Diminished Chords

NylonDave

Lango-Django wrote: »

Ok, Dave, I'm afraid you've lost me.

What I thought you were going to do was an exercise in chord substitution to make this tune sound more like a typical swing tune.

I'm not sure I understand where you're going with all those diminished chords--- is it an etude in octatonic technique, with the soloist choosing notes from those arps?

Because I know most of the swing standards and there's not a one of them that uses diminished chords remotely like that.

I'm attaching an eight bar grille with some typical swing-style chord choices for you to try playing as you hum the first eight bars of "Long Long Ago" over them.

Hi Will, I am a progressive kind of guy. I chose to explore the single idea that is the title to this thread i.e. diminished chords. I used all three of them to deliberately show in a short example how they would work in this tune. I DID sing and play them and if you do too you will see that they support the voice more than adequately.

They may not look like a grille for a typical swing tune of the time but what they do look a lot like are the kind of thing a certain player from the swing era whom you might be familiar with might play around with and use to comp. If a fellow was keen on finding that kind of thing less mysterious he could try and finger it and see how it works. And if he used it as a study then he might be able to play with these ideas on the fly. I'll be working them round a few keys and preparing them with some other simpler exercises, but that's just me.

The tune does not go to the four chord so it is kind of hard to make a full blown swing thing happen but if I wanted to 'skip to the end' then I would probably move to the relative minor pretty sharpish if I was trying to make it like a classic swing. But I thought engineering principles are best learned one at a time. So yes it is an etude in diminished chords and that is exactly what I meant it to be.


'The idea back then seemed to have been to tart up simple chord patterns to make them sound busier and more complicated, which was considered to be a more "modern" "sophisticated" sound...'

I do not think that is what the point is of tarting up chord progressions Will, I think the points are to create ear candy that lets the soloist know where he is in the tune at all times by giving it a more detailed structure and 'pulling it's harmonic punches' so to speak. It can be terribly difficult to orient oneself buy ear in an unfamiliar tune if this detail is missing, like a load of tonic chords in three repeated a sections where the cadence arrives at either bar six seven or eight. Also elaboration helps to provide a harmonic journey that creates more of a narrative for the listener and potentially greater emotional depth. It is also good to have a few places to go to avoid staleness or sameness for the soloist.

I like simple harmony and don't like sophistication for the sake of it and haven't the slightest interest in sounding modern. I'll go for beautiful if I can manage.



D.

NylonDave

Over and OUT.