On 22-Jan-07, at 8:46 AM, dhbailey wrote:
Christopher Smith wrote:
Bbmaj7/C is a C13sus4 chord, with a different name. It functions
identically to a C7sus chord, and the acoustic and functional root
is C. If you were a bass player playing a 2 feel (root, fifth in
half notes) then you would play C G, not C F or anything else. The
G is the implied fifth, even though it isn't present in the chord
symbol. It is the same as Gm9/C, too.
Jazz chord symbols are full of implied notes like this, that
aren't stated in the actual chord symbol but are implied anyway.
Kind of like our eyes fill in the blank spaces in a dotted line,
our ears fill in the blank notes in an incomplete chord.
Christopher
And that's the only possible interpretation? Geez, and here I
thought jazz was a music wide open to different interpretations! :-)
Heh, heh!
Jazz is lot more structured than one would think (given the usual
press it gets.) There IS more than one interpretation for a Bbmaj7/C
(for example, one that comes to mind would be a Bbmaj7 chord with a
passing bass from Bb to D) but I'd say 96% of the time or more, it is
a C7sus.
Part the whole chord naming question is being able to understand it
at first glance (or second at least!) which gets more and more
difficult as the complexity increases. To make things worse, the
chord naming convention started out easy enough for the harmonies of
the time, and things were tacked on as needed (kind of like an old-
fashioned clarinet needing an extra trill key here and there) until
we are stuck with today's Frankenstein monster of various conventions
and ways of naming extra notes that may or may not agree with their
actual function. Already in the 50's pianists had moved away from
triadic voicings, and chords based on 4ths, 2nds, 5ths, and mixed
intervals were the norm, yet we are still stuck with the stacked
thirds chord naming system.
Christopher
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