Pitches that determine a chord's harmonic function

Yes, no, maybe...

Chord harmonic function exists within a tonal center only. Modal music doesn't apply.
I will have to disagree with what you are saying about chords.

A minor chord with a major third doesn't become a dominant chord. The problem resides in how you voice and heard the chord. If you stack C Eb G B D F# A E. The "roots" of the chord are minor and the extension doesn't change it's function. But if you stack C E G B D F# A Eb, you have a major 7th chord.

As for the major 7th becoming dominant, again I want to say it's not right. I can understand that the feeling might be similar, but their function are different again. But again, how did you voice it? The minor third created by the #5 and major 7th may feel a bit similar to the 5th and flat 7h. But again it is not.

In the end, one very particular thing about music is that you can hear one thing in many different ways. There is theory and there is how you hear something. I would encourage you to try to hear the mentioned chord in a different way, not to prove you wrong but to make you realize that hearing is very relative.

Some books you may be interested in
The Lydian chromatic concept of tonal organization, George Russel
The Jazz Theory Book, Mark Levine
Modal Jazz Composition and harmony, Ron Miller

These are the first to come to mind. Hope this help!

 

I liked this book a lot, because it explains the development of chords/scale relations as an continuous historical evolution, and submits lots of examples. Lets you create your own opinions on why and what it means.

 

@Tom Lane
Now it's starting to get interesting, I wasn't sure at first if we were talking theory/hearing. I always take a more theory approach at first and I think in this case it's wrong. I guess what you meant by dominant is the unstableness that the chords have? Am I wrong in thinking that you are using the word dominant just to imply that some note wants to resolve? If so, I agree with you to some extent.

Also, when you are trying these on the piano, do you have a real piano? If so sympathetic vibration may step in the game and change some of these things. I would love to try what we are talking on a real piano but I can't. This is to me the beautiful thing about music, it's when we start talking about how you are hearing something. Doesn't matter what is the quality of the chord, it's beautiful to hear where it can take you.

Food for tough, Jacob Collier as some very interesting things to say about minor chords, but I can't find the video. If I remember correctly, he switches the 9th and minor third around to get very different feel. The only interesting one I got for now is

Regarding the Lydian concept, if there is a college or university near you, it is usually very easy to get a card to rent from them.

 

To me, a key feature of a dominant 7 in root position is that it has a two step reception process. Because of how the pitches are from early partials of the overtone series as well as the major third and soft dissonance of the minor 7, at first it is pleasant enough. As the tritone interval between 3 and 7 comes forward, it starts to wear out its welcome and beg for resolution.
Of course inversions alter this.

Blues chord changes actually restart this process (as well as resolve in the root movement)!
I came to an understanding of it walking around the zoo in the summer: I was in one area and there was horrific screaming child behind me - I moved to another area of zoo and there was another one! Still, changing out the screaming kid for different screaming kid "restarted the process".

Any chord with a tritone will want for resolution in a similar way, if it doesn't have a two part process then something different than a dominant 7 is happening.

 

I wouldn't call a flat five dissonant, though I also wouldn't call it consonant, to me the harmonic quality it has is unstable, which can be more unsettling than dissonance.

 

Hey! maybe you are interested in Mike Tomaro´s Instrumental Jazz Arranging.

 

It was worth getting on TB this morning just for this

 

I'm always a bit puzzled when I read about chords having 'functions'. My own concept - acquired from my studies of, first, classical harmony and counterpoint, and only then jazz harmony and lots of arranging has led me to the conviction that chords don't exist, at least not as entities with specific harmonic functions.

Chords are a way of shorthand for the ('vertical') cross-sections of parallel ('horizontal') voices in a piece of music, more convenient than sheet music and leaving some space for improvisation. One of those voices is ours, the bass part. No doubt taste is king, but I really dislike bass players who break up say, a half-diminished chord to then move to the next, say, an augmented dominant seventh chord, without showing - from their playing - how these two chords are functionally connected in terms of voicing.

The punch of this concept is that if at a certain point I decide to incorporate an extra (half) step (or whatever comes up in me) for the sake of a nicer voicing, the chord itself will change, but the chord's function will stay the same.

 

I think if we think of them as colors it can work better than function. In art even a misunderstanding can lead to great work. I like the idea of trying to describe a chord. Ex. m7 in root position could be described as a dark consonance with a soft dissonance.
It is also helpful to consider the basic qualities of adding a note:
1. Add a note already in the chord that does not disrupt the current color or function
2. Add a note already in the chord that strengthens or accents a quality in the chord
3. Add new note that does not alter the color or function of the chord but makes it more rich
4. Add a note that changes a chord.

You can also think of it as hamburger: Bacon or cheese doesn't disrupt the burgerness of the situation, where an egg, pulled pork or making the patty out of something other than beef might.

Also, back to my ideas about the secondary reception dynamics of a dominant 7 chord: If a new note or inversion causes dissonance with notes other than the lowest note, then those qualities may emerge as the chord is played rather than on the first sounding of it.

 

Very true. Alterations can add a special flavor to chords, and enhancing chords with additional can really give our music a special flavor. But if a master of this art (e.g. Chick Corea, John Scofield) flavors a chord with some extra's leading to, say, Ebmaj7b9#11, what is the message to us bassists? We carry the band in the harmonic sense, and our concern is not this special flavoring (that obviously has already been taken care of by keys or guitar), and our role is not to squeeze in all of those extensions, but try to keep together the larger picture of the piece by laying down firm lines.

 

The message to the bassist is to be careful if you play passing notes between the basic chord tones.
Each alteration alters the basic scale (from the unaltered Version of the chord). Exceptions are only if these notes are still part of the scale but not written down, but then there would be no real added new spice, just a bit more of the already present one.

 

This brings up an interesting idea, which is how, where and why lines and chords connect. The Western music concept of melody/chord/bass line + possible counter melodies doesn't come through if the music is heard as continuous block of vertical harmony.
The way we perceive music is more complex than that.
Various factors such as dynamics, decay, melodic integrity, note length and orchestration (whether improvised on written) makes the lines and chords connect at various points and be autonomous at others.
A bassist really needs to be careful in general of what the play on the one and what notes they repeat or otherwise lay into. Chromatic lines are going to "separate" from rather than connect to the chord. It is also possible to create a line with enough melodic integrity that it comes through on its own.

 

Very true. And this is exactly the reason why I prefer to stay away from the prescriptive character of chord symbols.

 

If you are trained to play root notes on the 1 and lower chord notes on the other beats, that can be limiting. But the training is the problem, not the chord symbols themselves.
Anyway, I prefer to have a shorthand notation for the scale (which is the full chord) instead of or additionally to a chord symbol.
But since no one else wants to use that notation ...

 

I mean, yeah so do I. However, in the study of standards and tunes by jazz composers, it is part of that discipline. Trying to stay away from them isn't really the answer when you are working with that material - which I don't use for my work. You are free to play your own material with its own rules or just to play free. When engaging with chord based material, there are plenty of ways to be free with them while keeping them in mind.

In my mind too much is really given to what notes to play with chords and more thought could be given to how to take off and land on them! When people talking about "playing changes" it is quite literal - the moment a chord changes is a meeting point. If you learn the various ways of engaging and disengaging with the chordal harmony, there is a lot of melodic and chromatic freedom to be had.

 

Wow! What a freaking mouthful. There is no diatonic scale that fits, but Lydian #2 (6th mode) from the Harmonic Minor scale comes close. Of course I am assuming the 13th is Major. I believe the chord function would work out to VIMaj7#9#11, assuming the chord is functional; which is not guaranteed.

Although I don't have the depth of education to explain, I think it's fairly common to have the (discretionary) choice between b9 and #9 when faced with such a dilemma, so you really have 8 note choices (Eb,Fb,F#,G,A,Bb,C,D). IMHO with the right degree of care, you could probably work in all 8 of these tones into a nice bass line. You could probably even work in a few more carefully chosen notes. Given you don't need to use all of them, I am just making a point that you have a bunch of notes to choose from.

Regarding the question posed by the thread: AFAIK, individual pitches don't tell you a lot. You have to look at everything. Sometimes the chords are ambiguous to some extent, but then the notes of the melody narrow it down to a specific key center. Or, perhaps the melody is ambiguous as well. No big deal, in jazz you have considerable freedom to color outside the lines, although it's better if you can do it using knowledge and skill, instead of just throwing out a bunch of .

I admit I am more if an inside player . This is is the logic I would use if I were to see Ebmaj7b9#11; then I would use my ears to confirm my desperate attempt to make sense of the insanity.