[Dixielandjazz] Chord simplification question

[Gary Lawrence Murphy]

I'd take this a step further with this little trick I learned watching
Lenny Breau: because you are in an ensemble, there is no need for the
guitar/banjo to play full chords, that's not their job.  The bass will
take the bass, the soloist will go for all the altered tones and the
fifth is redundant.

All you need to hit are the 3rd, to set the major vs minor, and the
7th, to set the dominant vs maj7 quality!  Everything else is
superfluous.  Sure enough, even when the rhythm player stays entirely
within the 3/7 constraint, the arrangement sounds alright (they are,
after all, called the 'rhythm' section)

I'd used this trick for years before I saw a masterclass with Joe Pass
who said that he never thought in terms of altered chords, but always
and only in terms of I-maj, ii-min and V7, the very skeletal
*functions* of the chord, and then, said Joe, since he had fingers
left over, he'd just use them where they seemed to fit.

On 1/16/15, Ken Gates <kwg915 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I make lead sheets for our play-for-fun group of six.
> We play for fun but take seriously that we want to
> sound as could as we can,  which includes playing
> "proper" chords.  We have two very good guitar/banjo players.
> Sometimes my choice for making the lead sheet (musescore)
> is a source that uses chords that are more sophisticated
> than our tunes or our level of musicianship require.
>
> So I simplify.  For example---if a see a C7-9 I recognize
> that the top four notes make an Edim7.   So I substitute
> that for the C7-9.
>
> Here's the question.   Is that a satisfactory substitution or
> should I consider other alternatives for that chord?  When
> I play the five notes of C7-9 on a keyboard the Db sure
> makes it sound like a dim chord.
>
> I did reference a guitar book with 14 possible fingerings
> for C7-9.  Three of the 14 chose the 4 notes I chose (eliminates
> the root note).  Six of the 14 did play all 5 notes.  The remaining
> five of 14  removed either the E , G, or Bb.   Note--our bass player
> finds his good notes by ear, I don't know what he would choose
> but he rarely misses.  Of course, when the banjo is used, there
> are only 4 strings involved.
>
> Ken Gates (clarinet)
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