Chord tones for an Alt chord

An alt chord normally (as I use it) has a #5. B7alt - I presume the B7 is a major dominant seven so the 3 is major (natural), the 5 is sharped and the seven is a b7 or flatted 7. R-3-#5-b7

The 5 can be altered to a b5 or a #5.

 

Sorry to come in here with not much more than a thread bump, but I will be pretty stoked to get a coherent answer to this. I have yet to see a description of alt chord construction ANYWHERE that makes sense to me. I first saw it attempted in Mark Levine's "jazz theory book." It was the only point in the text that I just went "ErrrRRR...?" and walked away knowing nothing more than before I started reading.

 

That's it??

 

No. See Pacman's post. An alt chord is a dominant chord with an altered fifth and/or ninth.

 

See here we go again! And/or? I have never had a problem playing over them as a soloist, but now that I am trying to approach it from a bassist's point of view I find it a little more tricky.

So if I outline an alt chord then all of these intervals are at my disposal? Is there ever a "wrong" choice when the alt chord is called for? Or is anything fair game as long as you stick to the intervals you named?

 

He he yeah sorry to lag the conversation a bit I'm typing on a tablet

EDIT... And let me just say, Febs, that the description you just gave (if it's that simple) clears things up nicely. Now I just have to go play a few to get the sound down.

 

Thank you man! You have no idea how must I appreciate this bit of knowledge.

 

Over a altered chord, I like to play a minor six chord up a half step, which gives you most of the altered chord tones. So in this case, Cmin6 over B. And you can change the amount of alteration by moving that minor six chord up in minor thirds. So C min 6, Eb min 6, F# min 6, and A min 6 can all outline that dominant chord. Just because the sheet says altered 7 doesn't mean you have to play that. Out of those four chords, F# min 6 is the most "in" and C min 6 is the most altered or out. Amin6 gives you a suspended sound. This is one of the ways a lot of piano players think about and play altered chords.

Or you can ignore that B7 alt and just treat it as a bar of Dmin7. And you can treat the next one as a bar of A7. The chords on the sheet are just embellishments of that basic I-V-I motion.

 

In the big picture of how to address altered chords, the advice given is good, but in the context of how the B7alt is being used in this section of Beautiful Love, the B7alt is just a reharmonization of the Dm7 to add downward chromatic movement (by adding B natural over the Dm7) to the Bb7(#11) chord that follows. Since the B7alt is only two beats, there aren't that many choices to make. Here's one case where I'd actually focus on the root.

Dm7: D F A C
B7alt: B D# F F## A C D

 

How does it not make sense?

 

The natural ninth (or second) and the natural fifth are wrong. It is a dominant 7th chord wherein neither the ninth or fifth are played unaltered.

 

Just skimmed through the thread. Coming from a guitarist/pianist, an alt chord has the following members:

1 3 b5 b7 b9 #9 b13

Yes, both b9 and #9. The #9 is technically a split third.

So, B7alt = B D# F A C D G

 

the Altered chord comes from Melodic Minor Harmony. More specifically it is the scale built on the 7th degree of MM harmony. An altered dominant chord has the Root, Third and 7th of the dominant chord. the 3rd and 7th (the guide tones) define the quality of the chord and the tension between the 3rd and 7TH (the tritone) is what wants to resolve. This is exactly like any other dominant 7 chord.

The Altered scale also contains the b9 and #9 as well as the b5 and #5. Therefore you have
Root
b9
#9
3
b5
#5
b7

or

you can think of playing a C Melodic Minor scale over the B7alt

 

Well, you know what? After going back into the book (it's been several years since I last checked it out) I have NO IDEA what was so hard to get at the time! When I went back and looked again it seemed perfectly plain... Of course this time I was going into it with my brain preloaded with "it's a dominant chord with an altered fifth and ninth" which seemed to make all the difference in the world. I think what might have left my head spinning last time was the way Levine summed it all up in the last paragraph of the section...

I remember reading that at the time over and over, shaking my head, and walking away aggravated. Don't know if my brain was already full by the time I got there or what, but after I went back and reread the entire section again today it all seemed so straightforward

 

I think of the b13 as the #5, because of how the chord was defined for me, but in some voicings, adding the #5 above the octave as a b13 might sound less muddy.

 

I try to avoid too many occurrences of the same number. If you're going by the "melodic minor harmony" interpretation, then this is technically what the chord is: 1 ♭3 ♭5 ♭7 ♭9 ♭11 ♭13. No repetitions whatsoever. However, nobody likes to see ♭11, so they change it to "3", which makes sense since that's how that tone typically functions. But then we have two types of 3's, which is weird, so "♭3" is changed to "#9", since that's the Jimmy chord. Now there are two types of 9's, but everybody knows that one of those ninths is an actual ninth, and the other ninth is actually a third. "#9" also implies that it should be voiced above the 3, which is correct. So, there's a lot of fuss about the ninths, but we're willing to live with two of them. I wouldn't start messing with the fifths, but if that's what helps you to remember it, more power to ya.

 

Another way to think about an altered chord is that it's basically a Dominant 7 chord with a flat 9 and flat 13, a chord which typically resolves to a minor chord. Then you fill in the space (a step and a half) between b9 and major 3 with a #9, and move the 5th down a half step to color it some more.

Nobody plays all those tensions simultaneously. Many times, they'll leave out the #9 and the b5, effectively playing a b9b13 chord. They'll use the #9 and b5 to provide some motion within the chord voicing.