JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques Music Theory and Education the Jazz Chords thread

Magne, I couldn't agree more. Jazz is much more than rhythm, it is much more than chords, much more than melodies. In this thread, though, I chose to focus on chords. If there continues to be interest, I'll include threads on rhythm, melodies, timbre and even lyric.

So now we understand the ninth chord. You start at any point in the diatonic or "do re mi" scale, call that the "root" then skip the next note, add the third, skip the next, add the fifth, skip the next, add the seventh, skip the next and add the ninth. You can keep skipping notes and adding an eleventh and a thirteenth, then you've used all the notes of the "do re mi" scale.

When you are using "ti" as the root, the resulting chords are taken over by what Emmitt referred to as "hidden chords." Also, most of those chords are so close in function to a chord built on "sol," that even if it doesn't contain the "sol" note, the ear hears it as a "sol" chord. That's why we don't read a lot of half diminished eleventh or thirteenth chords, they're just more like a garden variety thirteenth using the "sol" note as the root. Now, if you don't understand what I mean, just disregard this paragraph for the time being.

So, do jazz chords end there? Nope. Now we get into chromaticism. This is a relatively modern invention. It started with Galileo's father in the fourteenth century (not that long ago at all, in the grand scheme of things ). He was an early advocate of using a tempered scale. In other words, have a scale of equal intervals. A piano with only white keys would not have a tempered scale. A piano with both white and black keys has a tempered scale and can play using any of its keys as "do." So we have different colors that are available in a melody or harmony...colors...chromatics...we have a chromatic scale...C D E F G A B C, becomes: C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C. We can add the black keys. So now...let's add the black keys.

Here's a G9 chord (if G was "do" it would be a G major ninth, but a common G9 has G as "sol"...from here on out we'll be starting all the chords on "sol" by default, because that gives us the most common of the extended chords. other ones are major, minor, or diminished extended chords. Here's that G9: G B D F A It has the root, third fifth seventh and ninth built on G in the key of C. Just for fun, let's flat the fifth. G B Db F A. Now we have a G9b5 (G nine flat five). Try playing that one.

If anyone is interested, I'll post some examples on youtube to accompany this. Let me know.

Mike