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> This is why my functional harmony teacher used to get annoyed by people writing the “Crosstown Traffic”/“Purple Haze” Hendrix chord as E7#9 (which you see a l

> This is why my functional harmony teacher used to get annoyed by people writing the “Crosstown Traffic”/“Purple Haze” Hendrix chord as E7#9 (which you see a lot). He would say it is E7b10 because that g natural is coming from the minor modes so it’s actually the fourth degree which has been flattened. If you call it a #9 you’re telling players the wrong scale for improvisation (pretty much everyone else in the whole world calls it E7#9 though). you mean the third degree I think? at first I thought your teacher seems overly pedantic here, but it does kinda make sense... I'm surprised I've never heard anyone argue that before!

derriz 2y ago
Yep! It’s far more logical. This chord blends major and minor so the obvious way to indicate this is by adding a flattened 3rd.
seanhunter 2y ago
yes. Blame it on lack of sleep. Also as a sibling to your comment points out it's a blend of major and minor, so also in jazz you'll often see something like E7b9#9b13 written, but that really makes no sense in terms of a scale. The 9th is either flattened or sharpened, can't be both. So the next degree of the scale is the b10, which also makes sense when you think about something like a "diminished" scale which people play over this chord often. He also used not to like the name diminished for the scale btw, but would refer to it as one of Messiaen's modes of limited transposition. I can't remember Messiaen's nomenclature exactly but the scales which people call the wholetone/semitone diminished and semitone/wholetone diminished are one of his symmetrical system of scales. IIRC there are 3 distinct "diminished" scales and all the other ones are just modes of these three. So you can see that the st/wt diminished starting on D is just a mode of the wt/st diminished starting on C for example.[1] [1] This is him https://williamkinghorn.org/Biography https://williamkinghorn.org/Biography he was an awesome guy and I learned a lot from him
rerdavies 2y ago
I'm not sure your teacher is right. The notation should be Em7b11. Ultimately, I think it would depend on whether Hendrix included F or F# in the scales that he used to solo over The Hendrix Chord. If he includes F, E7#9 would be the better notation, since it suggests an altered mode: I, IIdim, IIImi, IVdim(and probably Vdim). (E, F, G, Ab, Bb, C D) . If he includes F#, then you could make a case for E7b10, which I would read as implying a blues scale, although I've never ever seen that notation: I, II, IIImi, IIImaj, IV, V (E, F#, G, G# A B C D). My bet is that Hendrix plays F, not F#, given that he was a jazz musician before he was a rock musician. The argument for Em7b11 would be that the major third is actually the FOURTH note of an altered scale. . Better still: Em7b9b11. Or I suppose you could be uncontroversial and just write Ealt. Chords derived from altered scales, and chords based on quartal stacks are both severely broken cases in modern chord notation. Neither seems to have settled chord notations, and the chord notations that do exists vary greatly by dialect. (Jazz guitarist who very much prefers modern functional chord notation, that implies both scale and chord, to the older Broadway jazz notation style).
- seanhunter 2y ago
  Well he would say it's not functioning as a minor chord it's functioning as a dominant, so any kind of Em is off the table. Also if you call the major third the b11 you are turning one of the notes of the main triad into an extension which he would take issue with too. But you know, obviously do whatever makes sense to you. As Schonberg says in Harmonielehre, "There are no rules of music, only rules of style".

derriz 2y ago

Yep! It’s far more logical. This chord blends major and minor so the obvious way to indicate this is by adding a flattened 3rd.

seanhunter 2y ago

yes. Blame it on lack of sleep. Also as a sibling to your comment points out it's a blend of major and minor, so also in jazz you'll often see something like E7b9#9b13 written, but that really makes no sense in terms of a scale. The 9th is either flattened or sharpened, can't be both. So the next degree of the scale is the b10, which also makes sense when you think about something like a "diminished" scale which people play over this chord often. He also used not to like the name diminished for the scale btw, but would refer to it as one of Messiaen's modes of limited transposition. I can't remember Messiaen's nomenclature exactly but the scales which people call the wholetone/semitone diminished and semitone/wholetone diminished are one of his symmetrical system of scales. IIRC there are 3 distinct "diminished" scales and all the other ones are just modes of these three. So you can see that the st/wt diminished starting on D is just a mode of the wt/st diminished starting on C for example.[1] [1] This is him https://williamkinghorn.org/Biography https://williamkinghorn.org/Biography he was an awesome guy and I learned a lot from him

rerdavies 2y ago

I'm not sure your teacher is right. The notation should be Em7b11. Ultimately, I think it would depend on whether Hendrix included F or F# in the scales that he used to solo over The Hendrix Chord. If he includes F, E7#9 would be the better notation, since it suggests an altered mode: I, IIdim, IIImi, IVdim(and probably Vdim). (E, F, G, Ab, Bb, C D) . If he includes F#, then you could make a case for E7b10, which I would read as implying a blues scale, although I've never ever seen that notation: I, II, IIImi, IIImaj, IV, V (E, F#, G, G# A B C D). My bet is that Hendrix plays F, not F#, given that he was a jazz musician before he was a rock musician. The argument for Em7b11 would be that the major third is actually the FOURTH note of an altered scale. . Better still: Em7b9b11. Or I suppose you could be uncontroversial and just write Ealt. Chords derived from altered scales, and chords based on quartal stacks are both severely broken cases in modern chord notation. Neither seems to have settled chord notations, and the chord notations that do exists vary greatly by dialect. (Jazz guitarist who very much prefers modern functional chord notation, that implies both scale and chord, to the older Broadway jazz notation style).

seanhunter 2y ago
Well he would say it's not functioning as a minor chord it's functioning as a dominant, so any kind of Em is off the table. Also if you call the major third the b11 you are turning one of the notes of the main triad into an extension which he would take issue with too. But you know, obviously do whatever makes sense to you. As Schonberg says in Harmonielehre, "There are no rules of music, only rules of style".