The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #50808   Message #772752
Posted By: Mark Cohen
28-Aug-02 - 02:24 AM
Thread Name: Naming of diminished chords
Subject: RE: Naming of diminished chords
Goat's breakfast? That's a new one on me, Don...but it's perfect!

I agree with Don that trying to follow chords in a songbook can be frustrating, because the editor will frequently just look at whatever combination of notes happens to be in the left hand part at that point in the measure, and give it a name that may have very little to do with the actual chord structure of the song. Good arrangements, after all, are not just a series of I-IV-V static chords, but are composed of moving and interweaving voices. The chord names are an imperfect snapshot of what the accompaniment is actually doing. Unless you're talking something like Kumbaya, of course...

Aloha,
Mark