Dm/sus4 and other mysterious symbols

Harmony & Theory
#21

Received an answer today!

Hi Andreas, sorry for not getting back to you earlier. I did receive your email as well. Thanx for spotting that. The / sign should not be there. It should read Dm sus 4. The sus4 is actually the melody note over that chord. I had some issues with the person that copied my work using the finale software program for the book production. Thanx for bringing it to my attention. Your the first one to spot a rare imperfection in the music. There may be other imperfections but have not been brought to my attention. Overall the transcriptions are very close to 100% accurate. Sorry to put you through this. I remember going through this tune with Tommy and the chords were as he saw them. Hope this all helps. I’m glad your enjoying the book!
Happy Picking,
Peter Pik

So it was just some issue with the notation software. Case solved! :white_check_mark:

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#23

Thanks for the update! He seems like a very nice man.

#24

I’m having a bit of a giggle at “Sorry to put you through this.”

I can only hope you eventually recover from this trauma.

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#25

Great post - the only other thing I’d add is that, traditionally, as you stack ascending thirds to build chords, a G7b13 would imply a chord comprised of a root, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and b13th, whereas a G7#5 would imply a root, 3rd, #5th, and 7th. That said, in practice, in jazz comping, you’re often (by necessity as much as anything) omitting a lot of those tones and focusing on the ones that really “color” the harmony. I don’t really play jazz and it’s been a LONG time since I’ve studied it, but my thought here would be that a G7#5 I’d certainly omit the natural 5th, but a b13 I’d expect to here some tension between the 5th/D and the b13/Eb so I might try to get both pitches into the voicing somehow, maybe X2344X and let someone else cover the root.

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#26

Yeah, you’re right about that. I’m a theory geek so talking about this stuff all day is fun, and we can too because there are so many ways to view these ambiguities. That said, since I’m old now (38 going on 70 is how I feel lol), I like simple! For comping, you can get by on just using the 3rd and 7th. The bass player has the root, the soloist can then do whatever they want to color with alterations. I like the Joe Pass method of thinking in terms of strictly major, minor or dominant. With that as the base, everything else is pretty straightforward. That will work for both comping and soloing. So if I’m the rhythm guitarist and see a G7(whatever), I’ll just play a chord with the notes B and F (i.e. the 3rd and 7th) and I’m done :slight_smile:

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#27

Hey, I’m 39 going on about the same, so I’m right there with you!!

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