Pick Yourself Up Chord Question

[terryj47]

Hi everyone. I watched a Youtube video of a duo playing "Pick Yourself Up" by Jerome Kern. Guitar and piano. It included an image of the notation for the melody with chord names. Lot's of major 7, ninth, half diminished chords and so on. I found the chord name with a triangle is a major 7th. There is one that is through me. There is a chord in interpret as D7 (#5#9). I have it voiced on my virtual piano as D F# A# F. It sounds awful! I could be wrong on the #5 and #9. The '#' char in the #5 and #9 doesn't really look the pound symbol. It looks more like a squashed Greek Psi charactor. I've been Googling and don't see anything that looks like it.
There is another chord that uses this charactor that I'm interpreting as F# 1/2 diminished 7. It sounds like it belongs.

Can anyone help on this chord shorthand notation?

Here is a link to the youtube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylEzIfsBojc

Thanks in advance,

Terry

[JonPR]

D7#5#9 contains the notes D F# A# C F. The C (the "7") is important!

Best shape on guitar is probably: x-5-4-5-6-6 (D-F#-C-F-A#).

An alternative position for the same voicing is 10-9-10-10-11-x.

You're right about the other chord: F#Ø7 (or just F#Ø) = F#m7b5.

The "7" is not strictly necessary after Ø, btw, because that symbol alone means "half-diminished", implying the standard minor 7th in contrast with the diminished 7th in a "full diminished" chord. Likewise the triangle means "maj7" on its own, without the "7" being necessary. But obviously it does no harm to include the "7".

The other potentially confusing jazz shorthand is "-" for "m". "G-7" = Gm7. Sometimes you even get "-" used to mean "b". I've seen the insane laziness of "C-7-5" for "Cm7b5" before!

[Brent Hahn]

To my ear quite a few of the keyboard changes in that video sound like, um, interesting choices. The upright bass makes them sound less wrong, and the pianist plays with firm intent, but still...

An online "Quarantine Band" I was working with wanted to do a version of PYU with sort of a Thomas the Tank Engine vibe (who knows why), so we took a look at just about every PYU chart we could find, and we found an amazingly wide gamut of opinions on what the chords should be and how it made sense to play them. And on guitar, how to make playing them possible. Eventually we landed on the tactic of finding a bass line that worked and then plopping in fairly simple chord voicings that sounded "not wrong." Here's a video of it, and I can probably dig up the chart if you're interested.

[terryj47]

Thanks for the comments. Playing these chords is out of my comfort zone so I'm "composing" them in the Reaper MIDI editor.
I'll try any suggestions tomorrow.
Thanks again.

[mr. beaumont]

Regarding the D7#5#9, most charts I've seen just have G-7 to C7 in that bar.

[terryj47]

Originally Posted by Brent Hahn

To my ear quite a few of the keyboard changes in that video sound like, um, interesting choices. The upright bass makes them sound less wrong, and the pianist plays with firm intent, but still...

Nice job on the tune and video Brent and the others.

[terryj47]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

Regarding the D7#5#9, most charts I've see just have G-7 to C7 in that bar.

Thank you sir. I'll give that a try.

[JonPR]

Jeff is right - the usual chord at that point is C7, so that version (which seems to be from the Real Book) has substituted the V7 of Gm instead - I guess to make it different from the Gm7-C7 in the next bar. It's the kind of thing jazz musicians sometimes do.

D7#5#9 has a totally different function from C7 - serving as a punctuation before the last 8-bar section - but it's only two beats, it harmonizes the long C melody note (in a more interesting way), and acts as an alternative contrast chord between the two Gm7s (while having 3 notes in common with Gm7!).

But a plain D7 would do, or just go with the C7 alternative.

[terryj47]

I tried the Gm7-C7 in place of the D7,etc and those chords sound nice. I still have to finish the melody track in that area to see how it sounds as a whole.
Then I can loop on it and learn to play it! (The new chords on guitar)

BTW, using Reaper as a looper is cool. You can just change the BPM and slow it down without changing the pitch. 115 is too fast on the few troublesome new chords (for me anyway)

Thanks again to those who commented.

[Italuke]

I looked at it, and those are just normal sharps (#) but smooshed to be a little smaller to cram them into the space.

So it is a strange chord they have there, difficult to name. They've taken an augmented triad, added the (m) 7th, which in itself is rare, then layered on top a raised 9, which is the same as a minor 3rd, only in higher register.

Whatever you do in voicing, you DON'T want that F natural (E#) too low in the voicing, nor the A# also. But definitely keep that F natural higher than the true third of the chord, the F#. It probably should be your highest note.

[terryj47]

Originally Posted by Italuke

I looked at it, and those are just normal sharps (#) but smooshed to be a little smaller to cram them into the space.

So it is a strange chord they have there, difficult to name. They've taken an augmented triad, added the (m) 7th, which in itself is rare, then layered on top a raised 9, which is the same as a minor 3rd, only in higher register.

Whatever you do in voicing, you DON'T want that F natural (E#) too low in the voicing, nor the A# also. But definitely keep that F natural higher than the true third of the chord, the F#. It probably should be your highest note.

Thanks for the comments. I have a track setup now with MIDI piano chords and melody that sounds pretty good. I can use it as a a backing track to work on the guitar chords. The piano chords are all voiced such that they can be played on a guitar.
Take care.