Despite being a music tutor who usually teaches music to fretted instrument players – including guitarists, mandolin players and lutenists – my musical thoughts seldom focus purely upon the guitar family. As a composer, I often write for other instruments. The differences in musical thinking and perception between the various instrumentalists, as well as singers, conductors, composers and non-musicians, are fascinating and illuminating. An absorbing side-effect of such diversity is seeing the vast terminology used to describe harmony and melody, which can be both informative and confusing.
With regard to guitar, there is an uncommon divide that concerns few other instruments. While some view the guitar primarily as a melody instrument, others regard it as a harmony provider – in folk music especially. The middle ground appreciates that the guitar operates well in both roles. This, combined with its portability, is its real strength.
Fretted string players have been some of the most fluent improvisers, using only figures, a barre symbol, or perhaps just an archaic mode label to invent expressive harmonic voicings or creative and exciting melody. The jargon and symbols used in Western music over the last few centuries are, at best, revealing function and/or sound or – at worst – shrouding music in an elitist mystery.
While a consensus on the naming of scalar and harmonic parts would be ideal, we are heading in the opposite direction: new names for established chords and modes appear regularly. Expectations should be served by the name on the tin.
Signs and codes
In a standard ii-V-I perfect cadence, the dominant chord following the supertonic leads to the tonic and, already, I am using a mixture of terms. The technical names give a clear indication of function, if you know how to interpret them. Roman (or Nashville to many non-classical musicians) notation would also indicate function to a classical and a jazz musician, and both would know what sound to expect from these numerals. I have also called this a perfect cadence, a sound unsurprising to any musician. Nowhere, however, is there a description of the actual chords involved, whereas most rock and pop musicians would expect to see the symbols: Dm, G, C. While classical purists might sniff at this, it is not so far from thoroughbass or the Baroque alfabeto, where the chord G would often be described as A, broadly speaking, because it was the most popular chord – though beware a ZZ chord in a Baroque guitar book, which is likely an obscure voicing. The common skill involved is that, given a succinct symbol, the musician extemporises chord moves with decent voice leading.
In classical music, the ii chord here is likely to appear in first inversion, in jazz almost certainly extended to a 7th or 9th voicing, perhaps with a flattened 5th. Dm7 with an F in the bass is frequently described in rock or pop music as F major 6th, simply abbreviated to F6.
Some extended chords become ambiguous, their several names describing the note content, without explaining the role. Chord nicknames can help or hinder:
- A power chord is a barre 5th in rock but a third-inversion dominant 9th in certain forms of country.
- The Hendrix chord was used in a certain way by Hendrix, but he did not invent it, despite his other innovations.
- The half-diminished chord is technically a two-third-diminished chord if compared with the full-diminished 7th.
- The So What chord is an especially satisfying dominant 11th (root with 7th, 9th and 11th above).
The last one could be described as a major triad with the second in the bass. An effective 11th voicing rarely contains all six available notes, resulting sometimes in a 7sus4 configuration and appropriate symbol confusion.
The chordian knot
Time alters harmonic perception. Old guidelines for suspension preparation and resolution (with their wisdom in allowing choral passages which are both flowing and able to be sung) are becoming less applicable. Indeed some musicians already refer to suspended 4th or 2nd chords by simpler names (eg C2, C4). In some circumstances, the second inversion is considered a decorated sus4.
Figured bass has no such confusion. We seem to have allowed one system to become almost obsolete, replacing it with something suitable for a shorter attention span, even if it is less informative in many aspects. The same can be said of scales, including modal scales. The meaningless hijacking of church mode names (without its useful strict protocols) has always made little sense. Why isn't the Mixolydian the ‘major-flat-7’ scale?
There are so many layers to unpack, so many different names for the same thing, one can see why many students become disheartened when learning notation. Perhaps, for everyone's sake, we should choose one and stick to it.
