Advanced Music Theory Lesson 1: Upper Structures
Welcome to my Advanced level theory course. Now, before we start let me add a bit of a disclaimer. Some would call this advanced “jazz” theory. Yet, I find this to be a misnomer. At least in the university system, there is a severe lack of what I cover in this course which could be very useful to classical composers (like a detailed description of the melodic minor modes), and it is my intention to fill the gaps where this system falls off a bit (without having to resort to Scriabin mystics). I suppose it will be a bit difficult to quantify some of this material into “traditional” analysis, but where it is possible I’ll do my best to relate both. Now, i think it is important to note that this 8 week course will be very technical in its language and analysis, so it should only be attempted by those with a fairly firm grasp on music. All are welcome to try it out, but if it gets too in depth, it’s okay to take a step back and review some of the posts in my earlier curriculum.
So into the frying pan then.
First, we’ll have to create a footing over which most of the following material will be grounded: namely, the upper structure extensions.
What are the upper structure extensions you ask? Well, they are the 9ths, 11ths, and the 13ths of the musical world. There are several ways to look at these extensions, but we’ll start from where they are derived. Time to recall your chord-scale relationships. These concepts will keep coming back over and over and over again as this course continues.
Remember back to learning to where the 7th chords come from. This is essentially the same thing, except we keep going up the scale until we finish all the notes. Now, take a look at the top three notes, which are, of course, the 9th, 11th, and 13th from bottom to top respectively. They form a major triad! Yes, this is what an upper structure is: the remaining three notes in a scale which make up some sort of triad. This triad has all sorts of uses, and creates a very easy way to visualize the elusive extensions. As you can imagine, each 7 note scale and mode will yield a different upper structure triad. In C Lydian, it forms a Cmaj7(#11) chord where the extensions are the natural 9, sharp 11, and natural 13. In lead sheet notation you don’t write an extension out if it’s natural unless it’s acting alone or if it’s the 13th in a dominant chord. Later in the course I’ll explain why, but for now just memorize that; there are some implication issues which will take a little more understanding.
Let’s look at another example:
Over this C Dorian mode we arrive at the D minor triad upper structure. So, it would follow that playing a D minor triad (note this one is in 2nd inversion) over, say, a more open voicing:
will yield a more interesting sound than simply crunching everything together. This is where upper structures really shine, the arrangement. Debussy and Poulenc, for example, were certainly hip to upper structures. They played with them all over their compositions (check out Poulenc’s Piano and Oboe Sonata, it’s gorgeous). Upper structures have the stunning ability to add a new flavor to a harmony while still working within the confines of conventional theory. Take Scriabin, who I mentioned earlier. His “mystic” chord isn’t really all that mysitical: it’s just a D major (lydian) upper structure super imposed and inverted over a C7 without the 5th (which isn’t very necessary in this context anyway, as it just further clutters the chord…Scriabin was very smart!).
Now it’s time for you to experiment. But a word of caution: usually you want to avoid natural 11ths over dominant and major chords (unless you’re specifically for a more “modal” sound). Unfortunately the modes of major create many natural 11ths over the root, but thats what Melodic Minor is for (next week’s post)