In the past summer i attended the Siena Jazz Summer Workshop.
My teacher of musical form analysis, Stefano Zenni had a class about George Russell, one of jazz's most mercurial arrangers, composers and theorists.
In these days i'm reading the "Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Tonal Organization" by him.
I'm wondering many jazz teachers while teaching how to play on II7/ V7 /Is to their students suggest to play I also on II and V.
For istance, if they have to play on D-7/G7/Cmaj7, they play C major.
I know, this is a quick way to play in the correct key, but the worst is that they play the natural 11th on a dominant( or major ) chord!
Reading the book by Russell I noticed he was thinking in this way.
In a nutshell, his rationale was that a Major 9th chord with a sharp 11 has more a greater degree of unity a the same chord with a natural 11th.
So, we can adopt the Lydian scale as our 'base' scale.
Therefore, we can play Dmelodic-/../Gmajor on the previous example( on D-7/G7/Cmaj7 ).
All these informations start running through my mind and i have an unresolved question.
Well, if i write a dominant chord, for istance C7, i consider the seventh a flat seventh. I haven't to write C7b.
If i write C11, i consider the eleventh a natural eleventh and i have to specify if i want a flat eleventh(C11b) or a sharp eleventh(C11#).
This is valid also for the 9th, 13th and so on.
Why? Why only the seventh is considered flat?
I asked some teachers about my question.
They always gave the same answer: it's because the first seventh in the sequence of the overtones is a flat seventh.
So, if we know the sequence of the overtones, we know that the first seventh is a flat seventh, but also the first forth is a sharp forth.
Therefore i could have to consider also the eleventh as a sharp eleventh.
My question is still unresolved.
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if you have a possible answer to the question please mail me at code@insicuri.net.

code91 | posted on 13 Nov 2009