> Kevin's diagonal idea is one of those things I realize now was there all
> along and I just missed it.
I wish I could take credit for it. I got the idea from a heavy-metal
guitarist and went, "Yeah! Right! Of course! Duh!"
> I see this fine for min7 and dom7 chords. Somehow, though, playing 3rd
> and Maj7 as a two-note voicing sounds discordant to me.
> I am ready and happy to say "Okay, so I train my ear to like it....
> I have heard that prior to the Maj7 chord's rise in popularity, many
> jazz players actually played the 6: 1 3 5 6. Might the 3/6 2 note
> voicing work...? or am I just scrambling to avoid learning to use a sound
Yes, it works. You're just flatting the (flat) seventh instead of
sharping it to make the maj7. I may sound like an anti-intellectual,
but if your ear thinks something is wrong, it's usually wrong. That
said, your ear may be getting confused by the fact that the interval
between the 3 and the maj7 is a fifth so it sounds like a rock power
chord with the 3 as the root. Hearing the bass roots would help, I
think.
The 3/7 sound is kind of sparse, tho. "Jazz power chords" (as someone
put it) is a good way to describe it. It works okay with ensembles
when you have a bassist laying down the root, but without a bassist or
keyboardist I think I prefer the sound of four-note chords, stirred
not gripped.
Cheers,
Kevin
"The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."
- Robert Louis Stevenson