Scales/Arpeggiation

You'd be right to think of scales as 1, 9, 3, 4/11, 5, 6/13, and 7. I'd think of the 2 as 9 - only guitarists ever reference it as a "2" in building chords... every other musician thinks of it as 9. For the 4 and 6, I'd learn think of them both ways - that way you'll instantly know how to work a sus4, a 6th, an 11th and a 13th chord.

And yes, you can move from chord to chord through arpeggios. Many jazz players (and bass players) do exactly that.

Hmm, I dont understand what you mean about arpeggios, instead of strumming just do arpeggios ?

Because Ive seen people talking about this in Jazz forums and I think to myself, OK could it really be that simple ? Just go from chord to chord using arpeggios instead of strumming ? Ive also seen people that say that they do this to solo, do they follow the chord progression from chord to chord just using arpeggios instead ?

And about the scale degrees, well 2 and 9 arent the same thing, 9 is 2 but one octave higher, the 2 is used when u use sus 2 chords, the 4 in sus 4, and there are 6th chords, which sound really neat. The 9 is used for 9th chords 11th for 11th chords and 13th for 13th chords.

One question, when you use quartal harmony to build chords... you use 1 4 6 ? or 1, 4, 7 ? or what ? ( that questionjust kida popped into my mind )

Yes 2 & 9 are the same thing. As I said, only guitarists reference "2" in chord names - as in the "sus2" you mentioned. Nobody else uses that name - not keyboard players, arrangers, composers, or music theorists. And what octave something is in makes NO difference; in music theory, anything that's too big (or small) for simple analysis gets moved by octaves until its in range.

Quartal harmony typically uses stacked perfect fourths, so the basic chord is 1-4-b7. (Starting from C, up a fourth is F; from F, up a fourth is Bb)

Yea, i meant using arps like mini scales. Once you've milked one chord, you move to the next in the progression. Maybe something like Am,C,Em,G for example.

Maybe something like Am 9th Cmaj 7 Em 7th G maj 9th... :P

But yeah, now I get what you mean.

Dont get crazy on me lol...but yeh when i think of alot of the melodic songs like Bold As Love by hendrix, blackbird,etc.. they all sound like arpeggiation. I think its the way to go, most of the time, that is.

Quartal harmony typically uses stacked perfect fourths, so the basic chord is 1-4-b7. (Starting from C, up a fourth is F; from F, up a fourth is Bb)

Wouldn't F-Bb-C "tend" to sound like an Fsus4 chord? Or a Bbadd9 (no 3rd)? (aka Bbsus2 for ignorant guitarists) :wink:

I don't fully understand quartal harmony and can't quite figure out why that collection of notes would sound like any kind of C chord or under what circumstances one would want to use it as such. Do jazzers just want to be experimental and different or is there some deeper purpose?

Can you enlighten me?

Helgi, it all depends on context. If you've got a bunch of "regular" (tertian) chords, then yes - it'll sound just like Fsus. But if you're using quartal harmony, stacked fourths is the norm... so every chord has that sound, and the effect is more ethereal.

Quartal harmony is old... much older than the 'regular' harmony in western music. In ancient times, monks often sang chants as a divided choir, singing the same melody a fourth apart (parallel organum). The ethereal effect of fourths made them especially suitable for religious music. We don't know when that practice started, but it was considered an old way of doing things back in the 9th century.

In jazz, quartal harmony is used in a couple of different contexts: modal jazz uses fourths to avoid a tension/release cadence; quartal jazz uses fourths because they provide a different tone color than tertian harmony. Either way I guess it's experimental, but then that's what the monks did too - and that worked out pretty well... parallel organum led to free organum, which led to counterpoint.

For what it's worth, non-tertian harmonies don't have separate naming systems. In quartal music, the basic chord is called a 7sus; jazzers understand you don't play the fifth.