My question is about playing upper neighbors to embellish basic chord tone motion.
Lower neighbors like this...
...seem to pose no problems. Just use half steps below and the neighbor sounds like a leading tone and it never outlines a tritone
But the upper neighbor seem more complicated. All the diatonic upper neighbors seem fine except on the ii
chord...
...where a tritone is outlined. In minor this doesn't seem a concern, because that tritone is just outlining all chord tones on both iim7♭5
and imin6
.
Only A B A F
on the ii
chord in major seem like a potential problem.
If the lower chromatic neighbor acts like a leading tone, solfege TI
, then the upper neighbor seems analogous to solfege FA
. If you play all the diatonic thirds with an upper neighbor, they outline perfect fourths with the upper neighbor like FA
, except the one that outlines a tritone.
For a jazz player, would the "basic" approach put a flat on it? Like, A Bb A F
over ii
in C
major.
I understand that both diatonic and chromatic lower/upper neighbors are all part of the jazz vocabulary and can be used depending on context and style. My question is just about a "basic" diatonic approach.