Lead-sheet notation, also known as popular-music notation, is by far the most widespreadnotational convention used by jazz musicians. It comes in a variety of forms that arisefrom its murky origins and subsequent vague implementations. There are many alternatenotational systems in use, which for better or worse every jazz musician needs to getfamiliar with for purely practical, “bandstand” reasons. Here, we will only use chordsymbols that are commonly found in published and respected fake books. Lead-sheetnotation is very specific in showing what the chord is: it indicates the letter name, theexact number and types of extensions occurring within a chord, chordal inversions, orcomplex polychordal formations. A chord symbol, then, provides a quick insight into thechord’s pitch content. As such, it can be easily transmitted into a voicing that capturesthe essence of that symbol. The downside of this labeling is the lack of contextualconsiderations, especially in regard to the underlying tonality. As a tonally “uninterpreted”notation, we are not quite sure, for instance, how chords relate to one another, how theirbehavior conveys the underlying tonality, and what the overall tonal logic of differentchord successions may be.In this book, upper-case letter names will be used to indicate major-type chords. For minor-type chords a “min” extension following an upper-case letter name will be used. The lead-sheet symbols from Figure 3.6 also employ slash notation; this specifies a chord typewith the lowest sounding pitch separated by a diagonal slash. An upper-case letter nameto the right of the diagonal indicates the chordal root. The letter name to the left of thediagonal shows a specific chord type.