[PD] pd-based procedural chord progression database..

[David Powers]

I've been playing jazz piano for 16 years, I started at age 15 getting paid
to play. Here are a set of simple rules you could use to generate harmony
that would generally reflect what jazz piano players actually play on gigs.

First of all, one generally should not play the root at the bottom of the
chord. This leaves the structure more open to substitions and melodic
variation in the bass.

Second, a piano player does not REALLY play Cmaj7, when the changes say
that, he plays some coloristic variation on that. The only notes that need
to occur to define a progression, are either the 3rd and 7th, or 3rd and
6th. All others are open to variation.

With those in mind, here are some typical chords:

[Cmaj7]
E G B
E A B
E A D
E G B D
E G A D
E F# B

[Cmin7]
Eb G Bb
Eb Bb D
Eb A D
Eb F Bb
Eb G Bb D
Eb G A D
Eb F Bb D

[C7]
E Bb D
E F# Bb
Bb E A
E G Bb D
E F# Bb D
E A Bb D
F# A Bb D (no 3rd)
F A Bb D (a C7sus, which can be substituted often)

[...if the C7 functions as a V7, then it will probably be altered, b13, #9
or b9, as below...]
E Bb D#
E Bb Db
E F# Bb Db
E G Bb Db
E A Bb Db
E A Bb D#
E Ab Bb D#
E Ab Bb Db
F A Bb Db (C7susb9, another substition that will have more tension than
ordinary C7)

And that is about it for the normal arsenal of chords, excepting quartal and
So What chords, and a few other tricks that are more about superimposing
harmony then playing the harmony as given.

This info would give pretty realistic modern voicings, when combined with
some idea of voicing - not voice leading per se, but avoiding big jumps
between chord voicings. Hope this info is helpful, I don't want to clog up
PD list with too much of this kind of thing...

~David

On 8/14/06, Patco <megalegoland at yahoo.fr> wrote:
>
> Chuckk Hubbard a écrit :
> >
> > >Are you familiar with the "Gestalt" perception laws?
> I've checked it, that's interesting, but I wouldn't say that I am
> familiar with it.
> >  Is the simplest way to describe a harmony with letters the
> > same as the simplest way to hear it?
> For playing a standard jazz, we use a book called: The real Book.
> There are many volumes of 300-400 pages full of most popular jazz
> standards.
> Any jazzman would say that learning jazz is actually done through this
> book.
>
> In each score there are several levels of information:
>
> 1 The chords which are wrote with letters like CM7, G7b9b5, FM7#11/G,
> ect ...
> 2  The musical score with melody, and nuances ( but nuances usually have
> to be deduced from the emotion of the players)
> 3 The structure of the tune, where parts are also called with letters,
> part A, part B, ...
> and almost every structures are like that:
>
> A A B A
>
> 4 words of the song
> ...
>
> Voicing is the best way for both following the harmony
> and giving the soloist and the singer the notes of the melody
>
> Personaly, I don't think at all that full piano scores is for jazzmen,
> but for classical pianists that are too lazy to learn jazz.
>
> Don't forget that jazz is a music for improvisators.
>
> > >  And of course it depends on
> > >voicing, range, and changes.
> When I began to practice jazz with my guitar, and learned about voicing,
> I wanted to make a classification of every sounding voicings of every
> chords,
> like Joe Pass did in one of his book, but,
>
> the amount of combinations is very high, just an exemple:
>
> in the major scale we have four types of chords with four sounds using
> the 7th
>
> M7, 7, m7, and m7b5
>
> so we have 2^4 combinations of four different chords which has 4
> different voicings,
> then we could make at least  16*4*4= 256 different chords,
>
> and five types of chords with five sounds
>
> M79, 79, m79, m7b9, m7b9b5
>
> then 2^5*5*5= 78125 different chords
>
> etc...
>
> Obviously not all the chords are sounding good, mostly the ones where
> the basses
> has an interval lower than the fifth
> (and we uses to remove the fifth because this note is sounding like the
> fundamental)
>
> and some chords are almost similar with other chords
> eg: CM7 = C E G B = Em6 = E G B C
>
> I think that it might be possible to make a mathematical formula
> instead of a database of chords,
> but I am not good enough with math' to write a formula that would give
> all sounding chords
> in an harmonical context.
>
> Patco.
>
>
> p4.vert.ukl.yahoo.com uncompressed Mon Aug 14 20:27:01 GMT 2006
>
>
>
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