Student’s question:
Do you have any tips for communicating with musicians that are outside IFR? Sometimes at a jam session I want to propose a chord progression, but not everybody understands concepts like the “six chord” or the “five chord”. Is there a better way for me to express these ideas so that people can understand me?
Some ideas to think about:
Yes, absolutely. When talking with other musicians at a jam session, the most common universal language is that of chord symbols. So rather than talking about the chords in their tonal context like we do in IFR, you need to break out each chord by telling people the root note and the chord type. For example, if you want to play a progression consisting of chords 6- and 5D in the key of F, you need to identify these two different root notes and also what kinds of chords they are. In the key of F, these two chords will be Dm and C7. So that’s what you would communicate to the other musicians: “Let’s jam over a chord progression that alternates between Dm and C7.”
We lose something when we reduce our musical ideas to these isolated chord symbols, because we lose the information about the overall key of the music. For example, a generic “D minor chord” could be a 2- chord, a 3- chord, a 6- chord, or even something from Mixed Harmony like a 4- chord. And each of these chord concepts results in a slightly different scale. So by telling people only the basic chord symbol “D minor chord”, we’re leaving it open for them to paint this chord however they like.
But in practice, this works just fine. Musicians use their ears to harmonize with one another, and it’s not even a problem if different musicians paint different scales over these chords. Just by agreeing on the basic chords and the order of the progression, there will be enough coherence in the music to keep everything sounding great. And if there’s a little bit of discrepancy in some of the notes that the musicians are playing, this could even enhance the music and make it MORE beautiful. This is because the other musicians aren’t just spitting out notes blindly. They’re using their own taste and sensitivity to make beautiful music with you. So you don’t have to necessarily spell out every last detail of the harmonic situation you want to explore. Just giving them a rough idea of the chords will allow them to use their own intuition to fill in the blanks with beautiful music.
So whenever you’re talking with other musicians, the safest language of exchange is always the language of chord symbols. Some musicians might also have more advanced language for talking about entire scales or modes, and many musicians will even be able to understand you perfectly when you say things like, “the six chord and the five chord in the key of F” (especially if they are jazz players with a strong foundation in theory). But whenever these words generate confusion, the safest bet is always to spell out each chord by simply telling them the chord root and the chord type, e.g. “D minor” or “C seventh”.
