![]() He had used felt for the pads, probably because the original leather ones were so deteriorated that they looked like felt to him. ![]() Grandpa (Doug) had filled a hairline crack, replaced the string windings that this instrument had instead of tenon corks, and replaced the pads. It was a clarinet, but obviously a very early one. Do you want to see it?" I said, "Sure, bring it in next week." I was expecting a junker, or maybe an Albert system clarinet from the early 1900s, or.whatever.Īt his next lesson, Eric brought in a cardboard mailing tube, and pulled out an instrument that looked like a recorder (German blockflöte or English fipple flute) but had a few keys, and a clarinet mouthpiece. Some years ago, I think in the late 1980s, one of my students (Eric, an eighth grader), said, "My grandpa's been fixing up an old clarinet. In older fakebooks, you'll often see m7b5 expressed as a IVm6 chord: Or sometimes as a VII in major, as part of the "circle within a key" (diatonic circle of fourths):Īnd yes, it's quicker to write a circle with a slash through it (or type option - o) than to write "m7b5."īut I'd still argue that "m7b5" better describes this chord, given its most common function. It's also true that you will sometimes see the m7b5 chord used in a sort of "passing" context in what I'd call an extended turnaround:į#m7b5 Fm7 Em7 Ebdim7 Dm7 G7 (e.g., Cole Porter's "Night and Day") It's true that a m7b5 chord could serve as a dominant 9 chord minus the root (Bm7b5 = G9), but you'll rarely see it used that way in jazz lead sheets. Here are two common turnaround progressions illustrating these usages:Ĭmaj7 C#dim7 Dm7 G7 (here the C#dim7 has a dominant function, substituting for A7b9 as a V of II)Įm7 Ebdim7 Dm7 G7 (here the Ebdim7 is a passing chord) ![]() Rather, it virtually always functions as either a dominant chord (Bdim7 = G7b9 minus the root), or as a passing chord (supplying chromatic passing tones between two other chords). But these chords are not functionally related: The "fully" diminished seventh chord does not occur as a II (dominant preparation) in either major or minor. It's only one accidental away from a "fully" diminished seventh chord. The m7b5 chord is often called "half-diminished" because of its construction: diminished triad, with a minor seventh. It makes sense to use similar terminology - m7 and m7b5 - to describe similarly functioning chords. ![]() So in C major, II would be Dm7, and in C minor, II would be Dm7b5. The m7b5 chord is usually encountered as II (dominant preparation) in minor, as in the examples above. That made sense to me then, and still does now. One of my first jazz teachers felt that the most accurate way to notate the first chord in this progression would be "m7b5," rather than "half-diminished." His reasoning was that its usual function had more in common with m7 chords than it did with diminished chords. These three progressions all express pretty much the same thing, II V I in the key of C minor: "Minor 7 flat five," "half-diminished," or "IVm6"? ![]()
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