I came across an interesting anecdote concerning the great alto sax player Ornette Coleman and his sideman tenor player Dewey Redman. Redman looked at of of Ornette's charts and asked why there were no chord symbols, and what was the overall key.

Ornette took the lead sheet away and put chords under every melody note! The chord was always the same as the note. If the note was G the chord was written simply as G and if the note was F# it was also merely an F# with no chord quality as such.

Redman just scratched his head in confusion none the wiser as often was the case in dealing with Ornette's methodology.

What interested me was the idea that a note could suggest it's own chord all on its own regardless of key.

Looking further afield I saw that in a discussion of Scriabin's music the mystic chord was the chord suggested by a note's overtone series. The chord was a dominant 13b5 I believe.
He was referring to the 'audible' overtone series which came to be referred to as the overtone scale or the Lydian Dominant scale 1, 2, 3, b5, 5, 6 b7.

Others believe the audible series to be only a plain dom 7 chord 1, 3, 5, b7,starting on the note's root which conforms to the overtone series order. while many consider only the root major third and 5th as the really strong overtones suggested by a note.

While I can't say I've heard that I've heard this psycho-acoustic phenomenon for myself I'm interested to know what others think of this as a possible source of melody reharmonization and if you've ever used it.

Could this be the origins of constant structure chords or harmonic planing you find so much today in post Bill Evans jazz?

Alan