Hello and help /w chord in key question, please

[M Sharp]

My twins are now 2 so I decided to dust off my basses and get it going again. Started learning some old Maiden and Metallica etc. and now figure why not go back to theory. So I am starting all over from scratch to get up to speed and then improve and just enjoy the bass.

I had an ok understanding w/ basic theory and music reading from college and playing, but never really applied it fully. So now I am refreshing / learning with StudyBass, Scott Levine online stuff, this site (cool find), The Art Of Walking Bass book, and I just received Bass Aerobics.

So, my question...I bought iReal B per this site. I went to play over a progression in C major. The first chord of the progression was C7. Right off the bat I am thrown off, because I just chose C major as the key and this chord has a B flat. Why not Cmaj7?

Am I missing something? I want to understand the theories correctly before giving myself permission to break them.

Thanks (for ALL the info I am picking up here!)

 

[pkazzo]

I am quite certain other more qualified individuals will reply with a more in depth explanation... Briefly the C7 is a dominant chord, not major, which means it has the flatted seventh.

 

[Bassist4Eris]

Can you post the whole progression?

 

[LeeNunn]

I just got an iPad, just so I could download ireal b. It's great. You can edit the chords. Just change the C7 to a C or Cmaj7. Also, you might create a new song that starts on a C going to a Cmaj7 to a Cmaj9, to Cmaj7#11, and so on just so that you can hear the differences between these chords. You can loop a section forever, or you can repeat the entire song up to 20 times. An add-on program can tell you all the notes in whatever chords you're using, but any theory book will tell you the same thing.

 

[M Sharp]

It's the Blues Jazz exercise. I chose C major. The first 4 bars are C7, F7, C7, Gm7 / C7.

 

[thebass905]

Though the "song" may be based in the key of C as its tonal center, there will be chords with non diatonic tones (because its jazz and that's usually where the flavor comes from!). In the key of C major,technically the only diatonic dominant chord is the V chord or G7. A lot of times, the real book app uses the key as more of a "starting pitch" than as strict confines of chords, because using the notes in the key signature alone would yield limited results because there are only seven pitches to use. On an actual real book page, you'll often see changes with pitches outside of diatonic harmony, while the notated head will have a specific key. I hope this helps a bit, and I tried to explain without too much theory mumbo jumbo!

Best of luck!

 

[M Sharp]

Nope. Makes sense. I just needed to hear "it's a jazz thing". If I just didn't understand my chord tones for C, that would be another problem. Thanks.

 

[mikkejohansson]

It's actually more "a blues thing" than a "jazz thing".

 

[M Sharp]

It's actually more "a blues thing" than a "jazz thing".

Understood. Thx.

 

[MalcolmAmos]

People misuse the dominant seven (C7) all the time. Your thinking it should have been a Cmaj7 is correct.

Blues will use all dominant seven chords in a progression, Why? Good question, it's just been that way for ever. The b7 note makes the minor pentatonic work over an all dominant seven chord progression as the minor pentatonic scale is R-b3-4-5-b7. The Blues scale takes the minor pentatonic and adds a b5 blue note; so the minor pentatonic or the blues scale work well over an all dominant seven progression. Along those same lines Mixolydian R-2-3-4-5-6-b7 would also work, but, here you probably would be stepping into jazz. When the blues gets fancy it turns into jazz.

Once you introduce modes into the picture you leave the blues and venture into jazz and then modal harmony becomes important and your all dominant seven chord progression is no longer viable. Modal normally works best with a modal vamp instead of a V-I chord progression. Long story...... You are on the right track. This may help. http://www.riddleworks.com/modalharm3.html

Here is a Mixolydian backing track. Two chord vamp in C.

My point - hear the two chord vamp of the mode compared to the V-I cadence of the Blues. Two different animals.

Have fun.

 

[Groove Master]

My twins are now 2 so I decided to dust off my basses and get it going again. Started learning some old Maiden and Metallica etc. and now figure why not go back to theory. So I am starting all over from scratch to get up to speed and then improve and just enjoy the bass.

I had an ok understanding w/ basic theory and music reading from college and playing, but never really applied it fully. So now I am refreshing / learning with StudyBass, Scott Levine online stuff, this site (cool find), The Art Of Walking Bass book, and I just received Bass Aerobics.

So, my question...I bought iReal B per this site. I went to play over a progression in C major. The first chord of the progression was C7. Right off the bat I am thrown off, because I just chose C major as the key and this chord has a B flat. Why not Cmaj7?

Am I missing something? I want to understand the theories correctly before giving myself permission to break them.

Thanks (for ALL the info I am picking up here!)

It is probably a Blues. Blues harmony is unique and start with that special sound by having a Major key with the sound of a dominant chord as a tonic chord.

 

[mickster2]

People misuse the dominant seven (C7) all the time. Your thinking it should have been a Cmaj7 is correct.

Blues will use all dominant seven chords in a progression, Why? Good question, it's just been that way for ever. The b7 note makes the minor pentatonic work over an all dominant seven chord progression as the minor pentatonic scale is R-b3-4-5-b7. The Blues scale takes the minor pentatonic and adds a b5 blue note; so the minor pentatonic or the blues scale work well over an all dominant seven progression. Along those same lines Mixolydian R-2-3-4-5-6-b7 would also work, but, here you probably would be stepping into jazz. When the blues gets fancy it turns into jazz.

Once you introduce modes into the picture you leave the blues and venture into jazz and then modal harmony becomes important and your all dominant seven chord progression is no longer viable. Modal normally works best with a modal vamp instead of a V-I chord progression. Long story...... You are on the right track. This may help. http://www.riddleworks.com/modalharm3.html

Here is a Mixolydian backing track. Two chord vamp in C.

My point - hear the two chord vamp of the mode compared to the V-I cadence of the Blues. Two different animals.

Have fun.

...and once again the penny drops for me. MA, you have a fantastic way of explaining this stuff...many thanks!!

 

[M Sharp]

Thanks for that response. It sure helps lift the fog some.
Since this post my study brought me to a I IV V in C exercise. But the chords were C7, F7, and G7. Knowing each key major key has one dominant 7 chord (and it C that would be G7), I figured out now this example was a blues riff and the "shape" of the riff just moved to a different root.

I am building my theory beach one grain of sand at a time.

 

[Clef_de_fa]

People misuse the dominant seven (C7) all the time. Your thinking it should have been a Cmaj7 is correct.

Blues will use all dominant seven chords in a progression, Why? Good question, it's just been that way for ever. The b7 note makes the minor pentatonic work over an all dominant seven chord progression as the minor pentatonic scale is R-b3-4-5-b7. The Blues scale takes the minor pentatonic and adds a b5 blue note; so the minor pentatonic or the blues scale work well over an all dominant seven progression. Along those same lines Mixolydian R-2-3-4-5-6-b7 would also work, but, here you probably would be stepping into jazz. When the blues gets fancy it turns into jazz.

Once you introduce modes into the picture you leave the blues and venture into jazz and then modal harmony becomes important and your all dominant seven chord progression is no longer viable. Modal normally works best with a modal vamp instead of a V-I chord progression. Long story...... You are on the right track. This may help. http://www.riddleworks.com/modalharm3.html

Here is a Mixolydian backing track. Two chord vamp in C.

My point - hear the two chord vamp of the mode compared to the V-I cadence of the Blues. Two different animals.

Have fun.

not all type of blues... the blues played by a jazz musician moves a lot more harmonically than a blues played by rock musician ...

 

[warnergt]

It's actually more "a blues thing" than a "jazz thing".

Exactly. Music theory teaches us about keys. A tune that is
diatonic (very common) will only use the notes in that key.
Blues, on the other hand, typically employs a lot of dominant
chords which, by definition, means it is not really in any key.

When I call out a blues tune, I usually say something like,
"play it in C." I never say "play it in the key of C" because it
isn't in the key of C.

This looks like the tune you were referring to (see below).
The application says the "Key" is C but it's really just giving
you the starting chord root for the progression.

 

[M Sharp]

warnergt, thank so much you for that. In a very simple manner, you open my eyes to the obvious, which I have been missing. In terms of learning theory I only thought diatonic. I thought that was the point of theory.

All the times I would jammed with someone or learned a song using a bunch of 7 chords, I thought there was a key or scale I haven't learned yet which would explain all the notes not in the key when I eventually get to it. I thought I didn't get to that part of the theory yet. Well I guess I just did.

I learned what the word diatonic meant, but understood it as explaining how music theory works or how all chords relate to the key of the song. It's just how I read and digested the explanations in all the books I have read. I am recently redevoting my time to learning theory and when looking at sheet music, never thought of music NOT being diatonic.

So simple and obvious and somehow I missed that and it would throw me off all the time. You just removed a huge stumbling block for me with a simple post.

Thank you!

 

[Snarf]

People misuse the dominant seven (C7) all the time. Your thinking it should have been a Cmaj7 is correct.

No.

OP said this was a jazz blues exercise. Blues chord progressions are NOT functional diatonic harmony. The blues is in its own harmonic genre, where I7 and IV7 are perfectly valid symbols, and do not function as secondary dominants, but as their own separate sonorities. V7 does serve as a dominant chord, but its resolution is to another 7 chord.

Major 7's are never the I in a blues.