Luverly Jazz Chords Pt 1

[Serotonin]

So I play keyboard. Sorta kinda. I used to be able to read a bit of score at 12, and then quit playing Bach for my AMEB music exams because I found it boring. Then at 18 I sat down at the piano again and taught myself to play my favourite songs by ear. I know chord shapes, so I can play by looking at A, Dmin etc. on top of the score. But figuring it out note by note is like "OK, that note's a whole 3 lines below middle C, so it's a G, but fuck, it's a Gsharp as well, oh fuck it".

But playing the bass accompaniment to a friend singing "Where's Summer B?" by Ben Folds Five inspired me to want to play the piano again, so I learned that song and took off from there.
I go through all my parents' modern sheet music. Beatles, Cat Stevens, Elton John. Not much else. Around 19 I start listening to Steely Dan. Fall in love with the cool sounding complex chords that they used. Bought the songbook anthology, and also Ben Folds Five and :shock: Supertramp (hey, they played gorgeous pop. Shut up).

Anyway, this thread is dedicated to my favourite cool jazz chords.

1) The major seventh: OOOOooooh yeah. Made famous by Burt Bacharach, this chord has a real "wistful" feel to it, punctuated by the the semi-tone off the root in the treble. Think of the chord of the end of the verse of Carole King's "It's Too Late". Duh, da-duh, da-da-duh duh. When put in a song in the right place it can never fail to make the hairs stand on the back.
Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky", when the soundbite says "but I am not frightened of dying" is also another great example.

2) The minor seventh: Makes straight minors sound mysterious and earthy. Use a lot of them when playing a Fender Rhodes.

3) The eleventh: There's conjecture over whether this chord should be written as say: D11 or C/D (C with a D root). Play a C triad and put a D in the bass. Either way, it's a beautiful way to build suspense before you resolve back to the root chord.
Most notable example: David Bowie: Lady Stardust. "And it was aaaaaaaaaaalright, the band was altogether".... the chord played on "altogether" is not quite an F, and not quite a G, but it's a G11. And it builds suspense like no other.
Edit: a more familiar example is the beatles "long and winding road", where the orchestra comes in

4) The "fourth in the bass": My absolute all-time favourite chord. Sounds a little discordant at first, but all warm and tingly and melancholy a split-second later. Play a major triad, say A (A C# E), then instead of putting an A in the root, put the fourth, a D in. Ooooh.
Some examples: Chorus of Steely Dan's "Pretzel Logic"
Tom Waits "Lonely"
Joni Mitchell "Blue" where she stops singing and holds that triad up top for 4 beats.

5) The 7#9: A real blues chord. Some blues wannabes will put dominant 7ths all over the shop and think they're John Lee Hooker, but it takes guts to put this in a song. It's got the root, a dominant 7th, maybe a 5th but it has both the major and minor thirds together. Yowza. Consequently, you don't know whether to be happy or sad when you hear it. It just makes you wanna play your instrument.
Lots of them in Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues". Last chord of the intro, right before the first verse.

I'm not finished yet, there are more to come.

[Maniac]

It's interesting Serotonin, we're more than probably either of us thought. I had a similar on and off relationship with keyboard, and also with guitar, drums and sequencing/synthesizing music on the computer.

I like the dominant 7th, it can spice up the return to the key chord. Maj and min 7ths are ok, I haven't used them that much though. I've seen min 7 b5 used a lot in jazz/blues.

[deus.ex.machina]

Awesome thread!!

I am actually a music major, and sing, play guitar, cello, piano, mandolin, and harmonica. I do alot of composition as well (mostly voice and acoustic, although I am working on a couple string, voice, piano arrangements).

Here are some other good ones...

Sus2 triads: very mysterious sounding and doesn't have the tonal certainity of a major or minor chord. It acts as a very nice chord if you don't want your progression to sound certain. I like using vocal metaphors to describe this chords. For instance, I have one song (still an idea really) that describes a relationship that I never had closure in - the main progression is a C#m, Asus2, E, B5 and then Asus2 Dsus2 E. I think it really does a good job of subconsciously getting the lyrical point across.

Sus4 triads: (EDIT This is number 4 you refered to) also have a very mysterious sound, and I like their ability to add warmth, and a joyful qaulity to a progression. Gives chords a hymm like sound when used as an embellishment. For instance, playing an E Major and hammer of the major third (G#) on to the perfect 4 (A) - sweet sound eh?

add9: some of these positions are great as embellishments and replacement for major chords that - especially Cadd9 for quick transitions into a G (for guitar at least). The Major I add 9 always works very well with the P5.

[Maniac]

True dat, I forgot about sus chords. Yeah sus chords are great. The word describes it all, very suspended feeling, like it's waiting to be resolved. I was talking scales in another thread. I dunno about you guys, but the minor and minor harmonic scales I like much better than major scales. Minor scale music moves me. Nothing like moonlight sonata or nocturne in f minor to depress your ass, LOL. However, nocturne in Eb major did turn me back on to the major scale a bit ;)

[deus.ex.machina]

True dat, I forgot about sus chords. Yeah sus chords are great. The word describes it all, very suspended feeling, like it's waiting to be resolved. I was talking scales in another thread. I dunno about you guys, but the minor and minor harmonic scales I like much better than major scales. Minor scale music moves me. Nothing like moonlight sonata or nocturne in f minor to depress your ass, LOL. However, nocturne in Eb major did turn me back on to the major scale a bit ;)

Actually some major scale compositions do it for me as well, but usually the more melancholy ones. I do a cover of "I Shall Be Released" by Dylan which I play in E major, and I use a straight up E major scale to improvise over it, and the song has a real melancholy feel to it.

Personally, I prefer minor scale stuff, however, lately I have been doing alot of Jack Johnson/Sublime type of acoustic stuff in straight major progressions. I find it alters my mood and I can get actually get my voice to sound really soulful singing those types of songs (I guess I was getting annoyed that everyone thought I was one-sided as a musician, since nearly all my material is "depressing" sounding).

[Pan]

Actually some major scale compositions do it for me as well, but usually the more melancholy ones. I do a cover of "I Shall Be Released" by Dylan which I play in E major, and I use a straight up E major scale to improvise over it, and the song has a real melancholy feel to it.

The Sting song "Fields of Gold" is one of my favourite examples... the melody is 100% major, but the song has a very "minor" feel to it because of the way certain notes are emphasised.

I love the minor and minorish modes too... there just seems to be a greater range of expression available in the minor, more freedom.

[cosmic06]

Man, you nailed it when talking about the major seventh. That's my favorite chord. (In GM preferably). (And yes, I agree that Supertramp is cool) I also like added 9th and 11th chords. Suspended chords are really awesome too. I pretty much always prefer minor keys over major.

I myself play the piano, guitar, flute and oboe. I write songs on the piano and guitar. Most of my music is in minor.

[lexiphanic]

Right before I dropped out of college our music theory course was just getting into the really cool stuff. Things like borrowed chords and other neato stuff.

I think I'll have to take that class again. Anyway, borrowed chords are my current fav. So completely out of place, but they still fit in, and when you go back to the strong key, it is such a cool relief.

[Hexchild]

I stumbled on some more complex chords some ten years back or so while I was playing around with simplistic note combinations. I found one combo that was particularly powerful with jazz and blues music:

You pick two notes that are exactly 6 halfnotes apart, say A# and E. Then you find the note exactly 5 halfnotes above the upper one, or one octave less one halfnote above the lower, in this case the next A. Learn to transpose this combo to anywhere on the fly and play it as if it were a note, try it out with various bass notes.

For example, the above A#-E-A combo sounds really cool with a C bass (you get a mix of a 6 and a minor 7). Then move the combo down to A-D#-G# and combine with an F. Same combo, different chord (which is now a bluesy sharp 9 sort of thing). From there it's natural to go on to G#-D-G/A# and then G-C#-F#/D# and so on. It also works well to move the bassline like C-B-A#-A, which allows for some natural chord variation.

The F-B-E combo (this is the same one transposed), when used briefly, also sounds cool with a C bass, unless you give the F too much focus. The effect is like a combination of a sus4 and a maj7. If you combine the same with a G bass instead, you get a regular (minor) 7.

Combos like this one only hint at the actual underlying chord while bringing out the notes present in the combo above the others, and this can be really effective. I think the chords themselves usually get so much attention that the effect of "weighting" the notes differently in a chord tends to be gravely underrated.

[Winterpark]

The 7#9: A real blues chord. Some blues wannabes will put dominant 7ths all over the shop and think they're John Lee Hooker, but it takes guts to put this in a song.

Actually, it is more often used as a dominant chord, leading to a major or minor tonic chord. e.g. G7#9 -> Cm11

And yeah, sus chords are great. I like the sus13 the best cause it has all the tensions in the scale(7,9,11&13). A nice voicing for the sus13 that I like is playing the root in the bass, leaving out the 3rd and the 5th and playing the rest in the upper register. e.g. Gsus13 - G(bass) + F, A, C, E. You might also find this chord as Fmaj7/G - generally the same chord with a different name.

[Serotonin]

It's been a while, but I've got more.

- What I like to call the "reaching for the stars" chord. Play a normal major triad in the treble, say D F# A. Instead of playing the expected corresponding root D, play the root a step down from the expected one, a C in this case. Works well after you play the Cmajor actually, since you keep the root but the treble shifts up a whole step, hence the "reaching" quality of the chord. Classic example is in the last 20 seconds of the Beatles' Abbey Road album: (discounting Her majesty's a pretty nice girl) ".......is equal to the love you make" - on "make" they play the C, then the C-reaching chord with vocal harmonies will give you eargasms. Joni Mitchell likes this chord too, you can hear it a lot in "Court and Spark".

- The 13th: Like the 6th but spookier in that it has the dominant 7th in it as well. The staple chord in the verse of Steely Dan's "Deacon Blue", it's jazzy, rich, yet has a certain intrigue. Try playing a Bb13 after an Am7 when you're fooling around with chords. The transition is spine-tinglingly good.

- The 7#5th. This one is a deceptive chord. Again "Deacon Blue" is the best example I can think of, you can hear in in the 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th chords in the intro. although I wrote a song called "Tourmaline" in which it is used extensively in the chorus. When you first hear it you think "hmmmmm, sorta bland" and then if you hear it again and again then you grow to appreciate it. Usual implementations of this chord will have the minor third in, although in some jazz pieces (probably Thelonius Monk) the major third is used instead. It's an unresolved chord, so you shouldn't start or end a piece of music on it. It best conveys a mood or portent of apprehension or impending intensity, but in itself the chord seems disinterested, almost apathetic. Thusly I can relate to it quite well ;)