and I still think y’all are making this more complicated than it needs to be
scroll down to the section on jazz and pop tunes
(I am enjoying this conversation very much, by the by).
If you read that wiki cite, it says:
the pedal point is unique among non-chord tones “in that begins on a consonance, sustains (or repeats) through another chord as a dissonance until the harmony” not the non-chord tone, “resolves back to a consonance.”
So, by this definition, the pedal point starts and ends as consonance. That Bb in the bass must therefore, if it’s a pedal point, be a chord tone when it first shows up, which is in the chord in question.
If it were a pedal point, there would be a Bb-containing chord, followed by a non-Bb-containing chord, followed by a Bb-containing chord.
And I think the Fm11/Bb is more complicated than it needs to be. Bb suspended is the easiest and most logical notation for me. When I played the chords, that’s what obviously came to mind (and ear).
Just answer this for me. Does the tonality of the chord sound minor to you? Do you hear the A flat functioning as a minor third or a dominant seventh? If you hear a minor tonality and hear the A flat as a minor third, then I have no qualm with your analysis. I simply don’t hear that. The A flat (to me) is obviously a dominant.
Cap’tBarbossa/Arrr, Matey, ya misspelled guidelines/Barbossa.
Glad you’re enjoying it, I am too, I didn’t want to come off like I was pursuing an arguement for it’s own sake, especially seeing as how we seem to have lost the OP. I have no Idea how Richard Rodgers would have described it, and considering it’s histroy, I very much doubt that this is his version
Well, dominant to what? I usually don’t think of a single note as being dominant. I was wrong earlier BTW, my realbook runs the progression like this: Gbmaj7-Bb6-F9-fm7-Bb7-Eb, Which puts a G natural in the measure before the one we’ve been discussing and makes no mention of the Bb in the first 2 beats the the measure “Gold.” Which works just fine, although I don’t like the G natural bit, and I don’t feel the absence of the Bb.
That’s my point, in a musical style full of ii-V-I’s, and a particular song full of ii-V-I’s why look for a more complicated explanation than that they’re reinforcing a ii-V-I after the tonal ambiguities of the bridge?
As a guitarist, I have a absolute limit of 6 notes and in fact rarely play more than 4 in this style of comping. Now I happen to like 3rds in the base and often voice a minor cord like this as Ab-F-C-Eb, so I might play Ab-F-Bb-Eb which changes the sound, yes, but not the cadence, to my ears. I’m also trying it as F-Ab-Eb-Ab or as Bb-Ab-Eb-Ab with the bass a 5th below the F and then dropping the Eb and Ab a half step and minor 3rd respectively to form the Bb7 chord. There are some differences, but the ii-V-I cadence is still clear to me. I think Fm11, or fm7/Bb(same notes, just specifies the inversion) conveys the most information to the most people with the least amount of writing. But that’s assuming you insist on every note that’s not in the melody as being in the cord, but why should that be? The OP’s chord chart calls it an Fm7, so does my realbook lead sheet, that’s good enough for me. Want to account for the bass note? Fine, call it an Fm7/Bb
ETA so, yeah, I hear a minor 3rd
In the context of the progression, with the Bb bass, the Ab to me sounds like its fullfilling the role of a dominant seventh and creating tension to resolve to the tonic Eb major chord.
Am I not agreeing with you there? I wrote above that jazz is built around ii-V-Is and that’s why it’s written thusly. I know how to read a fake book. If you played that progression for me without showing the lead sheet and asked me what type of chord that is (as in an aural skills class, for instance), I would not say it’s a minor chord. I’d say it sounds like a suspended chord with a dominant seventh. And we have several people in this thread who apparently hear the same thing.
Well, if you do hear a minor tonality, then okay. You hear the ii-V-I cadence. You probably play a hell of a lot more jazz than I do. I hear more of a Vsus7-V7-I cadence. When I play the Fm7/Bb on its lonesome, my ears are pulling me strongly (particularly the A flat) to I to resolve the tension. Jazz fakebook notion is often quite a bit of shorthand. My jazz piano instructor often showed me stuff like this and explained that while a chord is actually notated one way, its function is another.
I can see why for a jazz player the ii-V-I notation is more informative. I still think the suspended notation is more accurate.
Music theory major, ex-Hollywood copyist and arranger here. Enough credentials, OK?
Not every note sounded simultaneously is considered part of “the chord”. Besides, chord symbols above the line on most sheet music are not intended to be a complete harmonic analysis of the work, but cues to a guitarist, bass and/or sufficiently-hip keyboard player. A rhythm section doesn’t always play the melody anyway unless the singer really needs help.
That’s a Fm7 chord. If you want to explain what the relationship of the melody Bb is to the harmony, it’s an anticipation. No mystery, no problem.
That’s for sure. I’m music directing Little Shop of Horrors right now, and the guitar book is full of chord symbols that are spelling out specific inversions/variations that represent what the band as a whole is playing, but not what the guitar is playing. (F with an Eb in the bass, for example). Not major, but a minor annoyance; I know the guitar player wishes he didn’t have to mentally ignore all the slash chords.
I agree. I was considering the interpretation based on the Bflat in the bass and the Eflat and Aflat, which I consider the main notes of the chord. If you say Fm7, so beit. It’s not what I hear, though.
In rereading this thread, I see that the Bb in the melody, which I was talking about, is not the only note in question. The Bb in the bass presents a different situation.
But not by much. It’s been the standard in handwritten pop music[sup]*[/sup] for about 50 years now to indicate the primary bass note if it is not the root of the chord, so that particular beat would typically be notated Fm7/Bb.
Keyboard players love this kind of notation as it gives them more hints about the harmony. Bass players like it, too, as it indicates what a simple chord symbol cannot. Guitar players – well, I don’t play guitar well enough to say if they do or don’t play the Bb along with the Fm7 in this particular case; it could go either way. If there is no bass player around, they should. In a typical rhythm section, they probably wouldn’t. I can certainly envision a studio session where the guitarist might ask the arranger, “You want me to hit that Bb or not?”
If you want to analyze a complex chord as Bb11 for theory purposes, fine, but for practical purposes, Ab/Bb gets the job done pretty well. Pop music – as opposed to some jazz – doesn’t tend to include all the intervals in a 11 or 13 chord; just the significant ones.
[sup]*[/sup]I say “handwritten pop music” because, due to the expense of preparing music thru the engraving process, if you buy sheet music like Blue Moon, it’s likely to have been engraved long before 50 years ago, and the publishers rarely have the music re-engraved. They just keep reprinting the same old crappy art work created in the 1934 days of Rogers and Hart and the style of notation, mistakes, quirks, colloquialisms and all, is frozen in time.
Yeah, guitarists never play all the notes in an 11th cord, and can’t play all the notes in a 13th, just the important ones. That’s why I think of Fm7/Bb as being the same thing as 11. Whether I played a Bb in the base, or at all in this case would depend on where I was on the fretboard and where I was going at the time. I’m certainly not good enough to be asking the session arranger!
Of course it depends on the music, Jobim bossa nova uses a lot of desending basslines, so the slash cords aren’t really optional there.
OK. I think we’re coming around to the same page now. A keyboard player wouldn’t play all the notes, either. You almost always drop the fifth, you often drop the root especially is there’s a bassist present. When I see an 13 chord, the most important notes to me are the 13th, the 3rd (major or minor), the 7th (dominant or major)? So, when comping with a bass, you’d just stick the 3rd and 7th in the left hand (in open harmony), and play the melody (which often is the altered tone) and whatever other notes fill in nicely. Maybe the 9th, maybe the 11th, maybe the fifth or root sounds good.
When I see an Bb11, I’m more apt to think Ab/Bb (as I noted way up thread) than Fm7/Bb. I still don’t think an Ab/Bb sounds the same as a Bb11. Including the 3rd makes quite a difference in the way I perceive the chord. Ab/Bb indicates to me that an F natural is to be avoided. Bb11 means to me to try to include the F natural.
Yipes. D, not F.
Yeah ya go, I was thinking about this while I was out and about today and I realized that the Ab doesn’t sound dominant to me because I’m not playing a D. The Ab/Bb combination doesn’t scream dominant to my ears without the diminished 5th.
No, I’m not lost, I’m just sitting back enjoying the tennis match here 
I was playing this on the piano just now, and in the inner voices was alternating between C-Eb and D-F. Different chords definitely, but both sounding and functioning as a Dominant. So, I’m with Pulykamell in dismissing the Fm7. It seems the notater was in the I-vi-ii-V groove and forgot to stop.
While I was playing this, it sounded very much like something else I play. And that was “With A Little Luck” by Paul McCartney. It’s in the key of E and starts with the sequence:
A/B E A/B A/D C#m7 B7sus4 E
The A/B is our problem chord, and if you add the F#… B7sus4. And, again, to my ear not F#m7/B
That’s my take, FWIW
Yeah, and the thing is, there’s plenty of valid ways to spell this chord (as you’ve seen here), depending on how you hear it and also what the convention is for your style of music. I’m probably trying to analyze and hear it more in terms of classical Western harmony, which is not the way you would notate standard jazz harmony. I mean, music theory is just a way of looking backwards and analyzing music and creating a language to talk about it. Music dictates theory, not the other way around. The jazz vocabulary is very much based around ii-V-I and its variants, so, to a jazz player, Fm7(/Bb) is more informative than Bb7sus. I can’t help but hear a suspended fourth and a dominant seventh in that chord, which is why I’m making the counter argument.
But part of my argument is also informed by my old jazz teacher, who showed me that progressions like II7-V7-I (in case there’s any confusion, capital Roman numerals indicate major chords and lower case indicate minor chords) can be analyzed more classically as V7 of V - V7- I, which makes complete sense to me. I’m trying to think of other examples, but there many times where he’d point out fake book notation and show me that while something is notated as a slash chord or a weird minor chord that seems out-of-context, it was actually shorthand or conventional notation for something else that was going on harmonically. Like if you saw an Ab/Bb cadence going into Eb in the next measure (not exactly what you see in our example above), then the Ab/Bb chord would just be another way of notating an embellished V7 that’s easier to read than Bb7sus(9).
At last, we’re in 100% agreement 