You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Name Chords

Episode Date: March 14, 2019

Today, Peter and Adam answer a question from a YouTube commenter with a tutorial on how to name chords.Today's episode is sponsored by the Oxford American. The Oxford American is a magazine dedicated to documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. Its award-winning annual music issue comes with a CD sampler and digital download - a must-have for any serious music fan. Recent issues have featured Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk, John Cage, and John Cage. Visit https://www.oxfordamerican.org/yhi today for a special subscription discount!Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Yeah. Do you know how to spell out a C-sharp, half-diminished, flat-7, double flat 5 over B major 7? I don't, but I heard you play one last night on your gig. It's not a good. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you are listening to the You'll Hear It podcast.

Dogmatic daily jazz advice coming at you. You're a little dogmatic in your intro today. I was a little dogmatic. Today's episode is sponsored by the Oxford American. The Oxford American is a magazine dedicated to do. documenting complexity and vitality of the American South. It's award-winning annual music issue comes with a CD sampler and digital download. It's a must-have for any serious music fan.

Recent issues have featured Nina Simone, the loniest monk, John Cage, and John Coltrane. Visit Oxfordamerican.org-slash-Y-I today. That's Oxfordamerican.org-Forg-slash-Y-H-I. This sponsorship has been wonderful on a number of levels, but I feel like they're sponsoring our brains, too, because we've been reading. I mean, I've been an avid reader for years, but truly, this is like the intersection of literature and music in a way that speaks to me

in such an authentic way that, you know, it's very exciting, so I hope you guys take an opportunity to check them out. Check out your T-shirt. Oh, yeah. For our YouTube folks. Yeah, you got your Oxford American T-shirt. Yeah, we might have to do a little giveaway

sometime on that, you know. Okay. So today we're talking about how to name chords. Yes. This came from YouTube comments. We have our fair share of, people active on the YouTube. I know. And you know what? I've been shying away. I don't know if you've noticed. Well, you've been giving me crap for months about it and then all of a sudden you abandoned it.

Well, the whole Corey Henry thing scared me off, man. What? I blocked that out. That's what I'm saying. That was trying. We talked about trauma. Yesterday we talked about, wait, is today hump day? Did I miss it? Today's Thursday, man. Oh, man. So yesterday, after all that buildup. Anyway, next week, I'm a catch you. Damn, bro. It feels like hump day. It feels like hump day. So, yeah, with this, yeah, came on the YouTube We're gonna get back in there. I think it's safe now. Are all the snarky comments? You go right ahead.

You go ahead. Snarky puppy comments. I'm just gonna go start commenting on Jacob Collier videos. That'll be safe. Yeah, well, good luck with that. So this is from Florian on YouTube. He says, hey guys, I'm a guitarist from Holland. I only say that enthusiastically, because he has lots of exclamation points. Dutch people are very enthusiastic in my experience.

I don't want a stereotype, but they really are. It's such a great way. First of all, you guys are making some insanely helpful videos for all musicians, not just pianists. Thank you, Florian. I give you guys 10,000. 20251 out of 10 rating. I don't know what that means, but thank you. I have two questions for you. Oh, first of all, do you guys have some guidelines on how to name cords?

I think that's the question we're going to deal with mostly today. Because I don't think it's something we've really talked about. Well, I think it's kind of like we both have children and beautiful families. It's like naming your kids. You want to reserve the best names for the ones you love the most. Is that the concept you use? No, man. Oh, my God.

Oh, dang. Sorry. I feel sorry for your kids. Oh, my kids are older now. They know the way of the world, man. Your kids are still, like, young and, oh, daddy loves us all equally. That's why you don't hear a lot about McLemore Martin. Poor little McLemore.

Where is he? Where art thou? No, I think there are some guidelines you can use. You know, it's definitely more of an art than a science. Core changes. I mean, it's a little, it's part of both. But like any kind of notation, it's really about what you're trying to communicate to your reader, right? You want to make it as simple and as clear as possible.

That's goal number one. That's right. Right. So that there's no guessing game for the person reading the chart of like, what do they mean? Exactly. Yeah, you should never have. And it should never be a situation. And this goes even beyond just naming chords.

But this is certainly an area where you can trip easily as a jazz musician or jazz writer, so to speak, because there's so many chords that we put in for all parts. You know. But you never want to have. have something written that you would have to explain where it's not clear from the music. And we've both been in the situation as the Rangers and stuff. It should never be like, oh, I'll just tell them what it is. What if you don't make it? What if you die tomorrow? Your music's got to live on. And so it has to be very clear. And when you say with the chords,

I would even say that if there's not a way to do it, and we'll talk about some specific ways to do it with chord symbols and stuff. But if you need to write out, and you're great about this in like some of your charts, I know sometimes you'll just write out big voicing. And then you'll put the court. I mean, that tells them exactly what you want. Yeah, it really gets specific. And I think that's kind of like number one, right, is really show your intent in the clearest, simplest way possible. Yeah. That that's really the goal is to show what what you want out of that time frame that you have designated for that chord symbol in the clearest so that your vision of how it's supposed to sound is conveyed and the simplest so that they don't have to, so you don't have to write a two-paragraph long

direction of, you know, what this means. Oh, I hate that with people. Well, and I think that that's great, too, because you want to remember people are going to be, you know, yesterday we talked about memorizing music and stuff once, you want to make that process, hopefully for them to be able to love your music enough to want to play it and want to memorize it and want to internalize it. So it does need to be as simple as possible. Now, that doesn't mean that sometimes we don't have something that is complex if the music calls for it at that time. But we don't want, this is not a time when you're naming chords to try to make it like the equivalent of like use a big fancy word and be very verbal. and, you know, when a good, clear, simple word could work better. So you don't want it to be so simple that it doesn't explain the sound that you want, but you don't want to make it overly complicated just to make yourself look cool and technical.

That's right. So a couple of things you can do for this is if you're writing or arranging a song with a melody that can be defined by the chord. So in other words, let's say it's a C-7 chord and the melody is a D-flat. Yeah. Right. Don't just write C7 as the chord. Right.

You can convey what that melody is for the pianist and the voicing or whomever by putting C7 flat 9. Right. Easy to do. And definitely don't like have a big D flat in the melody on a half note and then put C9 or C13 without anything else. I mean, unless you want that to clash. Yeah, exactly. Unless you want that sound. Explain yourself with the chord symbol.

And then also maybe if that's not the sound you want over the solo, have a different set of solo changes that with the sound you want over the solo but in general the melody should be primarily what people are soloing off of you know and the core changes should reflect that. Yeah and I mean especially in this day and age of you know how we

note tape music usually with the you know program finale Sibelius or whatever and you start moving things around sometimes you start out thinking oh I'm just going to put C7 they'll see the pianist will see the D flat there and that's fine but sometimes that gets taken out of their part or maybe it's put into the

base part and the base only has the bass clap and doesn't have that D flat and they just have slashes and you might think well I don't want them playing that note well that's fine then just put C7 but if you're just doing that because you're lazy or you forgot to move that it's better to kind of have everybody and you might say well that's making it complex no

a C7 flat 9 is no more complex to a good base player than just a C7 there totally you know and I think that you know another part not to jump ahead too much and we'll talk about it some more but is like think about these chords and how you write them, never just on their own. You want to think about patterns, because when people, especially their sight reading,

they're identifying, really good site readers are great at this. They're identifying patterns. So if you start putting like C-7, F-7, G-7, you don't have any alterations. That's fine. But what you're telling the bassist, the pianist, somebody soloing over it, is this is bluesy. Even if, like, they haven't heard that yet, just because you start to see that one, four, five. And so just think about that.

Like, that might be the kind of sound that you want. You don't have to put blues or whatever. but also be careful with that because if you do that they're going to I mean maybe they hear that you've got these major sevens and flat nines and they're like wait this isn't bluesy and maybe you want that kind of a sound but just know that

we're going to look at that as sort of a pattern that's there. Yeah that's great man one thing I'm thinking about with this especially for simplification let's talk about slash chords. Okay. Because I think this can be a real point of like whether or not to make them slash or not right. Like my philosophy on it is

I don't put anything as a slash cord that I can have as a root court, right? So I'm not going to put, like, D-flat major 7 over B-flat. I'm going to put B-flat minor-9. Right. Right. I usually don't put, like, D-flat major 7 over E-flat, even though I see that, I'll put E-flat 13 sucks, right?

You know, I'll get specific with that because I want to convey from the root up. Yeah. Yeah. The only time this, that I would use a slash core like that are very specific times. There's probably two cases where I would use. slash chords and that's you know the base note is not in the scale yeah like if we're talking about e over yeah yeah exactly i i just want that clash yep but i'm the always remember that the top chord the top um yeah the top chord in a slash chord is the scale that the improvisers is going to

use right not having anything to do with the bass usually i mean that could be in there because it's in the base so you can improviser could use it but in general if i say e over b i want them to play an e i scale, a major scale, right? Yeah, and I think some people make this, I've even occasionally seen somebody write like E major seven over B flat seven. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, wait. You know, because really the bottom of the slash,

my understanding or my usage of it normally, except for some very select complex situations, is that below the slash or to the right of the slash is the root note, is the foundation, which is not necessarily the foundation of the harmonic center that you want, the whole reason that you're not making it one court. As you said, D-flap major over B-flat.

Come on, that's a B-flat minor nine. Unless you really want them to hear it, the voicing and the tonal center is really D-flat. Like, there would be occasionally a situation where it would be like D-flat major over B-flat for the first two beats, and then maybe it moves up to D-flat major. And you're kind of telling basically the bass player or the route to move down there, but the tonal center staying there. The reality of it is, for most situations, it's going to sound. And you want it, you know, back to our first point of it being simple and clear, B flat minor is easier to read.

And if it's going to sound the same, don't get so fussy. Don't get so funny. Clear, being simple and clear again. And readability. We want it to be, you want to get your sound. And if you have to make it complex to get, you know, just make sure that you make it as clear and as simple as possible to get that complex sound. It's fine to get, you know, I mean, I've done sharp 11, flat 9, flat 13 with a slash cord. And that's the sound that I want.

and there's no other way to ride it, then that's fine. But just make sure before you make somebody jump through those hoops that that's really what you want. Yeah, I mean, the other case for a slash cord would be like, say, let's say it was like a B flat alt altered, B flat 7 altered over A flat. Right. That to me is easy as translated as a flash court. Yeah. Because to try to make it off of the A flat would be more confusing, I think. And then you're really saying you want like, that's almost like a pet, is that a pedal point?

Like that would normally sort of show up at a pedal point. Right. You'd almost feel like it's going to go there. Yeah. Where the base is like super rude because it's so far from like the tonal center of the actual court that it's kind of doing its own thing. Yeah. You know, and if it's moving around and stuff, it's just like boom.

It's a stationary thing. Right. And the other thing for slash chords would maybe be triads. Like wanting a specific, like think about like E flat over A flat. Yeah. You could maybe notate that as A flat, major nine, no third, but that is more confusing to me than just E flat. over a flat. I mean, if you really

follow the letter of the law with that, that E flat over A flat, when I see that, I don't mind that because I won't play that like an A flat major seven. I'll get mad if that's what they actually want. They were just trying to be fancy, but it's like the, melodically, you're basing things off of that E flat triad. Right. So this brings us to another good point as we

free ball on all things, how to write a chord here. You know, when somebody puts E flat over A flat as opposed to, or even just E flat as opposed to E flat major seven or E flat major six, like have intentionality when you do that. It's fine to just put E flat, but that really implies that like triad kind of triad to me. Yeah. And and not to say that when you're improvising, you can only play an E flat

G and a B flat. You can do other things, but it's like that's a certain sound. If you put E flat two, I used to not like to do that, but it really is a difference. It's like an E flat nine without a seventh, you know, that's its own sound. And that's clear for people that play, especially in certain styles. Like the whole thing is like, I mean, we could put an infographic. or a pictograph, if that clearly made, we're just trying to represent what a sound is. So once you understand the sound and what the connotation of that is,

then these things start to make sense and you want to make them clear. That's right. E flat 2, like I would use that, and I do use that all the time, but mostly when the third is in the base. So like E flat 2 over G, because I don't want that G in the right hand

on that voicing. You know, I want only the third on the bottom of the court. Yeah, and I think that's a great thing too because when you put that, I mean, other slash chords, if you wanted to not have the third in it and you wrote a try it, I would say, like, you better write either a two or you better write the actual notes out so they know that. But in that case, because it's so commonly used in certain situations, E flat over G.

Is that the one you said E flat over G? Like, yeah, same thing. When I see that, I don't need to see E flat 2 over G. Right. I mean, you can do that, but it's the same thing as E flat over G. I know not to put, at least let me listen and most likely don't put the third in the right hand. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think if there's anything else we can, I mean, I feel like we said simplify, and then we got really deep and some complicated stuff.

But we stuck to the theory of, I think it's just important to remember, you only get as complex as you need to define the sound. I mean, the whole thing is about how it sounds and the possibilities, especially in a jazz situation where there's going to be some choices. You want to have choices. Yeah, that's right. I mean, so, you know, one thing maybe we could just touch on to wrap things up to would be where we started with, you know, F7 versus F7 flat nine. there's an idea of like when you have a dominant chord but you don't have any alterations do you call it f9 if there's a ninth in the melody or do you call it f13 and for me i kind of default to more simpler like f just seven with an assumption that the pianist and the improvised you know pianists or guitarist in terms of comping the bass player it doesn't mean you can't play the ninth but we're not specifying any alterations so that you know that anything within that's the bass player you know that anything within that's a bass player's 13 chord is fair game based upon listening. But it doesn't, like, sometimes people will put like F-13 and then A-flat-9 and then a D-7.

So when I see that, I'm like, okay, let me be very careful. And once I get to that D-7, not play a ninth or three-th. That's right. I think if you want to be that specific, be that specific. But if you are giving the player more freedoms, be as simple as possible. The seventh is always a go-to-for-that. Once you see a couple of those, and that's what we're talking about, too, pattern recognition, you're going to know, okay, there's a little more freedom.

So I can do some susses. I can do a lot of different things, whatever's appropriate. And that's generally what we want. We want things written out in a way, the chords so that the comping instruments and that the improvisers have enough freedom just as much as they can have to make it sound good. So you're giving them the constriction that they need to be able to fit in with each other. So it's not just like slashes and no chords, but not so much specificity that they're locked in beyond where they need to be. Because what you're really giving them is the sort of voice leading.

Like if I see, so back to the alter to the not alterations, the extension. So if I see C7, C13, right? And then the next chord is F9. I know that I have that A on top, G on top for the F. Like the A on top, the 13th for the C and the nine on top as a nice little voice leading thing. And the same thing. If I see, if I want to, if I want to make sure that the compers do like a nine motion, I would do C minor seven.

F7 flat 9 B flat major 7 because I know I can get that G, G flat F motion, right? Yeah, and it's not even like you're telling them the exact voicing, because there's several versions that you can make that happen, but you're giving them, again, pattern recognition and experienced players

are going to see that and be like, okay, I see what the voice leading is here. Right, right. All right. Nailed another one. Done and done. Done and done. We left off about 100 different ways to name chords, but that's okay. Well, remember for a limited time, you'll hear listeners can subscribe to the Oxford American for only 25 bucks. That's an amazing quarterly

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We kind of teased it out there. But this is very exciting. We have a new blog that accompanies this wonderful podcast. Yeah. We've always had the blog. As if we weren't given enough great free information. We're giving them more, man. It's all good.

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