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In general, the conflation of "chords" and "harmony" can be just little sticky, because one implies something the instrument is doing, and the other what the co

In general, the conflation of "chords" and "harmony" can be just little sticky, because one implies something the instrument is doing, and the other what the composer/band/piece does. An instrument might be making lots of chord changes, but that doesn't necessarily mean there is any overall harmonic motion happening. Sure in rock'n'roll the guitar player isn't hitting the third a lot, but the singer almost certainly is! Also, if you are playing modern jazz, you are not really doing functional harmony like this analysis assumes except at a very macro level. Chord changes there are about color more often, only punctuating with a true harmonic change. This can be true even if they are moving from, say, an I9 to IV9. That seems like a "change", but its really just elaborating on the I. I seem to remember "open chords" in my brief counterpoint studies, but can't find anything to back that up now. But in counterpoint you could talk about the openness of certain "harmonies" in terms of their compatibility to any number of changes. Something with a lot of doubled roots and fifths are less open to changing, if you are following the "rules".

tejohnso 5y ago
> In general, the conflation of "chords" and "harmony" can be just little sticky, because one implies something the instrument is doing, and the other what the composer/band does. Maybe not directly related or as confusing, but also worth noting here I think is that you can play three notes sequentially and still call it a chord. It would be a "broken chord". And you can play just two notes simultaneously as a "harmonic interval".
klodolph 5y ago
I'm not going deep into Jazz, but if I'm playing a song with something like I vi ii V, then I'm going to likely color those chords with the 7th (at the minimum) and likely additional extensions. I picked something like I69 not because it has function different from I, but because a 6/9 chord is a common choice for a Jazz musician to play as a I chord. Or, at least, it's one of my first picks. And if you're playing I9 -> IV9, my question is whether the I IV is just comping on I or whether it's harmonic movement. And I will say that while there is no requirement to use functional harmony in Jazz, there is a massive repertoire of Jazz that uses functional harmony, or at least uses harmony where you can get insight by analyzing it functionally. For example, I might analyze something as "bV7/V I" in a jazz song and that is both very functional and very jazzy, and in a classical piece I might see "N6 V7 I" and while N6 and bV7/V are similar chords, using the chord with dominant function is, stylistically, a jazz idiom.

tejohnso 5y ago

> In general, the conflation of "chords" and "harmony" can be just little sticky, because one implies something the instrument is doing, and the other what the composer/band does. Maybe not directly related or as confusing, but also worth noting here I think is that you can play three notes sequentially and still call it a chord. It would be a "broken chord". And you can play just two notes simultaneously as a "harmonic interval".

klodolph 5y ago

I'm not going deep into Jazz, but if I'm playing a song with something like I vi ii V, then I'm going to likely color those chords with the 7th (at the minimum) and likely additional extensions. I picked something like I69 not because it has function different from I, but because a 6/9 chord is a common choice for a Jazz musician to play as a I chord. Or, at least, it's one of my first picks. And if you're playing I9 -> IV9, my question is whether the I IV is just comping on I or whether it's harmonic movement. And I will say that while there is no requirement to use functional harmony in Jazz, there is a massive repertoire of Jazz that uses functional harmony, or at least uses harmony where you can get insight by analyzing it functionally. For example, I might analyze something as "bV7/V I" in a jazz song and that is both very functional and very jazzy, and in a classical piece I might see "N6 V7 I" and while N6 and bV7/V are similar chords, using the chord with dominant function is, stylistically, a jazz idiom.