Why aren't chord chart symbols standardized?

[Fassa Albrecht]

Seriously, I'm learning to play Watermelon Man by Herbie Hancock on bass and also on piano and for this I'm using two lots of charts, both of which use different chord symbols and so present to me a memory challenge.

SO I was wondering- notation is to a point standardized, along with tablature legends (again, to a certain degree), so why haven't jazz charts also been standardized?


Anyone know the answer?

EDIT: When I say different chord symbols, I mean different symbols like the difference between Cm7 (for example) and C-7.

[TBAR Shane]

Most likely because not everybody seems to agree on which symbols work the best. Some prefer roman numerals over letters, and some prefer things written Maj/min, over min/-.

[JimmyM]

Because chart writers are by and large lazy, and when doing them by hand, writing C-7 or C+ is easier than writing Cm7 or Caug7. The dash and plus sign are a lot easier to write

[Russell L]

Originally Posted by JimmyM

Because chart writers are by and large lazy, and when doing them by hand, writing C-7 or C+ is easier than writing Cm7 or Caug7. The dash and plus sign are a lot easier to write

Exactly. However, I usually only use the short cuts when outlining and go ahead and write it out more on the final chart. Well, unless no is gonna read it but me.

[Groove Master]

There has been too locally ways of writing chords. Sometimes we needed a lexique to understand them which is a non-sense. But one page that tells it all for its professionally useage and its no-nonsense symbols is in all the NEW REAL BOOK serie by Sher Music. To me this is the reference that is worldwide understood.

[fdeck]

Even if symbols were standardized, nobody would go back and recopy old charts. And small discrepancies among chord symbols are not even the worst of what you are going to see. Chances are that as you gain fluency in reading charts, small discrepancies will cease to be a problem.

[Groove Master]

Also I think that the writing and the publicized version of the first Real Book edition that came out of Berklee as the first book with jazz standards got a lot of spread and therefore became kind of a standard way of writing chords that were used there. This is why we still see the ∆ to express the Maj7 chord or the - to express the minor chord. These symbols are not standard by there efficiency at representing the chords notation IMO.

The other thing to remember is that those guys who wrote the first realbook were really good jazz musicians and they knew about harmony really well. So, some chords symbols used at the time like C11 or C7b13 contain "avoid notes" that are not present in the notation but are known by the trained jazz musicians and are not played by them but, for the newbies, these symbols if played as is will sound bad because the avoid notes will be played in the voicing.

So, since then, the notation of chord symbol is a big debate regarding the area you are from but to me, the Sher's notation is the one that is used by the Hollywood composers and arrangers and on all the big studio sessions's arrangers in L.A. and to me it is good enough to convince me that these symbols are used by the top studio musicians and are also a good representation of French and English writing like Maj for MAJEURE ou MAJOR and min for MINEURE ou MINOR.

I actually hope this could be standardized but I doubt it. Too much egos out there but if you want to be able to be understood when writing chords, I suggest strongly the Sher notation as a base.

[Groove Master]

Originally Posted by fdeck

Even if symbols were standardized, nobody would go back and recopy old charts. And small discrepancies among chord symbols are not even the worst of what you are going to see. Chances are that as you gain fluency in reading charts, small discrepancies will cease to be a problem.

+1

I teach jazz harmony class in college and I teach the Sher notation since this is what is used in LA and are IMO the most logical and no-nonsense way of writing them but I spend some times to show all the possible versions of chords I have seen in my career since they might see those one day or another in the "real world" ;-)

[Ed Fuqua]

Because God hates you personally.

[theretheyare]

c-7, cmin7 or cm7- I know what the notes are, and that's all I need to know.

So why _should_ they be standardized? Our everyday English vocabulary keeps evolving, rather than being a 'standardized' thing, and so does music.

I'm sorry, but IMO it's mostly lazy educators or institutions with an interest in selling courses and course materials who push the idea of standardization, implying the authority to decide what notation should be. Nobody decides that; it's music, not a power game.

[HaVIC5]

Also I think that the writing and the publicized version of the first Real Book edition that came out of Berklee as the first book with jazz standards got a lot of spread and therefore became kind of a standard way of writing chords that were used there. This is why we still see the ∆ to express the Maj7 chord or the - to express the minor chord. These symbols are not standard by there efficiency at representing the chords notation IMO.

When you say the C7b13 has an "avoid note," I'm assuming you're referencing the m9 between the 5 and the b13 in a voicing. That's actually rather contested, since there are plenty of Berklee-approved ways to voice that chord with both 5 and b13 that still work, like voicing the Ab below the G (to invert the m9 to maj7), voicing the Ab next to the G in a cluster in the center of the voicing to get a nice m2 shimmer, or voicing the G in the lower register a fifth above the C to create a power chord sort of base to the chord that "negates" the unravelling effect of the m9. Because of this, the current Berklee literature calls the 5 a "conditional avoid note."

It's all BS, of course, you could also possibly want the sound of the m9 in the voicing....

As for the C11, that's a chord symbol that universally is known to mean "7sus4." Yes, it doesn't actually reflect the standard chord symbol naming nomenclature, but then again, there's are other symbols that don't fit in either.

Now, the "∆" symbol is an interesting story. Originally, so I'm told, it was invented by Sonny Rollins to denote a "triad" on his charts, specifically the tune St. Thomas. His piano players would always add 6ths and 7ths to the chords he wrote down, and he would get really frustrated, because he just wanted the sound of the basic triad behind him (triangle, triad, there we go). Because the tunes where he wanted the naked triad usually were in major keys, these charts typically had the ∆ symbol next to major chords, which pianists would go ahead and interpret with the major 7th when Sonny wasn't around. So, despite the fact that it ended up with the exact opposite meaning as it was intended to have, ∆ eventually mutated to mean "major 7th chord."

SO I was wondering- notation is to a point standardized, along with tablature legends (again, to a certain degree), so why haven't jazz charts also been standardized?


Anyone know the answer?

Here's the sad truth, they will never be standardized. A few years back, the now defunct International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) organized a push for standardization of chord symbols. The problem was that its own members couldn't decide on the golden standard! Now it's gone bankrupt, and there isn't any sort of central authority on the matter that can give a definitive answer on the subject.

As for me, I use both Chuck Sher and Berklee. I like Chuck Sher's overall approach, although I enjoy naming the basic seventh and then adding extension afterwards to be very specific what I want in the chord. For example, I like writing C7(b9,13) (Berklee's approach) rather than C13(b9) (Chuck Sher).

[Fassa Albrecht]

Originally Posted by theretheyare

c-7, cmin7 or cm7- I know what the notes are, and that's all I need to know.

So why _should_ they be standardized? Our everyday English vocabulary keeps evolving, rather than being a 'standardized' thing, and so does music.

And why should I have to learn 5 different chord symbols for exactly the same damn chord?! It's not like writing a chord in a different way changes the notes that chord is composed of.

And even within a language, there IS standardization. For starters, English spelling is largely standardized now to a set spelling or a SLIGHT variation (color/colour for example). Accents and other punctuation is also now standardized in most languages, including languages like Classical Hebrew where once upon a time vowel markings depended on the person writing it.

I'm sorry, but IMO it's mostly lazy educators or institutions with an interest in selling courses and course materials who push the idea of standardization, implying the authority to decide what notation should be. Nobody decides that; it's music, not a power game.

Wrong. YOu'll find standardization in pretty much any RL situation. Clothes sizes are standardized to a point, as is sizes of products, requirements for engineers and in manufacturing etc. Why shouldn't music be the same?

[theretheyare]

"And why should I have to learn 5 different chord symbols for exactly the same damn chord?! It's not like writing a chord in a different way changes the notes that chord is composed of. "

Nobody tells you you should have to, you just don't want to. Fine, but don't put that on anyone else but yourself.

"Wrong. YOu'll find standardization in pretty much any RL situation. Clothes sizes are standardized to a point, as is sizes of products, requirements for engineers and in manufacturing etc. Why shouldn't music be the same?"

Chord symbols are _interpretations_, not laws. If you really want to learn standardized music, throw out tab and chord symbols and learn to read notes, plain and simple. Build your own chords. Get creative.

[teleharmonium]

It's hard to get people on the same page. Even if you're talking about people in a management structure with the ability to enforce rules by firing people that don't follow them, this is not easy.

Musicians from around the world with language, style, cultural, and many other differences ? On the topic of music theory which itself it not really standardized or limited ? Good luck with that.

Outside of formal composition where the music is intended to be played exactly as written, music notation exists to solve short term practical problems among small groups of people. Nobody has the motivation or leverage to create universal solutions. Think about what it would take to engineer that. Musicians like to think of themselves as individualistic. They would enjoy not conforming and make it a badge of honor. Conspiracy theories and misunderstandings would abound.

[Richard Lindsey]

Originally Posted by Fassa Albrecht

And even within a language, there IS standardization. For starters, English spelling is largely standardized now to a set spelling or a SLIGHT variation (color/colour for example).

You're right, it would be nice if all the chord names were perfectly consistent, but frankly, I don't think the variation in Cm7/C-7/Cmin7 is *that* much greater than the variation in color/colour or esophagus/oesophagus or esthetic/aesthetic or antihelmintic/anthelmintic or Mohammed/Muhammad/Mahomet.

If you can deal with those differences in words, you can deal with the differences in chord symbols. They're minor differences, there aren't that many different chord symbols in the first place, and they don't take that long to learn.

[svenbass]

Because that's the way it is.
It ain't gonna change.
Deal with it.

[Blueszilla]

Why do you need a chord chart for Watermelon Man?

[Fassa Albrecht]

Originally Posted by theretheyare

"And why should I have to learn 5 different chord symbols for exactly the same damn chord?! It's not like writing a chord in a different way changes the notes that chord is composed of. "

Nobody tells you you should have to, you just don't want to. Fine, but don't put that on anyone else but yourself.

"Wrong. YOu'll find standardization in pretty much any RL situation. Clothes sizes are standardized to a point, as is sizes of products, requirements for engineers and in manufacturing etc. Why shouldn't music be the same?"

Chord symbols are _interpretations_, not laws. If you really want to learn standardized music, throw out tab and chord symbols and learn to read notes, plain and simple. Build your own chords. Get creative.

Not saying I won't learn the variations, only making an observation that a standardized system exists elsewhere in music.

Oh, BTW, I can read notation pretty much fluently. Reading from a score wouldn't be a problem one bit for me. But how many full scores have you seen in jazz playing?

Originally Posted by Blueszilla

Why do you need a chord chart for Watermelon Man?

Because I suck.

[Richard Lindsey]

Originally Posted by Fassa Albrecht

Oh, BTW, I can read notation pretty much fluently. Reading from a score wouldn't be a problem one bit for me.

Well, there you are, then. If you can read notation fluently, reading chord symbols ought to be trivially easy in comparison, even if variants exist. Learning what to do with them is a different matter, but just reading them should be no big deal.

Just buckle down and learn the variants. It won't take long, and shortly you'll wonder why you ever thought it was any kind of big deal.

[bigboy_78]

They are pretty standard really. C-7, Cm7, Cmin7 always indicates C Minor 7 chord.

It would be a problem if some charts had C-7 written for a dominant 7th chord.