Re: triangle chord notation

[David Raleigh Arnold]

On Thu, 03 Aug 2006 23:10:48 +0200, Eyolf Ostrem wrote:

> On Thu 03 August 2006 22:35, Rick Hansen (aka RickH) wrote:
>> You'll hardly find a jazz fake book that does not use triangles
>> somewhere or always for M7, take a look at Aebersold, Hal Leonard, Sher,
>> etc.
> 
> Agreed - but that's jazz.

In the 1950's people copying lead sheets found that using the accumulated
nonsense in the way of cryptic symbols and minus signs from pop music
publishers made their charts unreadable.  The reform was to use no symbols
at all except the sharp and flat.  It is useful to use slash bass notes,
which were invented in the early sixties, but other than that, nothing
good has happened since.

As I wrote years ago, the best thing to do is to adhere to that
strictly limited symbol set, and always to base spelling on quick
recognition rather than musical meaning, which is irrelevant in
improvisation, where the chords are a given.  It doesn't matter what they
mean.  Your purpose is to give them a different meaning anyway.

Academics poison the well when they use the system for analysis, which is
a purpose for which it was never intended.  Do not follow the
innovations suggested by academic articles.  It leads to such abominations
as the flat13th chord or the B#7, which is better written C7, regardless
of a big fat bis being in the score. daveA

> like G/D is less clear than G/d, in my opinion.

Yes, I've seen that a lot lately, and I use it myself.  Speaking for
myself, I can't understand why it took so many years for me to see the
efficacy of using upper case for chord names and lower case for note
names.  It's a big improvement. For other readers:

G/// G/D /// D/// G///
G/// G/d /// D/// G///

daveA

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