Jazz and sevenths-elevenths-ninths

[TheBlindBard]

Hello, everybody,
I've been researching into jazz lately and trying to get into playing it a little. My girlfriend helped me and transcribed the "12 jazz mandolin chords" chart in a word-document for me and I've been playing around. I love the sound of them. MY fingers are protesting and not working, but, they'll come around in time, hopefully.
I've been hearing alot about "sevenths" and other numbers, ninths, elevenths, in lots of the jazz mandolin articles. I'm just trying to understand a little more here. Let's take C major seventh. Looking at the chord, it's C, E, B, G (it seems as if this is switched around for ease of playing from C E, G, B)
What exactly does it mean by a seventh in this case, as well as the other numbers (I may of not covered them all, please correct me if not). Is it talking like, how the mando is tuned in perfect fifths? and the note falls on that? G, D (is five notes from G) and so on? B is seven notes from C in the C major scale, but, I'm not sure.
Can anybody help me understand a little more?
Thanks in advanced.

[Sid Simpson]

This is a bigger question than you may realize, and there is a ton of stuff out there on chords and scales. You could spend years on this stuff. As a good intro, I would suggest Mike Marshall's DVDs from Homespun.

Here's a short answer. Chords are derived from scales. As a simple example, a C scale consists of all natural notes - C D E F G A B C. If you give them numbers, C is 1, E is 3, and G is 5. 1, 3, and 5 together make a major chord - C. If you start adding notes above the scale shown, the last C is 8, D is 9, F is 11, and so on.

You gave the notes for a Cmajor7 chord, which is common - C E G B. If you take the 7 note from the scale and flatten it to a Bb instead of a B, you have the C7 chord. Adding a 9 on top of this gives you a C9. Add an 11, you have C11.

If you take that same C chord you listed, C E G, and flatten the third from E to Eb, you have a C minor chord - C Eb G. You can build from there, and get to things like a Cminor7b5. It's all built from the scale.

Given the way the mandolin is tuned, it's not always easy or practical to play the notes in a chord from lowest to highest. In addition, you can only play 4 notes at a time, so the notes may be rearranged to fit the fingering possibilities and for the different sounds they give.

I'm sure someone will post a note with a good chord/scale reference. I'm not coming up with anything at the moment. Good luck, and stick with it. It will all start to make sense, and you are asking the right kinds of questions.

[TheBlindBard]

Thank you very much for the response. It makes a little more sense. What exactly do you mean for the ninth and eleventh? so, since B is the seventh in that case, would the ninth be the D in the next octave? or does it not work like that?
Thanks, that helped greatly.
So, if you know that basis, can you quickly make up chords and play them, or does it not work like that either?
I'll definetly try to stick with it. I'm digging the sounds I'm getting so far. I found some instructiomal jazz improv piano stuff on a library for the blind as well, so, got that on as well and will be pulling from that as well.

[Mike Bunting]

Your library will have a ton of books on music theory and you would do well to put in the work required to study them. No one here can fully answer your questions properly without writing a 10 page dissertation. Much of what you ask requires a level of basic musical knowledge that you haven't acquired quite yet and need a lot of background to fully explain it. You seem to jump around from topic to topic before you understand the first one. I think that you might learn faster if you stuck to the basics for awhile before jumping to the next level. Best of luck though and keep at it.

[Dave LaBoone]

Thank you very much for the response. It makes a little more sense. What exactly do you mean for the ninth and eleventh? so, since B is the seventh in that case, would the ninth be the D in the next octave?

Yep. C7 (C E G Bb) plus the ninth (D) gives you C9. Take C7 and add F for C11. Keep experimenting, and check out books from your local library & Mike Marshall's arpeggio DVDs.
Cheers,
Dave

[TheBlindBard]

--When you put it like that, it doesn't seem all that difficult, to be honest. Kind of reminds me of cooking in a way.

[Sid Simpson]

Here's a short reference. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Music_Theory/Complete_List_of_Chord_Patterns

Cooking may be a good analogy, but remember it's the combination in cooking that makes it work. The artistry is how you combine the notes and in what order. Which notes you leave out can be as important as which notes you play. The first or tonic note may be left out if you are playing with other instruments, who will likely be playing it, and you may focus on the "color" tones, i.e. 7, 9, 11, etc.

Here is another link to a discussion of inversions, which you may find interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(music)#Inversions

Again, get a good reference on theory. This is a big topic, and you are just getting the flyover version here.

[JeffD]

Jazz, like music itself is a big ocean, with no front door. You jump in wherever you are, knowing that where ever you jump in it will not be the optimal place to start learning.

Mike Bunting has a very good point that there is a lot of background stuff that is real important, and available in a lot of reference books and on line. But you'll get it, maybe not in the order that makes the most sense at first, but you will get it.

Your enthusiasm will more than make up for whatever inefficiencies there are starting in the middle of the subject.

[Polecat]

--When you put it like that, it doesn't seem all that difficult, to be honest. Kind of reminds me of cooking in a way.

Unfortunately, it is difficult, if you want to understand what the chords mean and what they do in a musical context. You could do worse than using This Website (http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/jazz-learn/)as a study guide. You'll find the basic information about nomenclature and how jazz harmony works, plus a lot of other useful information.

[TheBlindBard]

"You jump in wherever you are, knowing that where ever you jump in it will not be the optimal place to start learning."
I laughed at this probably more than I should have. Is the world of jazz as much of a twisty windy road as my interests have taken me on the mandolin? :D

[Jim Gallaher]

I spent a considerable amount of time learning about the theory of constructing chords and it was time well-spent. It prepared me for the discovery that knowing "which notes to leave out" was essential to my progress.

That led me to 3-note chords on the mandolin and things made a lot more sense. Here's a good resource for those chords: http://jazzmando.com/tips/archives/print/3-Note-Chords.pdf

[Pasha Alden]

To Sidsimpton a good description of the notes. So I think anyone who had problem should get that and find it helpful.

Happy pickin' all!

[TheBlindBard]

That link you posted, is it an actual document? I'll see if anybody can look at it with me later today. I'm gonna go fiddle around with the stuff I have now and try and work on that some more. Those four-note chords are difficult because my third finger and my pink can get in the way. I stretch my pinky out and play the note on the A string and leave y third finger to cover the E, with first covering D and srecond covering the G. Very cramped. I've gotten a somewhat clearish sound out of some of them, though.

[TheBlindBard]

I"ve mainly been working on the smaller three-note jazz chords from the 12 assential jazz chords document and enjoying the sound of those.

[Jim Gallaher]

The link is for a pdf document file with 14 pages of chord charts for 3-note chords in all twelve keys.

[TheBlindBard]

... wow. And they are all jazz chords, or just three-note chords in general?

[Jim Gallaher]

They are probably 90% jazz chords.

[TheBlindBard]

Nice, I'll have to work on transcribing that later :)

[jefflester]

But it includes all the run-of-the-mill chords as well, major, minor, 7th, minor 7th, major 7th...

[TheBlindBard]

Ah, thank you so much for that link. My girlfriend said she'd be willing to help me in transcribing the charts so I have some reference.

[mmcadory]

Don't get caught up in the name game. Notes first. Names later.

Your original question was what are these 9ths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth) 11ths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleventh) or 13ths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth), where do they come from and how can I get some out of my mando?

The where do they come from is pretty easy. Write the C scale across the page twice.


C
D
E
F
G
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
A
B



Count under or over every other letter starting with C=1, E=3, G=5 . . . .


C
D
E
F
G
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
A
B
C


1

3

5

7

9

11

13

15



There are your 9ths, 11ths, 13ths. They were there all along. Not as hard to find as the Higg's Boson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson) has been.

Since you can't play all 9, 11, or 13 tones at once on a mando, you can approach these chords with pieces of that sequence. The fun part is that you can also play the tones out of ascending order and missing fragments on fretted instruments but still get credit giving a fluidity and approximation to the naming process.

Chord names are a relative object depending on the approach that the key, and therefore scale, and deviations from it, provide. Using the C major 7th chord tones you referenced, C E G B, when approached via the key of C are named C major 7th. But from the key of G those same four notes played on the same exact strings and frets could be called Em/C. With the another instrument playing A your exactly same fretted chord now becomes part of an A minor 9th (A C E G B). Name is relative to key. C minor 6th is spelled the same as A minor 7th flat 5th (A half-diminished). The former spelled C Eb G A from the C scale 1 b3 5 6. The latter A C Eb G differs from the A scale 1 b3 b5 b7. As stated before centuries of dissertations have been written about nuances of this realm.

The best explanation I've ever had was in the front matter of the Guitar Grimoire scales and modes book explaining how to use the book and I've taken several different courses in music theory. It also involved me burning through a couple of 1/4th inch graph paper tables to fully grasp what what going on where.

Good tunes and happy pickin'

MMc

[TheBlindBard]

Thanks, man. I appreciate all of the people who have posted answering my questions. It makes alot more sense now. I can't do any of the four-finger chords yet, but I've got alot of the three-finger ones on the "12 assential jazz chords" chart pretty down-pat. Happy picking, everybody.