The Summer Youth Music School (SYMS) at the University of New Hampshire runs each summer. I attended it a couple years back in High School. The second year, I prepared a piece called Au Privave (No. 1) from the Bird Omnibook. This is a transcription of solo by Charlie Parker.
Charlie Parker played on alto, but I played tenor sax, and prepared the version from the B flat book, which was transposed down a fifth. It turns out that this radically alters the fingerings. Parker played insanely fast, and in doing so, he naturally sought out the fingerings that flowed smoothly and naturally on the Saxophone. And then he played them at superhuman speed. It turns out that transposing it up a fifth radically changes some of the fingerings, and also puts many of the notes out of the range of the Saxophone
Why does the G# work so well when the rest of the song is in C major? Why, if the song is in A minor (the relative minor to C) does the G# become the note that turns it into a Harmonic minor? The answer would be based on the Harmonic series.
The G# we are discussing is based on the 13th element of the series. In a non-tempered instrument, this would be the +41 Cents indicated, meaning that it would be a fairly sharp note.
Let’s Ignore Octave for a moment and just write out the notes of the Series.
C C G C E G Bb C D E Gb G Ab Bb B C C# D D# E
You can think about how much color a given note has by how far down the series you need to go to get to that note. The 1, 3, 5 and Dom 7 all are in the Early part of the series. That Dom 7 is fairly flat (-31 cents) from the tempered tuning. I think it is fascinating that the Minor Third we hear so often in a minor chord is so far down the Harmonic series. A C minor uses the Eb, which is the 19th note of the series. However, if we think of the A minor, then the Third is the base note of the series, while the root of the chord is based on the 27th note of the series. There must be a simpler explanation for that.
The E minor chord is much earlier in the series…the E is the 5th note of the series, and the G is the 3rd. But the B (the V of the E minor) is the 27th note of the series.I suspect that what we actually hear is not based on a single harmonic series, but on multiples. If we were to translate the C scale shown above to the E scale, then the V of the chord is, again, the 3rd note of the series. Same with the A minor. So You would have to transpose around the harmonic series to see where the G# fits relative to the other notes of the chords.
I suspect that what you are going to find is that the Chords are based on multiple Harmonic series. For example, the B that makes up the Major 7th in the C maj chord is very closely related to the G in the Harmonic series based on the G root. It does not even show up in the first 20 notes of the Harmonic series based on C.
Looking again at our series of notes, we can see the earliest Minor chord is the G minor. The G is the 3rd and 6th entry of the Series, so very strong root. The Bb is the 7th entry and the D is 9th entry.
The sequence also shows why a Dom7 with a Ninth added to it sounds so strong. The Chord Ninth is the D, coincidentally it is also the 9th element in the series.
I also find it quite interesting that the E to Bb tritone shows up so early in the series: 5th to 7th entries. This sound is so strong and jarring, but it is right up front.
You must Take the A Train…if you want to improvise over a standard. But this standard tune has a non-standard chord in Bars 3 and 4. If you are playing the “Real Book” version in C, the song starts with two measures of C Major 7, and then goes up a whole step to D. If we stayed in the Key of C, this would be a Dminor chord. Billy Strayhorn was much more creative than that, and he put in a chord rarely seen anywhere else: D7 b5.
I’m a nerdy male of Jewish, Eastern European Descent. I was born in 1971. My parents listened to John Denver, Simon and Garfunkle, Billy Joel, Mac Davis, Anne Murray and Carly Simon. My Uncle Ben started me on Saxophone in second grade.
Jazz improvisation performance. You’ve been preparing. You have mastered your instrument with long tones, scales, and exercises. You have worked on general knowledge of music theory, chords, and the relationship between them. Now what?
