Re: A weird chord

[Tim McNamara]

On Feb 20, 2010, at 1:30 PM, Brett McCoy wrote:

> I am typesetting a lead sheet and it has a very strange chord --
> G7b9#9. I confirmed that this chord is correct (freakin jazz people
> ;-P ), but can't figure out how to get the chord name to display.
> Using g:7.9-.9+ only results in g7#9 since Lilypond doesn't like two
> of the same steps in the chord. I guess doing g:7.9-.10- would work
> (it yields G7b9(addb10) which looks even weirder... I guess I can live
> with that but if anyone has a suggestion on how to typeset this, it
> would be really helpful.

Really a G7b9#9?  Odd.  IIRC there's a couple charts in the Real Book  
that have something like this.  My recollection is that the chord is  
written as a dominant 7th with the #9 and b9 in parentheses, one  
above the other.  In another chart my guess is that the intent is 2  
beats of #9 and then 2 beats of b9.

My advice would be to just write a Gb7 or to pick just one extension,  
perhaps whichever coincides best with the melody note in that measure  
(e.g., Gb7b9 if the melody note is a G or Gb7#9 if it's an A; if it's  
neither, I would go with the Gb7).  Speaking as a musician, most of  
the extended chords in the Real Book are superfluous and really  
should be written more vanilla.  The melody is carrying the extension  
and it's often not necessary to repeat that in the chord on guitar or  
piano.  If I was faced with a chart with Gb7b9#9 I'd probably just  
play a Gb7.