Major Chords

For one reason or another, we've all come to consider the major chord to be the most basic of harmonic structures. It's possible this comes from early exposure to major tonalities in the form of children's music or pop songs, though exact reasons are of course impossible to pin down. As one moves into jazz, it's inevitable that the Major 7 chord assumes the same role, providing the base point to which all other chords can be compared. This is a curious occurrence, as the chord is actually fairly dissonant, and when encountered in other musics, stands out starkly; in fact, it wasn't really until the writing of Duke Ellington that the chord became common place, players frequently using an added-sixth chord in to create a major tonality before that.

Nonetheless, in our current environment, it can be desirable to find some substitute for the chord to add variety to compositions (or standards). The following is a list of some typical chords that can play the role of a major chord. As we've discussed before, chords of the same quality (major, minor, dominant) can essentially be considered interchangeable, though some of the following chords will be too dissonant for some settings. For simplicity, we'll spell everything on the root of C. While voicings are always important in the creation of musical effects, there are too many to consider at the moment, so chords will be spelled ascending from the root to the highest extension. Finally, the descriptions provided obviously cannot do justice to the sound of the chord. It's important for anyone interested in employing these chords to sit down at the piano and play them and experiment with possible voicings.

Major Triad – C E G

This may seem counter-intuitive, but a calculated use of a major triad can create drastic effects. While most of these will be accomplished through some sort of altered progression and not chord substitution, the purity of a tonic triad can be powerful and is often missing in jazz music. Of course, overuse both counteracts this and can make the music too simplistic for most player's tastes, but the option should be at least considered.

Major 9th – C E G B D

A simple extension of the Major 7th chord, this chord can be used to create lush textures without using any chromatic alterations. As with all extended chords, Major 9th chords provide the greatest effect when the upper extension is voiced in the melody.

Added 6th – C E G A

As mentioned before, until the time of Ellington, this chord was considered the basic major chord in jazz. As its structure is not third-based, it can be considered part of a family of chords that comes from the pentatonic scale rather than the diatonic scale and often invokes a mood more associated with folk music than art music.

6/9 – C E A D

This unique chord finds some of its earliest representations in the piano voicings of McCoy Tyner. Whereas the added 6th chord evokes folk music, the 6/9 chord, with its fourth-based structure, is decidedly artificial in its sound. Similar to the 6 chord though, the 6/9 chord also resides in the pentatonic scale and carries some of the qualities of that scale.

Major 7#11, or, Lydian – C E G B F#

The simplest of the chromatic major chords, the lydian chord has become commonplace in jazz today, and to some extent, may be losing its dissonant on veteran listener's due to its overexposure. The chord saw first saw frequent use in the music of Wayne Shorter and has increased in popularity ever since. The F# in the chord requires the use of the lydian scale in playing over it, and as such, when used as a tonic chord, changes the key of the piece. As it has become standard practice to improvise in the lydian scale over major chords though, this scale change is less of a hurdle than it may have been in the past.

Major 7#5, or, Lydian Augmented – C E G# B

This chromatic major chord lies outside of the standard major scale, instead finding its home in the third mode of the melodic minor scale, the lydian #5 mode. In the standard jazz literature, this chord is exceptionally rare, though it does occur in a few pieces by Keith Jarrett and Wayne Shorter. As it takes a skilled improviser to play over the chord fluently, frequent use of this chord can make songs difficult to play. As a side note, when encountered in classical music, this chord is considered to be a major chord with an added flat sixth, spelled from the third of the chord (in this case E G# B C). Debussy and Ravel use it to great effect in their pieces La Mer and Concerto for the Left Hand.

6/9#5 – C E A D G#

This strange chord is actually a personal creation. It fits in the Lydian # 5 scale, though it sounds markedly different from the Major 7#5 chord. I've provided it here as an example of a chromatic chord constructed through added tones. In practice, any chromatic tone can be added to any chord as a chromatic extension, though care should be taken to make things playable for improvisers.

6b5b9 – C E A Gb Db

And to completely ignore that last bit of advice here's a chromatic chord that offers no specific scale for an improviser to play. This chord can be described in numerous ways. If found in the music of Messiaen or Stravinsky, it could best be described as a reduced polychord, in this case Gb/C (the Bb is missing from the Gb chord). It's also possible to conceive of the chord as an added sixth chord over a chromatic bass note, here viewed as A6/C.

Hopefully exploring this list provides inspiration for compositional possibilities. Considering both the nature of harmony in jazz – as discussed in the last post – and currently accepted compositional practices, a thorough understanding of the sounds of these chords can be more useful than any traditional harmonic training.

Concepts of Harmony in Jazz

In discussing the application of harmony in jazz composition, it's important to consider the major ways in which the music differs from its European counterpart. With only minimal analysis, one can discover that the chordal palette of jazz music tends to be far broader than classical music. Even composers known for their use of extended chords – most notably, Claude Debussy – use them sparingly: the notion that his impressionistic style is the product of frequent use of extended chords is decidedly false. Yet at times, the works of even relatively early composers such as Haydn and Mozart seem to offer a wider spectrum of harmonic colors than the typical jazz standard. In order to understand this – and further one's own compositional abilities – we'll take a short look at some specific differences in these musics.

In the classical conception, chords generally occur as a combination of independent melodic lines, undoubtedly a byproduct of the music's choral roots. While pieces by composers such as Mozart and Schubert tend to employ block chords frequently, more often than not, this music has a substantial level of polyphonic activity. The advantage of this style comes in the drastic effects voice-leading can have on a harmonic progression. If you've ever taken a theory class, you'll be at least somewhat familiar with the concept of voice-leading: in short, a way of writing multiple melodic lines that flow between many chords smoothly. Creative approaches to this technique can turn a rather simple harmonic progression into a monumental event. This introductory passage of Shostakovich's Prelude in F Major from Op. 87 demonstrates how one can turn a rather tame – and by that point, old fashioned – modal mixture into a unique musical event.



What can be learned from this is that the effect generated by a chord does not arise simply from the chords quality, but the manner in which that chord was approached. While one can reply to all of this by stating the use of polyphony in Dixieland jazz, they'd be (probably knowingly) pointing out the exception to the rule. In general, improvised music doesn't lend itself towards complex voice-leading: by the time one begins to write enough of the material on paper, the spontaneous feel of the music starts to disappear.

Another difference – one that is an outgrowth of the last – is the classical composer's tendency to invert chords to create more fluid passages of music. In fact, the conception that the inversions of a single chord belong to a single family is fairly modern: composers as late as J.S. Bach considered the three inversions of a triad to be unique chords with separate functions. And indeed, every inversion of any chord provides a unique sound which the experienced composer can use to their advantage. If you'd like an easy example, go sit down at the keyboard and play G7 followed by G7/F: while both chords technically resolve to C Major, they sound surprisingly different. Yet in jazz, chord inversions rarely occur. Almost every standard has every chord written in root position; if an inversion does appear, 95% of the time it will be the result of a dominant pedal, which in many ways, is an entirely different compositional technique. The role of the bass player in the jazz rhythm section easily explains this difference. Written bass lines tend to be uncommon in the jazz repertoire, as, like any writing, they can easily impede the improvisatory feel of the music. That's not to say inversions don't occur – many bass players probably play inversions without the rest of the band really realizing it – but if a composer gives a bassist a long series of inverted chords, the variety of possible bass lines quickly dwindles.

The innovations in jazz writing that took place in the 60's show a conscious effort to circumvent these limitations. Chords expanded far beyond their typical four-note voicings, the general pace of the harmonic rhythm found in a piece slowed down, and non-functional chord progressions – that is, sequences that operated outside of the typical diatonic model – became standard. The final product was the shifting modal music of Wayne Shorter (which I've already touched upon a few months ago in this blog). And by and large, this model remains the standard for jazz composition. In this conception, a wide chordal vocabulary is necessary to approach writing. Starting with the next entry, we'll investigate some of the chords that came into use, as well as some lesser-used chords.

Dear John

“He had considered creation in its whole extent, and his descriptions are therefore learned. He had accustomed his imagination to unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were extensive. The characteristick quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is gigantick loftiness. He can please when pleasure is required; but it is his peculiar power to astonish.”

Samuel Johnson on English poet John Milton

What's to be said about John Coltrane? Lewis Porter already put the majority of it in words in his great biography of the legendary tenor player, so for any serious study, one would do best to seek that source out. As it is, this will only provide a few short thoughts about the man and his music.

Coltrane represents the hope of students, not because “Giant Steps” has become the benchmark for the training jazz musician, but because Coltrane moved beyond this piece almost as soon as he put it on record. All contemporary accounts of Coltrane as a young man speak more to his dedication than to his technique: he was in no sense a prodigy. Miles Davis was disappointed to be stuck with Coltrane at the assembly of his First Great Quintet, much preferring the playing of Sonny Rollins. Coltrane's breakthrough into his late period came from intense study and consideration of the music of Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman. While undoubtedly a musical genius, Coltrane's success came more from hard work than natural talent.

Coltrane shows the path from technique to expression. His mastery of Charlie Parker's bebop style allowed to speak simply when he reached his mature style: he borrowed from his own future with the thousands of notes he played with Miles Davis in 1960, leaving only what was necessary for what followed. He showed that one practices scales in order to not play them. The resultant level of personal expression in his music was matched only by Miles Davis in his greatest moments. The music on First Meditations, and Stellar Regions is almost overpoweringly emotional and can be exhausting to listen to. Ultimately, his late music initiated an ultra-romantic period in jazz. He's not too distant from Johannes Brahms in this, who studied the masterworks of Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert in order to transcend the mechanics of music in his highly expressive works. At their best, both discard passage work for vocal melodies, finding their greatest successes in a single note.

Also like Brahms, Coltrane appeared to be completely devoid of humor. If his music misses the beauty of the everyday, it only does so as it strives to speak on the most noble of subjects: a simple look at the titles of the pieces on Meditations confirms this. While Kind of Blue works equally well as foreground or background music, A Love Supreme demands focus and attention. In the end, Coltrane's music garners not fans but disciples. Furthermore, he demands not a passive worship, but an active role in the creative process. A love of Coltrane's music pushes the listener towards the creative. It's here that one runs into the biggest difficulty though, one which few have been able to surpass until this point: following in his footsteps while remaining faithful to its creative spirit.