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I "lost the thread" yesterday, not here but in life - family, all that.

I have mostly steered clear of this forum because of the name: "non classical". But that may have been a mistake.

First of all, the word "classical" has never meant sense to me. What is it?

I really enjoyed this discussion. One of the things that has been going through my mind is how important the fully diminished chord is. There are only three of them (not counting enharmonic spellings), and just adjusting one or two notes in the diminshed chords slides to all sorts of interesting places. I see this as sort of the "grease" in modulation, and to me it is so powerful that it playes a central role in everything.

I thought about talking about that a bit here, because I think the "non-classica" group has a much more adnvanced understanding of chord movement and all sorts of cool scales than the so-called "classical" group.

Oh, the "non-classical" bunch can get stuck on a rather mindless "chord=scale" system, and sometimes want to call every change of chord a "modulation". Plenty to be shared by both camps!

The point of the diminished seventh chord is that it contains tritones. Several of them. It can act as a dominant minor 9th (root omitted) chord in 4 keys.

I'd just like to express gratitude and appreciation to all the participants in this thread. I've recently crossed 'worlds' with some of you before quite recently and here's another instance.

Regardless of Tango's presence or absence I've both enjoyed the discussion and profited from the results as a passive bystander.

This was exactly what I was getting at! I teach something I call "slithering", and it means that any chord can go to any other chord, but if you can make a way to happen all with 1/2 steps and whole steps, either making some notes (voices) go up and other down, it always sounds great. Or combine that with the idea of keeping some notes as "common tones" while others move up and down.

That's why, for instance, something like Db7-5 going to C works so well (or the same idea in any key). Db slips down to C, F moves down to E, G doesn't move, and B moves up to C. That's a great sound in jazz, especially when the idea is dressed up with color tones, but it goes right back to Bach, Mozart, etc.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I did not fully understand such simple movements until I was forced to gig, which at first I hated. It was just for money. But I was surrounded by friends, all chiefly jazz players, and it took awhile before I:

1) Realized how much I did NOT know.
2) Started to fully realize the richness of what could be done, starting with "stock" chords but listening to what really fine arrangers did with them.

(This happened about four decades ago. It changed my view of "clasical" music forever.)

What gives Db7b5 its dominant function in relation to C is mainly the F - Cb tritone which (read enharmonically as F - B) are tne tension notes in a G7 chord. The "slither" from Db to C is an added bonus, but nowhere near as harmonically important.

Now, Ab9 > G9 *is* more of a "slither". There's no rising leading note or descending 4th. Just a pure slither, with all the notes moving in the same direction. Analuse it as some sort of b5 substitution for the dominant of G if you wish. I'll settle for "slither" :-)

I like "slide". The beauty of those kind of changes is they almost play themselves the way one can "slither into the resolution.

To me any kind of chromaticism is not only what attracts me the most but is what initially pulled me into music.

The first music I aim for is not the typical Baroque and Classical teaching pieces that are in method books and many collections supposedly "graded" for beginning and intermediate students. I start of with things like Alloutte and other simple tunes that stick mostly to limited positions and are based on I, IV and V chords. I don't think complete beginners can handle things that are more challenging. I know I could not, when I first started.

But I jump really fast, and I do it early. I like to go over a rather famous C minor Prelude by Bach, one of the "little preludes", because it is full of (among other things) diminished chords that come down chromatically for almost a page. I jump right into minor key signatures by introducing things with all accidentals to show what the key is doing (in C minor showing all Bbs, Ebs and Abs), then following with a second version with the key signature, with clues written outside the staves, then a third version without the clues.

Chopin's E minor prelude is like a study in chromatic movement. The first half of the piece keeps playing a droning melody - C B----C B---- CB----CB, which finally changes to to A---BA---BA---BA. By itself it sounds like something written by an idiot. There is nothing there. But the LH chords keep moving just ONE note at a time, always 1/2 step, which is about as "slithery" as anything can get.

Jumping probably a century and a half, there is a super collection of Guaraldi tunes arranged by Lee Evans:

http://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Browns-Greatest-Hits-Evans/dp/tags-on-product/0793508207

It looks like something for tiny tots, but there are two ballades, Air Music and Love Will Come that are so elegantly arranged that they can be played note for note and sound great. Air Music uses: G--- BA------B------BA--------B------BAG, then uses an EGE fragment and repeats that. Like the Chopin, the melody, by itself, sounds idiotic, but all the movement is in the LH. The first half uses rootless chords, lots of 7ths and such on the bottom of chords in the middle of the piano, then it repeats with roots and everything fleshed out.

I doubt too many people would link Chopin, Bach and Guaraldi, but they are all doing much the same thing. That's what I think is so cool about music. I describe what is going on in all of them with letter chords. We go over the music exactly as it is notated, then explore ways to expand or alter things.

Have any of you heard a version of Heart and Soul that keeps the simple melody and puts it with a chromatically descending bass?

At least in jazz circles, we call using a Db7 to move to C a tritone substitution. Db7 is the tritone substitution for the normal V chord, G7. As exalted wombat points out, G7 and Db7 share the same tritone.

I still say Cb9 is misleading (nonsense).
The composer of "Girl From Ipanema", Tom Jobim's, own publishing company shows shows B7(9). No confusion there.
The Hall Leonard Real Book I, Sixth Edition, simply uses B7. (All jazz pianists know that when we see a B7 we can add the 9th.)
Larry Dunlap should not have used Cb9 in Chuck Sher's lead sheet for "Girl From Ipanema". It's confusing. I doubt there are more examples of Cb9 beyond something from editor Larry Dunlap. He at least could have included some parenthesis like Cb(9)

Yeah. Whether there's much point in thinking of tritones and substitutions when the Db9 merely slides down to C9 in parallal motion is another matter. No tension notes are being resolved. It's just a "slither" (I'm warming to that description!)

You're dumbing down too far here. For instance, Ab minor tonality happens. Among all those Ab, Db and Gb chords and notes a B is just misleading.

Use of Cb - sounds like a horn player.

Yesterday I ran into a chord that had a Cb in it and I was tempted to call it a B. But that Cb gave a clue about where the chord was going and what role it played. I still understand that it's context in the music and context in what kind of music it is. I can't see someone playing by ear having an image of a Cb in his head. Or maybe he does(?) Like if I'm playing an ordinary C7 chord going to F, will I imagine the 7 to be an A#? Do I imagine it as anything or do I just play the darn thing?

There is sort of a fork in the road here. The bigger picture is that by the time you get to the key of Gb/F# you are stuck with 6bs or 6#s. F# has a C# V chord, ugly, but a B IV chord.

Gb has a Db V chord, much nicer, but a Cb IV chord. Obviously how you stack additional notes onto these chords is going to have a huge impact on simplicity.

I think the main point is that sooner or later we have to deal with major to minor moves, quick ones, and we run into Db major/C# minor, Ab major/G#m. The point is not about whether something is jazz or classical but rather the complexity of the changes. Ipanema is somewhere in the middle. It's not all I IV V, but it does not have totally wild changes either.

I'm all for the practical, so I would tend to think F# to B because F#m is immediately coming up, moving to D. (I'm not bothering with 7 or 9, because that part is obvious.) So I would write it the way you suggest, but the other way would not bother me. An Fb9 would.

I'm just not so quick to use the word "nonsense" for something that I don't agree with - well, actually, not in PUBLIC!

Just play the darn thing, name it later.

Something like an Fb7 or Fb7-5 going to Ab is very common in Romantic music. But for me this is all about notation, a combination of what is easier to write AND convenetions. In my mind, if I think of chord names at all, I'm certainly not thinking "French 6th". I'm just thinking of a V7 in another key slipping to a key down a half step. Fb7-5= E7-5, dominant of A, and the idea is to slip to or slip BACK to Ab. I teach augmented 6th chords (the classical name) as simply being the dominant of a key 1/2 step above the key we are moving to. The spelling problems I reserve for advanced students who need to know about notational conventions. I don't want them writing the "wrong" thing, wrong meaning unconventional, without knowing WHY they are breaking rules. Once they know the rules, I don't care if they break them.

I do.

Guys, we know the theory... the fact remains that B7 is more practical because it's easier on the eyes when sight reading a chart than the very esoteric symbol Cb9 that only Larry Dunlap used. That's Larry Dunlap, if you know the guy... Antonio Carlos Jobim, the actual composer, was more practical and published it with a B7 chord symbol and rightly so for the above reason.

Well, pardon the **** out of me. I was explaining this for people who DON'T know all the theory. If I take your stance, I simply will not talk to anyone who I don't judge to be up to "my level" and therefore will stay away from anyone who does not "know all the theory".

Sorry, I didn't mean to offended you, Gary. I wasn't directing "Guys we all know the theory" to you in particular, there are 8 pages of theoretical explanations in this thread now. I suspect it has maybe become overcomplicated.

LOL!!!

OK. In my world running into people who know the kinds of things we are talking about is a very rare thing. I caught your point immediately.

The problem is that different keys have different problems, and what is effortless to notate in one key, any system including chords names, can become a problem in another. I spend about half my life trying to explain why something that "looks weird" is actually logical OR why something that looks weird actually COULD be written in a much more practical way.

If I'm talking to you, you'd just say "No reason for Gb to Cb here, F# to B is clearer", and I'm going to agree with you in a heartbeat.

It might not be so easy for students to understand this.

Very esoteric? You really shold get out more! What IS hard on the eyes (and the brain, should you use it while playing) is a B chord with Abm, Db etc. on either side of it!