At 12:16 AM -0500 1/18/09, Christopher Smith wrote:
On Jan 17, 2009, at 7:06 PM, Adam Golding wrote:
Yeah the 'popular' chord notation (anyone know where this came from
originally?)
Strangely, it came from an adaptation of classical figured bass.
This is why the exception to the "all chord members are major
unless otherwise specified" rule is THE SEVENTH, which is minor by
default, because the first 7th chord in classical music was a
dominant seventh chord.
Hi, Christopher. I'm afraid that's quite the opposite of what I
teach. Popular chord symbols (which were first adopted and then
adapted for jazz) actually came from early 20th century Tin Pan Alley
sheet music. It included either guitar boxes, ukulele boxes, or
banjo boxes, but couldn't include all 3 so they added an alphabetic
indication of the chord so it could be realized by any chordal
instrument. It had, as far as I can see, absolutely no connection
with baroque figured bass, which was a totally different system
dependent on a bass line and related to the prevailing key and key
signature (as you mention). In fact I would hazard a guess that the
great majority of Tin Pan Alley songwriters wouldn't have recognized
figured bass if it bit the on the, er, base!
And the "rules" you cite (quite correctly) were simply an outgrowth
of the most common chord vocabulary of the time, a vocabulary that
can actually be found in the barbershop harmonies of the '90s and
even in Verdi. Those Tin Pan Alley publishers believed in KISS!!
One danger in the early days was that the chord symbols too often
represented the right-hand chord (for the pianist), but did NOT
indicate function or bass note. That was still true as late as the
sheet music of Richard Rodgers, and you can't always trust his chord
symbols to mean what we think they should. And I don't recall seeing
fractional notation, indicating an inversion and/or a bass note,
prior to the early '60s, although my experience at that point was not
drastically broad. I believe that it was the songs of Bert
Bacharach, among others, that required that notation, since it was he
who popularized the subdominant over dominant bass as a cadential
chord rather than just a pre-cadential chord. (IV/V - I, rather
that V7 - I)
The thing I have to remind all my jazz theory students is that
jazz/popular chord symbols have nothing to do with the key. They are
completely independent. A C7 is the same four notes no matter what
the key signature is.
Exactly so. On this we are in complete agreement, but to me it is a
clear differentiation from figured bass. Same problem, same need;
totally different solutions.
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:john.how...@vt.edu)
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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