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it was MY daggone jazz quartet, formed to feature my piano playing, and if I wanted to substitute a chord, if I wanted to reharmonize a passage or an entire song, that was my prerogative and the "right" thing to to would be to support the rest of the band in that situation rather than being so darned obtuse about harmonization. After all, it is indeed a JAZZ band.



Zackly. And let's not forget what a FAKE book is. It's a FAKE book. They are best attempts to document what might just be good mojo happening at a certain time and date by certain players.

It's jazz. Is there really a right way and a wrong way, as long as it sounds good? Just picked up Miles Davis' The Birth of the Cool, which has both studio and live cuts of the same songs for my 7th grader, who is turning out to be a real Jazz fan. Miles' band didn't play these songs exactly the same way studio to live. Which time were they right?

Maybe the person charting the HLP book was more classically trained, or prefers bebop over hard bop or whatever. Maybe they didn't really know how to transcribe and substituted chords that they knew.

I do this all the time when I have to play very simple worship songs, where the chord charts are very often over-simplified compared to what the guy on the studio or live recording was actually doing. Sometimes it's because the person writing out the chords is a keyboard player listening to a guitar player and they can't perfectly hear the 2nds and 4ths that result from a particular way of chording.

Very common for songs in G with modern worship band music:

G is played as follows, E to e strings: 3 2 0 0 3 3 That is fully G, no fancy oddball notes.
C is played as follows, x 3 2 0 3 3 (this is actually Cadd9 or C2, I think or depending on who you ask)
D is played as follows, x x 0 2 3 3 (this is Dsus4 I believe) often resolving off to what most players play for open D x x 0 2 3 2

But guess how it gets charted? That's right, just G, C, D -but if you play it that way, it doesn't get the ringing D on the b string that makes up the whole vibe of the guitar part in most cases!

Guitar players used to anchoring down their pinky and ring finger on the 3rd fret of the b and e strings to go between the chords know what that sounds like and can immediately 'go there' when they hear it on the recording, while the keyboard player, if that person doesn't play guitar, it's harder for them to hear/visualize it (I know they should be able to do it) and therefore they bang out something that does fit, even though it may not have the right timbre. Easy to write down G, C, D. Which one is right?

While I'm not a jazzer (though I wish I could be), I'm guessing the same happens with 'standards' depending on the perspective and experience of the person who did the charting.

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