Module 3: Theory II: seventh chords and the ii–V–ILesson 5intermediate⏱ 60 min + reading practice with every tune you learn

Reading chord charts and lead sheets

Decode every symbol and sign on a lead sheet (aliases, slash chords, rhythmic notation, repeats, endings, D.S. al Coda) and read a 12-bar blues and a 32-bar AABA chart from top to bottom.

Why charts, and why they look the way they do

A jazz lead sheet gives you three things: the melody, the chord symbols and the form. Nothing else. It does not tell you which voicing to play, what rhythm to comp, or what notes to improvise; those are your job. That is why the same chart works for a trio, a big band and a solo guitarist. The price of that freedom is that you must read the shorthand fluently, including the conventions that differ from one publisher's chart to the next, and you must be able to navigate the repeats and jumps without losing your place while the band keeps playing. This lesson is the complete decoder.

Chord symbol conventions and aliases

Chord symbols were standardised by habit rather than by committee, so the same chord appears under several names. The table below shows the spellings this course uses (the plain ASCII forms you also type into the chord dictionary); the list that follows gives the aliases you will meet on printed charts.

• Major seventh: Cmaj7, CΔ7, CΔ, CM7, Cma7. A bare triangle means major seventh. A bare "C" on a jazz chart is a tonic major chord and you may play Cmaj7 or C6.
• Minor: Cm7, C–7, Cmin7, Cmi7. The dash is very common in handwritten charts. "C–" alone means a minor triad, and in practice a minor seventh or sixth.
• Half-diminished: Cm7b5, Cø7, Cø, Cm7(b5), C–7b5. The slashed circle means "half".
• Diminished seventh: Cdim7, C°7, Co7. A bare circle with no 7 technically means a diminished triad, but in jazz it is nearly always played as dim7.
• Minor-major seventh: CmMaj7, Cm(maj7), C–Δ7, CmM7.
• Dominant: C7, and with alterations in brackets or stacked: C7(b9), C7b9, C7#5 (also C+7 or Caug7; the plus means a raised 5th), C7#9, C7alt. "alt" means the 5th and 9th are both altered (b5/#5 and b9/#9) and you choose which; it is only ever a dominant chord.
• Sixth chords: C6, C6/9 (a sixth chord with the 9th added), Cm6.
• Suspended: C7sus4, C7sus, Csus. The 3rd is replaced by the 4th.
• Extensions: C9, C13, Cmaj9, Cm11. The number is the highest extension; everything below it is implied. Module 8 covers these; for now read C13 as "a C7 with extras" and play C7.

Slash chords

A slash chord puts a bass note after the symbol: C/E means a C major chord with E in the bass. There are two kinds. When the bass note is a chord tone (C/E, C/G, G7/B) the chord is simply an inversion, usually written to give the bass a stepwise line. When the bass note is not a chord tone (Dm7/G, F/G) the symbol describes a chord stacked over a pedal note, and the result usually behaves as a suspended dominant: Dm7/G is a G chord with a suspended 4th and a 9th, and resolves like G7.

\tempo 72
.
\ts 4 4
:1 (0.6 3.5 2.4 0.3 1.2 0.1){ch "C/E"} | (2.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 1.1){ch "G7/B"} | (3.6 0.4 2.3 1.2 1.1){ch "Dm7/G"} | (3.5 5.4 4.3 5.2){ch "Cmaj7"} |

As a guitarist in a group you will usually not play the bass note of a slash chord (the bass player does), so read Dm7/G as "play a Dm7 shape above the bass" and C/E as "play C". When you play alone, the bass note matters and you should voice it.

Rhythmic notation: slashes and kicks

Most lead sheets have one chord symbol per bar or per half bar and leave the rhythm to you. Three devices tell you more:

• Slashes (one per beat) mean "play time": comp in the style, four beats to the bar, your choice of pattern.
• Rhythmic notation (note heads with stems but no pitch, or slashes with stems) gives the rhythm the chords must be played in. A rhythmic figure that the whole band hits together is called a kick or a hit.
• Diamond-shaped note heads or a whole-note slash mean "hold the chord", usually an ensemble hit sustained for the bar.

The notation examples in this course cannot draw slash heads, so chord stabs with chord symbols stand in for them. The first example is plain time: one stab on every beat, which is what four slashes in a bar ask for.

\tempo 120
.
\ts 4 4
:4 (1.6 1.4 2.3){ch "F7"} (1.6 1.4 2.3) (1.6 1.4 2.3) (1.6 1.4 2.3) | (1.5 1.3 3.2){ch "Bb7"} (1.5 1.3 3.2) (1.5 1.3 3.2) (1.5 1.3 3.2) |

The second example shows two kicks that appear on thousands of charts: a hit on the "and of 2" held into beat 3, and an anticipation on the "and of 4" that brings the next bar's chord in half a beat early (and is tied across the bar line).

\tempo 120
.
\ts 4 4
:4 (1.6 1.4 2.3){ch "F7"} :8 r (1.6 1.4 2.3) :4 (-.6 -.4 -.3) r | (1.5 1.3 3.2){ch "Bb7"} r r :8 r (1.6 1.4 2.3){ch "F7"} | :1 (-.6 -.4 -.3) | :4 (1.6 1.4 2.3) r (1.6 1.4 2.3) r |

Reading rhythms like these quickly depends entirely on the counting skills from Rhythm reading and counting. If the second example gave you trouble, go back and clap it before you play it.

Repeats, endings and the roadmap

A chart is a map with jumps in it. The signs:

• Repeat signs (a thick and a thin bar line with two dots, facing inward) enclose a passage to be played twice. A number of times may be written above the closing sign ("3x").
• First and second endings (brackets numbered 1 and 2 over the last bars before the repeat sign) mean: play the first-ending bars the first time through, jump back, and on the second time skip them and play the second-ending bars instead.
• D.C. (da capo) means go back to the beginning. D.S. (dal segno) means go back to the sign (𝄋), which is printed somewhere earlier in the chart.
• al Coda means: when you reach the "To Coda" mark (⊕), jump to the Coda section at the end of the chart. al Fine means: play until the bar marked Fine and stop.
• D.S. al Coda is the full instruction: go back to the sign, play until "To Coda", then jump to the Coda.

Here is a 12-bar blues in F with a repeat and first and second endings. The first time through, bars 11–12 are a turnaround (I–VI7–ii–V) that leads back to the top. The second time they are a final cadence that stops on the tonic. Every chord is played as a three-note shell so the shapes stay small; the point is to follow the signs, not the voicings.

\tempo 120
.
\ts 4 4
\ro :1 (1.6 1.4 2.3){ch "F7"} | (1.5 1.3 3.2){ch "Bb7"} | (1.6 1.4 2.3){ch "F7"} | (1.6 1.4 2.3) |
(1.5 1.3 3.2){ch "Bb7"} | (1.5 1.3 3.2) | (1.6 1.4 2.3){ch "F7"} | (5.5 5.3 7.2){ch "D7"} |
(3.6 3.4 3.3){ch "Gm7"} | (3.5 3.3 5.2){ch "C7"} |
\ae 1 :2 (1.6 1.4 2.3){ch "F7"} (5.5 5.3 7.2){ch "D7"} | \rc 2 (3.6 3.4 3.3){ch "Gm7"} (3.5 3.3 5.2){ch "C7"} |
\ae 2 :1 (1.6 1.4 2.3){ch "F7"} | (1.6 0.4 2.3){ch "F6"} |

In numerals the form is: I7 | IV7 | I7 | I7 | IV7 | IV7 | I7 | VI7 | ii7 | V7 | and then either I7 VI7 | ii7 V7 (turnaround) or I7 | I6 (ending). Module 6 studies the blues in detail; what matters here is that you can trace the route through the signs without stopping.

The shells used above come from the library; check your shapes against them:

D.S. al Coda in practice

The example below marks a typical roadmap with text: the sign is at bar 1, "To Coda" at the end of bar 4, and the instruction "D.S. al Coda" at the end of bar 6. Read it like this: play bars 1–6; at the D.S. instruction jump back to the sign (bar 1); play bars 1–4 again; at "To Coda" jump to the Coda (bars 7–8) and finish. The chords are a I–vi–ii–V in Bb with shells, so you can keep your eyes on the signs rather than on your hands.

\tempo 120
.
\ts 4 4
:1 (6.6 7.4 7.3){ch "Bbmaj7"}{txt "Segno"} | (3.6 3.4 3.3){ch "Gm7"} | (3.5 1.4 3.3){ch "Cm7"} | (1.6 1.4 2.3){ch "F7"}{txt "To Coda"} |
(6.6 7.4 7.3){ch "Bbmaj7"} | (1.6 1.4 2.3){ch "F7"}{txt "D.S. al Coda"} | (3.5 1.4 3.3){ch "Cm7"}{txt "Coda"} | (6.6 5.5 7.4){ch "Bbmaj7"} |

How a Real Book chart is laid out

The fake books that jazz musicians use (the Real Book and its legal successors, the New Real Book, the Hal Leonard Real Book editions) all follow the same layout, and knowing it lets you take in a chart at a glance:

1. Title, composer and style at the top (Medium swing, Ballad, Bossa, Up). The style tells you the feel and the approximate tempo.
2. Key signature and time signature at the start of the first line. The key signature is the main key; the tune may leave it.
3. Melody in the treble clef, usually one line per four bars, so an eight-bar section is two lines and a 32-bar chorus is eight lines. Guitar sounds an octave below where it is written, so play the melody where it sits on the staff.
4. Chord symbols above the staff, one per bar or per half bar. A chord lasts until the next symbol.
5. Section letters (A, B) in boxes, and rehearsal marks at double bar lines.
6. Repeats, endings, sign and coda as described above. The Coda is set off at the end, usually on its own line.
7. Sometimes an intro, a vamp (a short progression repeated until cue) or an ending written out at the bottom.

Reading a 12-bar blues chart

A blues chart is a single 12-bar chorus with a repeat sign (play as many times as the band agrees) and sometimes a written intro or ending. Three things to check: the key (most jazz blues are in F or Bb), whether the chords are plain (I7, IV7, V7 only) or "jazz blues" (with ii–V, VI7 and a turnaround as in the notated example above), and whether bar 12 holds the V7 (go round again) or the I (stop). When the melody is written out as a 12-bar head, the form is: head once or twice, solos (any number of choruses), head once or twice, ending.

Reading a 32-bar AABA chart

The most common standard form is 32 bars in four 8-bar sections, A A B A. On the page this appears in one of two ways. Either all 32 bars are written out, usually eight lines of four bars, or (more often) the A section is written once with a repeat sign and first and second endings, then the bridge (B) follows, then the last A is written out or marked "D.C. al Fine" with Fine at the end of the second ending. The bridge usually goes to a new key, often through a chain of ii–V–Is or a cycle of dominants. Read it as:

• A1: bars 1–8, first ending.
• A2: bars 1–8 again, second ending (often a turnaround back into the bridge).
• B: bars 17–24, the bridge; expect a key change.
• A3: bars 25–32, usually ending on the tonic, with a turnaround if the form repeats.

Practise counting through an AABA chart while a recording plays, saying the section letter at each boundary. Later, in Module 12, you will learn to hear the form without the chart.

Exercises

1. Alias drill. Write ten chord symbols using the printed-chart aliases (Δ, –, ø, °, +, alt) and translate each into the course's ASCII form and then into notes. Check with the chord dictionary.
2. Slash chords. On the first page of any fake book, find three slash chords and decide whether each is an inversion or a pedal.
3. Rhythmic figures. Clap and count the two kick examples until they are automatic, then play them with any chord. Then write two kicks of your own and play them.
4. Signs. Take any chart with a D.S. al Coda and trace the route with a pencil, numbering the bars in playing order. Then play the chords through the whole route at a slow tempo without stopping.
5. Blues and AABA. Choose one blues and one AABA tune from the repertoire list. Write the form in the margin, bracket the ii–V–Is, and play the chords through the entire form, once with four stabs a bar and once with the and-of-4 anticipation at every chord change.

Quiz