Originally posted by Ed Fuqua
DURRL - and a fine article it is, too.
Thank you, good sir. It has been brought to my attention that I promised a second chapter at the end of that one. It'll happen, but don't anybody hold your breath...
TJC - yes, everything does depend on everything else. But it mostly depends on what you are hearing. So if you are looking (for instance) at a C-6 chord (C Eb G A), in what instance (you ask) will you play either a Bb or a B? Well, where ya been and where ya going? What do you hear happening? What does your quarter note melody sound like?
It's not so much that an intellectual distinction is made (this approach is academic) as it is practical, you choose the notes you choose because that's what you hear when you are playing a specific tune with a specific group of people.
To take that a step further (or is it a step backward?), remember that in minor, the 6th and the 7th are actually variables most of the time during solos. One guy may choose to play a miMa7 kind of thing over minor, the next guy might go modal with it, the next guy might skip over the 6th and/or 7th entirely in his line. Or the same guy might do all three things on different choruses. Questions like this come down to COLORS of minor (or dominant, or major, locrian, etc...) in which there are many possible colors that could be played at any given time, and you have to kind of feel your way through it to find the right one. Sometimes you nail it, sometimes you don't. Oh well...tomorrow is another day. As long as you are keeping your ears open when you play, and your mind and ears open when you review the results of your playing, you'll be fine. UNLESS you wake up one day and decide that you've arrived, and don't have to work on it anymore - at that point, you're ****ed.
Most of the time I see a minor6 chord, it's in some older music/early standard/show tune kinda thing. And, most of the time, that progression is a C-6 to D7 to Gmin (generally tonic minor). So if you put on your Berklee glasses for a second, doesn't C-6 (C Eb G A) kinda look like Amin7b5 (A C Eb G) in 3rd inversion? So you're looking at a minor ii V?
Excellent point. The terms "min7b5" and "half-diminished" are newer than the music itself, and they used to be called things like, "man....you know...that C-6 with the 6th in the bass?". There's a translation that needs to be made there, and often the gist of the translation gets lost. Bottom line is that when you read changes, you always have to interpret what you see to make it better line up with what you're hearing. Sometimes the symbols you are looking at do a poor job of describing what the harmony should actually be for any given tune.
So put up the 8 bar phrase that this example came out of, everybody is gonna be able to be more concrete if we know exactly what we're looking at.
Sorry about the slip - that was careless of me...
