversion based on the 5th would be (g,c,e) or (5,1,3).

These inversions are represented as C/E and C/G depending on the bass note.

Likewise, the G major dominant (V) chord is (g,b,d) or (5,7,2), with a 1st inversion (b,d.g) or (7,2,5) and the 2nd inversion (d,g,b) or (2,5,7), and the inversions are represented as G/B and G/D

Once you have got the hang of this you can investigate the 7th chords, and others.

What you learn in the Key of C will be equally applicable to all of the other keys.

Later you can even use this knowledge to transpose the keyboard, and play in any other other key using the exact same chord positions.

PS I am a guitar player, but I've learned music theory using a keyboard, as I find it easier to visualize things. Also keep in mind many experieced guitar players memorize the fretboard and the notes in every chord, so it's definitely not an easy journey. In saying that, I found it easy to follow what you posted above based on the little theory I have done in C major, so there may be some method in my madness

 

Last edited: Jun 12, 2016

@Zenarcist Ok, ty. I have not seen the triad inversions shown that way, staying within the octave, nor the triad inversions being written that way C/E, C/G. I've only seen that notation as bass note under a chord, so I'd read those: C/E as C bass under E, G#, B; C/G as C bass under G, B, D, but I could be just conflating stuff with the 7th chord notations...which I think is why I'm currently confused.

I will restrict myself to triads for now and try to find in all my music theory tuts the places after reading music and before 7th chords, inversions and progressions...

@Von_Steyr Idk, I find switching from music playing, to music theory, to music composition, to music production in a DAW all connected, like a giant tangle that cross fertilizes each other. On the other hand, my CGI stuff is suffering, cause though I can make really pretty, photorealistic, completely unbelievable, across the uncanny valley images and seconds of video, music is more pleasing to me right now...and given my current state of suffering, it's the most effective palliative...and I'm still waiting for my cats' training to be completed:

They like are all gunho one day, then sleep 22hrs/day the rest of the week.

 

Apologies for not making it clear, but you do not have to stay within the octave. Just extend the numbering system over the whole length of the keyboard. In fact you can take notes from separate octaves and it will still be a chord, there are lots of possibilities.

In the beginning I found it was easier to stay within one or two octaves, and use tight groupings until I mastered the positions.

One of the main uses of inversions is bringing chord progressions "closer" together, so there is less movement in the sound. This is achieved by making smaller jumps between the chords.

Alternatively, spreading them out and adding extra notes gives a richer sound, which is the next step after you have mastered the basic inversion positions.

For me this is one of the most enjoyable aspects of music, you can have a lot of fun, even with standard chord progressions

 

Last edited: Jun 12, 2016

@Zenarcist ok, I thought "compact" voicings were for "playing" ease, but I'm learning in an inductive ad hoc way, so idk. The second I saw open voicings of 7th chord inversions, my laptop said, "you will not throw me out the window...it's not me, it's you..." Cause that complexity both in formula and sound, just burned down me brain like a magician's flash paper. Esp, the jazz guy showing how "easy" it is to vary happy birthday over a few times playing, adding color by using chords closer to augmented 7 chords, but he did it with inversions and open, now I realize just as an ad to get ppl to have him as a teacher...no way ppl could follow that...

So, still staying with triads.

Me brain on inversions of open 7th chords at this time...first few seconds:

 

@jeffglobal like @Zenarcist said, i would completely forget about 7th chords and their derivatives/inversions until after you have master triad inversions/derivatives, otherwise you'll spend more time trying to get it, instead of just getting it the instant you are given the information.

speaking of 7th chords, they are just the next triad up stacked on the original triad. For example, (Cmaj= C,E,G) + (Em=E,G,B) = (Cmaj7=C,E,G,B). It's that simple.

But seriously, master triad inversions, open and closed triads, harmonize the major scale in all keys with just triads first. Then fuck around with 7th chords. The way you are doing it now, is like trying to write sentences before you know enough words. I understand wanting to tackle the color available in more complex chords, but if you can't visualize triads with clarity it's impossible to grasp 7th chords. Because 7th chords are just two series of triads added together.

An example in CG. I wouldn't learn about hair dynamics before I learn how to rig and animate a character, because i couldn't animate that character to get the hair to move in the first place. It's akin to P.E.M.D.A.S in math, you know order of operations.

 

That's why I suggested starting with the basics and sticking to the Key of C until you've got a firm grasp of what is going on. The more complicated stuff just seems to be more of the same to me .. only a bit more complicated However, it's still all about intervals and root positions, etc., so if you are confused at the beginning you will be even more confused at the end.

Yeah, there is an aspect of economical playing when using inversions, but I think the sound is more important. Sometimes you want the harmony to blend and be less obvious, while other times you may be looking for more contrast.

 

Don't worry, I'm going back to triads and see what's up first. I still don't understand why some 3rds are maj, some min, (in constructing chords (I think that's still 7th chords, nvm) unless that's just an artifact of "naming" and scale construction of wwhwwwh (ionian) but don't worry I got a while to play with stuff now...