Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum A flat or G sharp: Same tone, but different note. Why?

Well, in this particular arrangement, the next chord is Ebm7 moving to Dbmaj9. That is to say, the whole piece is in Db Major from beginning to end. T.M. was not particularly 'outré' in this piece.

As mentioned by other posters, I think the arranger is just writing chords, not caring about the harmonic relationships. That's OK, if the pianist just reads the music, but man, what happens when you want to transpose it in your head or add some nice licks? That B6/9 chord doesn't exist in D flat Major, so it's not going to exist in any other key either.

Edit: What's even more funny is that the arranger, on the third beat of the second bar, keeps the C#/G# in the right hand, but puts a Db in the bass and re-lables the chord Db! The whole thing could have been better served with Db/Ab in the right hand, and Cb/Eb in the left hand - a chord that exists in Db.

That brings us right back to the Cb in lieu of B solution, but that whoever wrote this out probably felt B in his hand and wrote the first thing that came into his/her head.

But in C major that would just be Bb6/9, which is a pretty common move. I don't know the piece, but if it's staying in flats, that chord should be Cb 6/9. And on beat two, if you are using the held right hand, you get an augmented chord, not counting the top note.

Looks to me like a whole bunch of mistakes by someone who doesn't quite know what he is doing...

Yup...

Which goes back to my post a while back.

Exactly.

OK:

http://www.jwpepper.com/scores-png/5729819.png

This is ultra simple compared to what TM is playing, but it's way too chromatic to fit comfortably in any key, so no key sig is logical.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18IWWDkRdmc

The real thing.

It's a very ingenious tune, and any attempt to notate what he was actually playing is going to look pretty strange.

Yeah, I listened to the Thunk video before I posted above. To my ear, the piece is entirely in Db. That is to say it always returns to Db, and never wanders to far for more than a measure or two. Bach was more inventive and certainly used the same types of chord progressions, just with fewer tonal clusters, or just plain wrong notes, in the case of T.M.

That being said, I really like the piece.

A more logical - inversion of dominant Ab +, soprano of which is tonic pedal.

To my ear it moves to Db. At some point it's obvious that the tonal center is Db. But when you have something like only gets there and is no there most of the way through, you also have something highly chromatic, and highly chromatic writing demands a different mindset from something that is diatonic.

Wandering over a measure or two would be different if the song were 16 or 32 bars.

Gm7 C7, F#m7 B7, Fm7 Bb7, Em7 A7, Ebm7 Ab7, no matter how complicated or uncomplicated you make it otherwise, is not going to work in all flats. When it finally arrives at the dominant, Ab7, it surprises by jumping instead to B7b5 then round the circle to get back to Db.

So yes, The B7b5 that could be written as Cb7b5, to Bb7, but why? When something continues to drop by half-steps, you are simply no longer in a diatonic world.

The next thing would be to arrive at the D9 and rewrite it as Ebb9, just to stay in flats.

When I listen it simply is what it is, but I loathe that kind of convoluted notation, and I'm a very fast reader.

When something is highly chromatic, keep the writing clear, which has nothing to do with what key the piece is in when it ends or cadences.

There is a very logical reason for not using a key signature. When you do it, writing by hand, you have to write a whole bunch of extra accidentals, and with a program you get more #s, b's and naturals than you would have without a sig.

Not that kind of chromaticism except perhaps in his Chromatic fantasy, which does get pretty wild. But this whole thing of moving up or down 1/2 steps pretty much comes later.

Complete agreement there!

I agree that when there is a lot of chromatism or pan-tonality, it is easier to just write simple to see and read chords. The problem is, they are only easy to see and read in that tonality. Change the key and you have to use completely different spellings of chords to keep them easy to see and read. Nahum's example above shows this clearly when the piece is transposed to C Major.

It's a problem because of our notation system. Today we play in keys that were rarely used a few centuries ago due to the limitation of tuning systems. There are a ton of "conventions" that make clear sense in simple keys but cause headaches in others.

The traditional augmented 6th chords make sense in something like key of C. C E G A# moving to an E chord is actually very elegant.

E G# B Cx to G#m is not so nice, and that is utterly clear and easy to decipher compared to the mess that can happen in jazz that is also somewhat chromatic when your base tonality is Eb minor.

Nothing that is complicated is going to be transposable to all 12 keys without some tough decisions in notation.