Non-chords

[pollock]

I have for some time been engaged in trying to find a way to un-inhibit jazz music from the standard chordal harmony approach. In other words to support a written melody with "non-chords." I believe I have found it in a quartal-voiced 7#9 chord.

For example, a C7#9 chord would be voiced as:

(C bass) E Bb Eb.

This is a non-functional chord. It can go anywhere. The voicing points to parallel harmonic movement, and it does not require a key signature. In essence, it gives rise to music that is atonal.

This harmonic approach, however, does not give rise to tonal anarchy. Instead, it allows the melodic line to be the main focus of the composition. The music, therefore, is tonal, but it isn't in any key. Or, to put it another way, it is always in the key of C.

Other chords can be used of course, in fact any chord can be introduced as a coloring element behind the melodic line. Take, for example, a minor 6/9 chord. This is essentially a quartal-voiced 7#9 chord with an added note, and a different note in the bass.

Here's a C 7#9 chord:

(C bass) E Bb Eb

Here's a C# minor 6/9 chord:

(C# bass) E Ab Bb Eb

Here is the same chord, this time called a 7#9 b6:

(C bass) E Ab Bb Eb

Quartal voicing and chromatic movement are what makes this approach atonal, eliminating the need for a key signature, and allowing the chords to support the melodic line without there being any consideration of a key, which frees the melody to be anything it wants to be, and to go anywhere it wants to go regardless of any predetermined underlying harmonic tonality. It removes the emphasis on harmonic structure and replaces it with melodic structure, with the open voiced, non-functional chords serving as the basis for improvisation. Not a new idea by any means, but an interesting approach to composing jazz music.

[7/4]

Hey, it's the Jimi Hendrix chord. It's in Purple Haze, Foxy Lady...C7#9.

[pollock]

Hey, it's the Jimi Hendrix chord. It's in Purple Haze, Foxy Lady...C7#9.

Ah, I see. I'm still learning my way around here. Sorry...

[JSngry]

I have for some time been engaged in trying to find a way to un-inhibit jazz music from the standard chordal harmony approach. In other words to support a written melody with "non-chords." I believe I have found it in a quartal-voiced 7#9 chord.

For example, a C7#9 chord would be voiced as:

(C bass) E Bb Eb.

This is a non-functional chord. It can go anywhere. The voicing points to parallel harmonic movement, and it does not require a key signature. In essence, it gives rise to music that is atonal.

This harmonic approach, however, does not give rise to tonal anarchy. Instead, it allows the melodic line to be the main focus of the composition. The music, therefore, is tonal, but it isn't in any key. Or, to put it another way, it is always in the key of C.

Other chords can be used of course, in fact any chord can be introduced as a coloring element behind the melodic line. Take, for example, a minor 6/9 chord. This is essentially a quartal-voiced 7#9 chord with an added note, and a different note in the bass.

Here's a C 7#9 chord:

(C bass) E Bb Eb

Here's a C# minor 6/9 chord:

(C# bass) E Ab Bb Eb

Here is the same chord, this time called a 7#9 b6:

(C bass) E Ab Bb Eb

Quartal voicing and chromatic movement are what makes this approach atonal, eliminating the need for a key signature, and allowing the chords to support the melodic line without there being any consideration of a key, which frees the melody to be anything it wants to be, and to go anywhere it wants to go regardless of any predetermined underlying harmonic tonality. It removes the emphasis on harmonic structure and replaces it with melodic structure, with the open voiced, non-functional chords serving as the basis for improvisation. Not a new idea by any means, but an interesting approach to composing jazz music.

Not to be disrespectful or anything, but you're trying to reinvent the wheel here. Ornette's done been there, done that, and a lot more throughly for about 50 years now. And if you want to look at Bill Evans' internal voicings, they are frequently built off of this line of thinking. George Russell no doubt comes in here somewhere as well, and that's just in "jazz".

I would also suggest looking at what happens when you keep your same shell voicing and change the root. The easiest/most obvious is to change it from a C to a Gb/F#, which changes the shell voicing from that of a #9 chord to one of a 13th. But any root note will do, and will also create/imply a new functionality.

And speaking of functionality, once you leave functional harmony, you've inevitably got to confront "chords as color" rather than functional delineators, and then from there, it's on to "colors as sound", then on to "sound as sound", then "sound as music", and it just keeps going, rhythm as melody, texture as words, all sorts of breaking down/apart of what we;ve all been taught is "what music is", and if we're lucky, it allows us to create music that more truly speaks to how/what we as individuals think/hear/feel.

It's a delightful journey, it is, but hardly a new one. I can't say with any confidence that there's any "new" frontiers left any more in terms of the components of music, definitely not in terms of tonality/atonality. But there are new challenges ahead in terms of structure, of how we assemble all we've by now collectively "discovered".

[MoGrubb]

James Brown touched on this stuff too. Ow! Get down. Whoduv thought JB was into Bill Evans et al.

[AllenLowe]

I would make three suggestions -

1) if you are writing melodies, get away from the chord entirely as you write them - I always tended to sit at the piano and play chords in my left hand and melodies in my right, as I composed - this became deadening after 20 years or so; now I frequently work on the melody first, and worry about harmonization later - it tends to reduce my dependence on old habits -

2) a great way to harmonize things is to think in intervals - take the note "C" - this is the ninth of a Bb chord, the dominant seventh of a D chord, the major 7th of a Db chord, etc etc etc - this tends to help pull one away from strictly diatonic thinking - but also remember that a chord may work in isolation but not relative to that which precedes and follows it -

3) compose on some kind of synth, one with good sustain - this has helped me a lot - the piano, which I've always composed on, sometimes dictates its own melodies by it's very specific tonal properties - as any instrument does - a new instrument opens up the mind, presents new sonorities, new kinds of sustain (love my little Yamaha) - and will likely open up new melodic horizons -

4) listen to Mingus - incredible harmonic transitions, unafraid to follow the logic of a melody even when it leads to unfamiliar and even apparently illogical harmonic territory - and Jaki Byard - another master at violating conventional harmonic wisdom yet preserving inner logic; both of these amazing musicians created their own frame of reference (as did, of course, Ellington, Tatum, Monk, Bud Powell, et al)

Edited February 18, 2008 by AllenLowe