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What am I missing in this measure?

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It's so interesting that a thread about a clearly-visible typo (or typos Eb and E natural) was able to produce four pages of comments.
Just to keep this thread alive, I'd like to ask a simple question.
If we had an descending line where the bass moves from F to E natural, would you write it as
F - Fb or F - E natural?
 
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I'm terrible at reading, but in my super limited exposure I thought it was always sharps or flats, but not both in the same score.

My simple-minded approach is an upward chromatic step, use a sharp, and downward, use a flat, regardless of key signature. Probably wrong but I'm mainly doing transcriptions for myself so whatever works...
 
Why not listen to the recording and hear what Paul Chambers played?
Seems to me that would be the definitive answer (and maybe what your teacher is testing/hoping you will do).
Oh, yes. Of course. If you could point me in the direction of the recording where this bass line is what was played, I would do that. It's the first thing I looked for.

Unfortunately the only recording I find that I know he played on is not played like this, so I am not sure to what extent this is a faithful transcription, or a transcription of a more obscure performance, or a student-level reworking of one of those two things, since it's in an instructional book. All I have to go by is the paper combined with some chords I programmed into iRealBook so I could have some context.

What I should have done, but failed to do, was record it when the teacher played it, but I didn't think I'd have a hard time finding the recording. I know better for next time.
 
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Also Too - I don't consider the E natural a "chromatic..." movement, as E is the #11 of the Bb7 chord. It is "in" the Bb7 chord as an upper extension, that just happens to result in a "chromatic.." movement. That's why it sounds "good/right", IMO.
OK.
Would you call the chromatic movement "chromatic" from the following example?

Chrom1.png
 
Thanks everyone. Again, I don't think this is any big deal, I just wanted to know if there was some weird thing about that measure that I didn't quite understand.

It seems like it's probably a mistake and I'll clarify how he wants it played next week. I can't be the first student who has noticed this, so he either forgot to mention it or wanted to see if I would also notice it. In any case, it's a small thing and note reading isn't the focus of instruction here so it's also a bit of a sidetrack. I appreciate you all very much.

Now I am going to get back to actually playing this rather than talking/writing about it :)
 
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It's the third measure in this line:

View attachment 5124273

It's a lesson, so my gut tells me it's just a test to get me to ask this question, and to see if I don't play two different notes there.
Given the characteristics of the whole part and the first note of the following bar being F - it stacks up as a chromatic run up from D. Either misprinted or written incorrectly with the natural sign for the F being omitted.
On the other hand, as it’s a lesson, it may have been a test.
 
...
Is she reading the flats and accidentals correctly?
...

The consensus, with which I tend to agree based on what it sounds like, is that it is supposed to be E natural. I've seen jazz charts that use only accidentals, i.e. no key signature, in which case D# to E would be written that way - Eb followed by E natural would require 2 accidentals, and some folks will go to all kinds of extreme measures simply to reduce, on principle, the number of accidentals. What might have happened here is the key signature was added later and the addition of the natural sign (demanded by the addition of the signature) was simply overlooked. With a signature in place it would be better to annotate as:
upload_2023-7-14_15-30-16.png

Not least because that accidental is only in force within the bar and is cancelled at the next barline.

I'm terrible at reading, but in my super limited exposure I thought it was always sharps or flats, but not both in the same score.

There is no convention for that. In minor keys the 7th is always raised to a leading tone by accidentals that are not part of the signature. In the case of say, D minor, the signature is 1 flat, but the leading tone is annotated C#. If the line in question is using the melodic minor scale, the 6th is raised by a natural, so you could easily see all 3 simple accidentals in one place:
upload_2023-7-14_15-26-3.png
 
It's so interesting that a thread about a clearly-visible typo (or typos Eb and E natural) was able to produce four pages of comments.
Threads always veer off course based on a number of factors, not the least of which are assumptions about the situation in the OP that are only tangential to the topic. So far I'm hearing that- due to one typo- everyone involved here is incompetent, two Berklee grads don't know any theory, I read better than they do, I haven't got enough common sense to look for a recording of this song, and since it's my first lesson with this teacher I'm a beginning player.

That's just off the top of my head. There's more, but this is just the way things go on these threads :). You can't blame people - where there's limited information, our minds tend to fill in the blanks - usually with poor substitutes for real info.

The thing is, there's also a lot of interesting stuff that's only tangential to the question, and that's all good.
 
Oh, yes. Of course. If you could point me in the direction of the recording where this bass line is what was played, I would do that. It's the first thing I looked for.

What kind of transcription doesn't tell you what it's a transcription of? That's a seriously 4-dimensional chess move by your teacher, to withhold that information. "Your homework assignment is to learn this tune, but I won't tell you what it is."

I think it's a typo. I would play D Eb E F.
 
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There is no convention for that. In minor keys the 7th is always raised to a leading tone by accidentals that are not part of the signature. In the case of say, D minor, the signature is 1 flat, but the leading tone is annotated C#. If the line in question is using the melodic minor scale, the 6th is raised by a natural, so you could easily see all 3 simple accidentals in one place:
upload_2023-7-14_15-26-3-png.5124772
I have a feeling the confusion about all sharps or all flats comes from what you'll see in key signatures as opposed to what you'll see in the notation itself. It's true (to my knowledge) that the signatures will contain sharps or flats, but never both. It just doesn't work that way for the notes that follow, though.
 
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It may be more typical to see this approach written as "E(b) E-natural F", but that doesn't mean that writing it as "D# E-natural F" is incorrect (though if you have an Eb in the key signature, why not use it?)
Well, maybe not technically incorrect in the most basic sense, but, let's say, bad notation practice. First, it obscures the fact that that note is simply the 4 in the key (and not the augmented 3). Second, the whole point of having key signatures in the first place is to cut down on the number of accidentals you have to use. As you say, if you have an Eb in the key sig, why not use it? Now, if we'd temporarily moved into another key without changing the main key sig, that could be a different story, but we haven't in the example given, so the D# helps nothing and actually gets in the way.
 
Would you say, "It's a typo" in the following notation?

It's from
Diane
Steamin' With The Miles Davis Quintet (1956) - Paul Chambers.

View attachment 5124748

probably not -

enharmonics have a math to them. spelling notes/chords is sometimes a little more flexible with jazz, but typically there is a correct and incorrect spelling of a note depending on its function. lots of perfectly good reasons to name that name D# rather than Eb even if we're in the key of Eb. if the next chord had a root of E, playined D, D#, E makes 100% perfect sense, for example.
 
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