On Oct 22, 2008, at 9:35 AM, Dana Friedman wrote:
I always stayed away from the - because most people use + to mean
augmented. Though I have seen some people stay way from the + by
writing things like C7#5...... But..if I'm to to reduce the amount
a player has to read, I wouldn't want the player to have to
question things...especially when reading the chart down. The more
question the ensemble has, the more morale goes down during a
rehearsal :)
No?
I absolutely agree with the principle that the notation should be as
clear and quick to read as possible and not create ambiguity in the
mind of the performer. The difficult question is: what notation
accomplishes that goal?
I have reasons for not using #5 on dominant chords. I know it was
part of chord nomenclature for a long time, possibly out of ease of
explanation to newbies - ("you can have an altered 5 (#5 or b5) or a
natural 5, but not both") - but the note is not normally spelled
correctly as #5; it is spelled correctly as a b13, the sixth note of
the chord scale, not the 5th note. In my area b13 is the norm on
dominant chords, but one still sees #5 in old fake books like the
original Real Book.
I would use #5 on augmented major 7 chords, though, as this is indeed
the 5th note of that implied chord scale.
I don't use + for the simple reason that some French and Italian
sheet music editions I've seen use it to indicate major 7 chords (C+7
for Cmaj7) and I wouldn't want to create any question about that at
all if my music is being read by musicians from other countries.
Christopher
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