what exactly is an upper structure?
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in ninth chords, the upper structure is the triad formed by the 5th, 7th and 9th. for example, in a cmaj9 chord, g is the upper structure.
in larger extended chords, the upper structure is usually thought of as a triad or seventh chord formed by its uppermost pitches. for example, in a cmaj13#11 chord, you could think of the upper structure as being eith a d major triad, or a bm7 chord, depending on where you choose to mentally divide it.
another area where we get into upper and lower structures is in polychords. a polychord is actually two unrelated chords, where one is stacked on top of another. for example, suppose your left hand plays a c major triad, and your right hand plays an ebm7 chord (not that this would necessarily sound good). the way it would be written is with the ebm7 above the c, with a horizontal line between them. the c, in this case, would be the lower structure, and the ebm7 would be the upper structure.
in practice, upper structures can be useful in soloing, and forming two-handed voicings for jazz piano. for example, try playing a bm7 upper structure arpeggio over a cmajj7 chord. actually use the arpeggiated notes of the upper structure as if it were a scale. very lydian sounding, and has a certain intrinsic melodic structure. this is only one example.
also try this (for voicings): play a dm7 chord with your left hand (or an a-form ii voicing) and play any inversion of am7 (an upper structure) with your right hand. the two together yield a voicing for dm11, which could be useful in the context of a ii-v-i sequence, or in a minor groove of some kind. if you move to v7 (g7), play an a-form v voicing with your left hand, and play any inversion of em7 with your right hand (again, an upper structure) for a nice g13(omit11) voicing. move to i (cmaj7, or an a-form i voicing) and play a different inversion of em7 wiith your right hand, for a nice textural harmony on the tonic resolution. it's easy to create harmonic diversity in comping by knowing what upper structure chords blend well with the left hand voicings, and simply moving them around in different inversions.
hope this helped,
ben blau
what an explanation! this sorts out everything! tnx man
ben blau
nor.
did you mean to say that there's no difference between polychords and extended chords? common practice suggests that harmonic structures should be expressed as polychords if they cannot be written or interpreted easily via conventional chord symbology. so it's true that one could think of a common extended chord as a polychord, this often isn't necessary from an analysis or transcriptional point of view. for example, it would be odd to annotate a common extended chord as a polychord in a chord chart.
have i misunderstood you?
ben blau
an upper structure is a "triad over a tritone", which he defines as the 3/7 of the chord, plus a triad at various positions which then is used to construct an upper structure chord (or chord with extensions). then he lays out different positions of the triad such as at ii of the root (+11 chord), bvi (alt), vi (b9), #iv minor (b9 +11), the combination of the 3/7 and the triad creating a chord with the quality noted in parenthesis. sounds to me too that one could invent various triads of other types (minors) to create other extensions. the point to them apparently is quick chord/voicing construction.
the other way i was taught to understand this was just by remembering the quality i want (e.g. alt), then i would know to improvise on a triad starting at bvi of the root, or if i want a +11, i can improvise a triad at ii of the root. so i use the same principle used by mark levine but in a different context. the reason i don't necessarily use mark levine's structure here is that by design, i think the voicing he uses is two handed.
since an upper structure chord defined here could also be played on the left hand (eliminating duplicate notes), i would think that it would appear just as a normal chord rather than a polychord which implies to me to be two or more separate chords. on the other hand, since any combination of two chords would always result in extensions to the first chord, one wonders what difference a polychord makes. so i'm going to guess that polychord implies a two handed chord irrespective of chordal quality. must be just a matter of voicing difference (1 vs. 2 hands)?
rc
polychords are a way of expressing harmonies that are awkward to express via conventional chord symbols, in most cases. they're not necessarily "special" in any other way, besides the way they are written. they are by implication unusual structures, since otherwise one would tend to use regular chord symbols to express them. it is true, however, that one could express many simple chords as polychords (like expressing cmaj9 as g over c), although there would be little reason to do so in a standard chord chart. so in that sense, any seventh chord or extended chord could be thought of as a polychord (consisting of two or more simultaneous triads).
i'm not trying to be argumentative, just trying to clarify the common practice usage of these in mainstream theory. to summarize my position, i'd say that polychords are a way of writing and thinking of large harmonic structures as two simultaneous smaller, and more managable chords. this can be done with large diatonic tertian structures, but is more commonly done in atonal music where the two structures are unrelated, and would result in an unusual chord symbol if expressed in the traditional way.
ben blau
but like i said, my common application of upper structures is not even for constructing chords but for quickly visualizing harmonic extension structures in improvisation. so in that sense it is probably unique. i learned this before i saw it in mark levine's book, so it is probably a common approach in jazz circles.
7 - i think i'm understanding what you are saying. i can imagine a musical context where one chord is stationary and another chord is moving, let's say chromatically for effect. which makes more sense to express as a polychord. kind of like a slash chord easily showing a chromatic bass movement.
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