Is there a way to notate an aug 6th (F-D#-A-C; or the French F-D#-A-B)? This has voice leading implications of course. I am toggling from Faug6th to E so it would not be good to notate an Eb instead of the D# over the F.
Thanks.
Augmented sixths aren’t really a thing that is notated in jazz. It’s just a tritone sub or tritone sub with a flat 5 (or sharp 11). Perhaps John Mehegan’s books from the 1950’s that used a sort of chord symbol / figured bass / analytical hybrid notation would have something like that, but I’ve never seen it used in a chord symbol. F7 to E is fine, we know what the resolutions are.
3 Likes
Well, you do have raised sixths over minor chords so it seems like you would just be able to plug in a raised sixth over a major triad. That would solve the problem.
So what do Jazz players do when they try to explain the voice leading of Eb to E when resolving from F7-E…“oh, our voice-leading is not good here but we don’t care”?
I hope that was not rude. Just seems weird that you wouldn’t study the history of theory along with the theory and have an explanation for those cases.
We don’t really have raised 6ths over minor chords in chord symbol nomenclature. Flat 6 or flat 13ths of course, but not raised 6ths.
We deal with tritone subs all the time. This isn’t new and is an integral part of the jazz language. The 3rds and 7ths are enharmonically the same so whether it’s an A and D# of a B7 or an A and Eb of a F7 doesn’t really matter. These resolutions are built in to anyone proficient the in the jazz language, whether a soloist or comping.
In alto sax key here’s Charlie Parker subbing an F7 (really F9) over a B7, then going to a D# diminished over B7 at quarter = 300 or so.
Top line is the actual chord, bottom line is how I would analyze it:
Not rude at all, but we do study the history of theory! This is stuff at the level I teach my high school students. These sort of resolutions are so ingrained that they are second nature by the time my students hit college. When you are improvising at quarter = 300, there’s not a lot of time to care whether it’s notated as D# or Eb, you just have to know how to use it and where the resolutions are.
EDIT: Typos
2 Likes
Thanks for the tip, I hadn’t looked at those books, and they’re certainly interesting!
1 Like
They are interesting! I teach a masters-level class in Jazz Pedagogy so I’m kind of a geek about this sort of stuff. I’m not sure how relevant the Mehegan books are today, but historically speaking they were a very important development in Jazz Pedagogy. His keyless concept of thinking of everything as how they function harmonically isn’t that far off from current methods! Just the nomenclature is a bit different.
1 Like
The trouble with your characterization is that the voice leading Eb-to-E in moving from F7-to-E is not actually at all bad when one pays attention to (and even cares about) how it sounds rather than how it looks. Given the artificial constraints of a seven-letter name-plus-accidental system of nomenclature in trying to capture highly chromatic music, such cases abound — and not just in jazz.
One could, of course, choose to notate it as B7alt/F to suggest the same scalar palette to an improviser or comping player, but does whatever good the “theoretically correct” spelling achieve outweigh the extra visual processing required?
1 Like
That voice-leading matters. Historically and practically. If jazz players choose not to observe it, as a matter of convention, or lack of knowledge, that is fine. And, in practice, I agree it doesn’t really matter.
But in theory, it most definitely matters. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and numerous others would notate the proper voice-leading unless there was a reason for notating the enharmonic equivalent.
And, a tritone substitution might be conceptually similar in practice, but if you get to college and have to take the entrance exams, F7, FLydian, and other jazz nomenclatures will fast track you to failure. You have to know what an augmented sixth chord is and its voice-leading.
Either way, Dorico has plenty of room to make improvements in RN analysis, modal chord
That’s ridiculous. Chromatic notes do things. D# tells you that it must lead to E, Eb tells you that Eb must lead to D in the context of F with a #6 or b7 respectively. Otherwise, forget about theory, the history of practice and theory, and just play. There is nothing wrong with not formally studying music, but to ignore the historicized implications of voice leading would be ridiculous. By the way, at my program, the jazzers often fail or do poorly on the theory sections at the graduate entrance exams. Nothing against them, but the contexts of practice and theory matter.
Kevin, in what musical context do you want to use the augmented 6th? Are you talking about classical theory rather than jazz? Or flamenco, or something else entirely?
If it is jazz, I would agree with @FredGUnn and @judddanby.
1 Like
What are you talking about? Voice leading is literally one of the first things beginning jazz improvisers learn. There are so many II-V patterns in jazz that the player has to be able to play the color tones on their instrument and make the 7th to 3rd resolutions. Just yesterday I was teaching a saxophone lesson to a 13-year old kid (he’s very advanced for 13) where I would comp blues in F and Bb, and rhythm changes in Bb, and he would have to play the color tones and all the resolutions first, before attempting his own solo.
Here’s a little snippet from a handout of mine that I give beginners. We literally start by learning resolutions and then embellish melodically outward from there.
Are you using chord symbols for analysis here? Or are players supposed to play off of them? To use a language analogy, chord symbols typically dictate the topic of conversion, but what you say is up to you. Chord symbols don’t literally tell you what to play or how to voice something. If you want a specific voicing then write it out. Can you show an example of what you are trying to do and why you want to use chord symbols for it?
1 Like
Not jazz, flamenco, which possesses its own set of theoretical problems, one being that its third system is phrygian. Because flamencos vocabulary is rooted in Baroque guitar and has been influenced by numerous musics, the theoretical point is to explain its practice. An aug6 on F has to resolve outward to the octave on E. Unless one resolves to an E7, in which case, it is spelled enharmonically as Eb and resolves to D. The best way to do this is through multiple analyses, including the use of Roman numeral analysis and jazz symbols and diagrams.
Flamencos do not read charts, so all notation and analysis is for learning purposes, either as complementary material or for students that do not have access to a teacher.
The chord symbols utility is that they are abstract/general. The chord diagram is more specific. This allows me to teach the student that they can explore plugging in chords that have similar quality. The diagram gives them a specific chord to work with and to see how it connects with its
melodic and harmonic surround.
As you can see in the second example, I do have and F7 notated because it leads to a tonic dominant quality chord. But there are instances when an aug6 (or inverted, dim3) are required. To be fair, this is problematic for RN analysis to. It works for figured bass with a chord numeral attached.
More debate:
Tell that to Wagner, who leads D# to D in the English horn in mm. 2–3 of Tristan und Isolde. It’s a shame he lacked the knowledge to consistently spell his notes correctly, though at least he “got it right” in the first oboe and clarinet.
What I’ve written is not, in fact, “ridiculous.” When limited to seven (or eight) letter names, spellings necessarily get looser the more fully chromatic the music is, especially when one is trying to balance, as in jazz harmonic practice, the leading of individual lines against a straightforward reference to a “vertical” harmonic unit. To insist that F7 instead be notated as — what…? — “F Ger+6” just because the “correct” resolution in one conceptual melodic line is D# to E might actually qualify as a ridiculous thing to do. (It also sidesteps the correlated issue that pure triads are quite rare in jazz harmonic practice, and the D# is more likely to move to the D of an E7 or even the C# of an Emin6/9.
That depends. Are you going to college / grad school for jazz studies? As a long-time educator, I always found it best to focus entrance/placement exams around what students would be centrally concerned with. If a student in jazz could cope with major- and minor-third matrix harmonic substitutions, it wouldn’t be tough to teach them the historical practice of augmented sixth chords.
That is assuredly important knowledge and understanding if one is studying certain repertory. Don’t get me wrong; I love a good “Swiss sixth” moving to V6/4 = 5/3 as much as the next person, but to consider knowledge of augmented sixth chords as a sine qua non of music-theoretical understanding in all musical practices seems overstated.
Your OP was asking a very specific Dorico question about notating an augmented sixth symbol using the chord symbol tool. Do you want all of the possibilities: It, Fr, Ger, and Sw? I imagine it would be possible to create them as custom symbols.
If you have students you’ve taught to read these as “chord symbols” rather than RN analytical labels, then they’d obviously be able to do so. To @FredGUnn’s original response, I wouldn’t expect just “anyone” out there to read those on the fly, since the two chord-labeling traditions are so different.
2 Likes
Yes. That is correct.
I am not familiar with Sw, but the others would be nice as chord symbols. Additionaly, inversions like the dim3 would also be nice.
The aug6 is possible as a slash chord in its third inversion (F/D# as a slash chord), but it is more problematic in RN analysis in most software.
The “Swiss sixth” (a name which, if distant memory serves, may have been introduced by Walter Piston) is an enharmonic variation of the German, in which the respelling of C to B# more clearly shows the motion to V6/4 (or “I6/4,” for those so inclined):
(I made this example using @dan_kreider’s (donation-ware) font MusAnalysis for the chord labels, entered as lyrics.)
To return to the “jazz versus common-practice-tonal-music” debate, if I for some reason wanted this in a jazz work, I’d write it this way if common tertian-based chord symbols were required:
More practical for being more familiar (performance and analysis being different domains of activity), and the requisite sound/voice leading is achieved by any competent player.
4 Likes
I don’t want to enter the jazz vs classical debate because flamenco’s tonal system has inherited and borrowed heavily from both. I am trying to layer the explanations.
Thanks for the Swiss nomenclature.
Forgive me for jumping into this conversation late in the game, but I can’t stop myself. Both @judddanby and @FredGUnn have of course given reliable and detailed examples of how jazz musicians might think of these concepts or, maybe more important, label them differently than is done in traditional theory. It is not that they do not understand or respect voice leading. I think this very notion is one built on an unfair bias against a musical practice that the classical world sometimes misunderstands. I suspect there are layers of bias here—though I am not accusing anyone here of possessing that bias, just noting that it’s there.
If young jazz musicians are doing poorly on theory exams, I submit there might be two reasons: a) they’re not well trained, or not yet experienced enough (i.e. not “good” enough yet) at their craft, and like any musicians still have things to learn, which is not a reflection of the commonly-accepted and well-understood aspects of jazz theory; or b) the exam is designed to elicit information in a specific theoretical language that may be different from the terminology jazz musicians often use—which is not evidence of a lack of appreciation of things like chromatic spelling or voice-leading.
I 100% agree that chromatic notes have meaning, but that meaning changes in different contexts. In my own music, I might have a chord with the pitch classes C-sharp, D-natural, and E-flat included at the same time. If the C-sharp resolves to C-natural, and the E-flat resolves to E-natural, should I spell the chord with D-flat, D-natural, and D-sharp? Who wants to see that? And don’t get me wrong, it bothers me when this happens! But our chromatic spelling system is designed to do some things well and other things not at all well, and we’re stuck with it. 
And then we’d have to see how these things are spelled for all the B-flat and E-flat instruments in the band.
5 Likes
You are preaching to the choir. My point was that flamenco has borrowed from many other traditions even as it developed within its own sociocultural and historical contexts. I therefore need tools that can describe/explain that practice. At my program, the jazz players have to take most of the general undergraduate courses even though they are not “classical” musicians. It is true that some don’t do as well because the entrance exams are biased toward the canon (i.e. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven), but it is also true that if you don’t know conceptually what and augmented sixth is (along with many other concepts not found in jazz under the same nomenclature), you are not going to do well. That is not a judgement, just an observation.
I agree. But the augmented sixth and related inversions are common enough and and can be used to explain certain voice-leading situations.
Kevin,
Your question was answered long ago. Dorico does not have a way.
And by now I am sure the Development knows you would like such capability to be available. In addition you have made your view of the matter known (again and again).
You do not have to convince those whose view differ; either the Development Team will grant your wish (in their own time) or not. Beyond that this thread is becoming far more repetitive than informative.