Nothing Left but the Sea, part 2

Yesterday, in part 1, I gave the background story on “Nothing Left but the Sea” the fifth track on my new Jamendo album, handmade. Today I’ll talk a bit about the composition itself.

This song was recorded December 10, 2006. Now, the chords for this one are much of the story, so I will discuss both parts. First, however, if you are new to jazz, or just puzzled by all the weird symbols you see below, check out my newly-written list of common chord abbreviations.

This is an AABA format tune. The “A” part of the song is a 16-bar unit:

Gm7	%	Abµ	%
Cµ	Cm7	Cm6	Ab∆/C
D/C	%	G7/B	%
Em7	Bb/A	D∆	%

The eight bar “B” part has a lower chord density:

A7	%	Fm7	%
A7	%	E/F	%

Finally, the vamp at the end just shifts back and forth between Gm7 and Abµ.

Now, some of the chords may be unfamiliar to you (unless you’ve read a lot of my articles — most of the chords in this song are my favorite types). Here’s a selection of interpretations:

• Bars 5 through 8 are a simple descending minor series, what jazz educator Jerry Coker called CESH (”Contrapuntal Elaboration of Static Harmony.” Coker, by the way, is one of the great jazz theorists–if you are interested in jazz and haven’t read his book, “Elements of the Jazz Language for the Developing Improvisor“, I give it my highest recommendation). The last chord in the series, Ab∆/C, is just my idiosyncratic way of writing “C minor seventh Aeolian scale featuring a flat 13th that doesn’t clash with the fifth of the base chord.”
• The chord D/C is a slash chord, D major triad over C — it sounds suspiciously like C lydian, so I usually play it as a lydian chord substitute (a major chord that is still unsettled and doesn’t quite sound like the final word).
• G7/B, a simple inversion of G7, here providing a bridge to the sound of the Em7 chord — the bass note is a half step down from D/C, but a fifth above Em7.
• The sequence Em7, Bb/A, D∆ is almost normal, but I’ve substituted one of my favorite slash chords (Bb triad over A) for the standard A7 chord.  Listen; it works.
• Finally, in the B section, the strangest chord is the vaguely unsettling, Twilight Zone sounding E/F.  If you tried to write this as anything but a slash chord, you’d get garbage: is it F minor flat 5 major 7th?  Or is it F major seventh sharp 11 flat 9?  Arrgh.  It’s neither; it’s E/F.  It sounds at home with the F diminished scale (E F – G Ab – Bb B – C# D); unlike most diminished chords, it sounds more or less at rest, so makes a good, if eerie, tonic chord.