Re: Chord Function?

He just did.  Hello?  Is anyone home?

Try re-reading his posts.  There is no Great Unified Theory of Jazz. 
There 
are conventions which evolve for different purposes and different styles. 
There is an established method of chord-symbol usage and interpretation 
which has evolved to communicate certain harmonic elements while leaving 
room for interpretation; there are certain stylistic conventions in
reading, 
such as conversion of straight 8ths to swing-triplets when running down a 
chart in certain jazz styles.  There are some shared conventions among 
various jazz styles, but the conventions that don't apply to reading or 
writing a chart are best learned by ear.

In jazz, every player, style, and period has its own parameters; a good
jazz 
musician has a depth of understanding of one or more styles, learns to
hear 
and adapt on-the-fly, and can play with other musicians in a way that 
complements what the other musicians are doing:  It's a real-time, 
interpretive and interactive art form.  A jazz musician "gets inside"
styles 
and players.  The subtleties change from player to player, style to style,

and even moment to moment.  Jazz "theory," as you call it, is mostly 
chord-symbol notation conventions, which are for written communication of 
harmonic skeletal frames.

If you want to write a chart, say, for a horn section, or even just voice 
chords to a melody, there are some basic conventional arranging 
techniques -- drop voicings and the like -- that have been used a lot, but

someone with good enough ears would hear them anyways; again, these 
conventions are for written music, such as big-band horn sections, and are

just small part of "jazz."  Some of those same arranging techniques can
also 
be applied to voicing chords on a harmonic instrument such as piano or 
guitar, but, again, someone with good enough ears would hear them anyways
--  
So again, the "theory" is just for interpreting written charts, and
written 
charts are only a small part of jazz.  Some people get confused when in
the 
learning stage of these basic writing and reading conventions; they aren't

always as logically consistent we expect, but they are what they are. 
There's also a fair amount of misinformation floating around about them.

Beyond that, if you were inclined towards that sort of thing, you could 
probably write lists of what's forbidden, obligatory and permitted in one
or 
more styles or by one or more players and call it "theory."  If you wanted

to teach theory for theory's sake or be a music teacher, you might be able

to get a gig where people to pay you to teach them those lists.  If you
like 
lists, but are lazy, you could pay someone to give you those lists and
then 
call yourself a jazz musician.  You would not be.

The problem is that if you want to be a jazz musician and not just a
teacher 
or listkeeper, you'll still need ears and time good enough to be able to 
suss those things out on your own; you will still need to have spent a
great 
deal of time listening to and copying recordings by ear; you will still
need 
to be able to hear and suss-out those constantly changing parameters 
on-the-fly by ear.  Without that, all the lists in the known universe
won't 
help you; but if you have that, then the lists are just second-hand news.








"LJS" <ljschenck@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:3d05338f-9f19-468f-acd9-0ac9a7a8bbc0@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> please save
> us a lot of time and define your terms of "Classical Theory and Jazz
> Theory"
>
>