Practising Chords

[bilgekaana]

Hi , I have been playing piano for 7 months. I made myself a daily practice session and I want to add chords in it. How can I practice chords ? Do you know any book or should I just play a scale and then all the chords in it ? ( For example: C major scale- CEG,DFA.. etc )

[j_tour]

Hi , I have been playing piano for 7 months. I made myself a daily practice session and I want to add chords in it. How can I practice chords ? Do you know any book or should I just play a scale and then all the chords in it ? ( For example: C major scale- CEG,DFA.. etc )

That's a good question.

No, I wouldn't do what you're describing.  Primarily, it wouldn't make any sense, from a theoretical perspective, and your ear would just get confused.

My ear is getting confused just thinking about how that would sound.  In essence, do stuff that sounds good.

Can you harmonize melodies, even a scale using diatonic chords?  Sure.  Of course you can, and some good music has been made on that idea, or very nearly.  But I would say that's more a trick for makng arrangements or doing orchestrations.  I'd be inclined to stick to stuff that sounds good "out of the box" and can be applied regardless of context.

Instead I'd work on some cadences in all inversions, in all keys.  Authentic, plagal, minor plagal:  you can write those out or any basic music theory text should have these, for example, at the very least in the model key of C.

And I wouldn't forget working on the diminished seventh chord as well, and resolving it.

Yeah, there's a bunch to do, but I'd stick with the basic cadences for now.  There's plenty of time for all the augmented sixth chords later on.

If you get bored, you can always just plunk your way through a fake book full of standards or jazz tunes.

But I'd stick with the basics for now.

ETA One caution:  if you grab a basic theory of harmony textbook, undoubtedly they're going to throw a bunch of figured bass notation at you.  Forget about that for now.  Just all you need for now is V7-->I, IV6-->I....well, just stick with those for now.  All keys, as many inversions as you care to do, and for that matter worry about the minor keys for in the near future.

And don't forget about the diminished seventh chord.

EETA And, yes, there are books of chords written out in standard notation.  I wouldn't bother with those.  Do the fundamental cadences in all keys, just stick to triads mostly, and don't forget about the diminished seventh chord. 

And play your scales too.

It might be boring, but when you hear somebody really using these IRL playing real music, you'll know why.

[bilgekaana]

Thank you so much , I have 1 more question. Why did you keep saying don't forget diminished seventh chord. What should I do with it ? Just play all diminished seventh chords in the scales I practice ?

[brogers70]

You might be interested in this video on partimento, an old approach to learning theory that starts with harmonizing bass lines.

The first step in partimento is learning the "rule of the octave", a traditional way to harmonize ascending and descending bass lines. Here's a link with a free pdf of the rule of the octave in all major and minor scales. You could throw a few of those into your daily scales. the idea is that they will eventually make your hands more or less automatically know where to go in a lot of common progressions you'll see in 18th and early 19th century music.

https://www.songbirdmusicacademy.com/post/free-pdf-rule-of-the-octave-in-all-keys-for-piano

[j_tour]

Thank you so much , I have 1 more question. Why did you keep saying don't forget diminished seventh chord. What should I do with it ? Just play all diminished seventh chords in the scales I practice ?

Yeah, I guess I was a bit strident about that.

Think about the diminished chords (or perhaps even the octotonic diminished scale, maybe for a future time) as giving you the maximum tension. 

A lot of the altered dominant sevenths are borrowing bits from diminished harmony.  You don't have to hit the theory right now, but you'll want to get that sound in your head and under your fingers, I'd bet.

And I'd bet you anything that you already know the sounds, just from being a fan of music.  I presume!

It's just a particular chord that is the very definition of an unstable structure that can't help but want to resolve to the tonic, the tensions, that is.  Or resolve to another key center.

I'd call it kind of a skeleton key for introducing motion into your chord progressions. 

A plain dominant seventh chord is the same way, just often not quite as extreme.  Or the IV6 chord, for that matter.

It's one way of thinking about the essence of what makes a cadence compelling, what makes it sound "right" or inevitable.

Plus, they just sound cool!   

I'll edit to toss in something that may not be in your wheelhouse yet, but let's say you want to play, say, a major scale, and you want to harmonize it.  A legitimate way to do that would be to introduce diminished passing chords as you're preparing to hit, say, the subdominant triad or whatever.  Very legitimate sound, you've probably heard it at least in the background as what are sometimes called just "block chords" in jazz or pop piano (George Shearing, Bud Powell, you name it, it's just a standard way of introducing an inevitable motion into what, to me, would just be an utterly boring series of triads which would lack most of the tensions that make chords make sense. 

I suppose you could say tensions, or maybe just the one tension of the leading tone makes chords come alive.  Otherwise it doesn't have too much flavor.

Now, yes, there are a lot of exceptions, and some very good music came out of subverting the traditional common practice period harmony.  But those are more "yeah I'm consciously going to break the expectations and do something different."  So, two well known examples from jazz come to mind:  Sonny Clark's tune and playing on "Melody For C," or....well I was going to also add Bill Evan's tune "Peace Piece," but he wasn't using triadic harmony, not really.  The Sonny Clark tune, though, IIRC is built off i think what you're trying.  More or less just diatonic triads (well, extended to the degree of the seventh, major or minor) to a melody which is just a fragment of the C major scale, as you might have guessed.  It's a very plain, unsatisfying sound, which is what makes it sort of exciting:  how are they going to get some music out of that nothingburger of a tune?  It's up to you if you think they succeeded or not.

You'll also note on "Melody for C" how much tensions derived from the diminished scale or chord Sonny Clark uses when he employs the authentic cadence in his improvisation.  He even outlines the diminished seventh chord tones at least once, so you can tell where his head was at, just as Bach was all about that too.

Just hit the authentic and plagal cadences in all keys, and then if you do have a theoretical bent, you can work on Neopolitan harmony and other exotic sounding things like other augmented sixth voicings, and do more work on minor harmonies, and fool around with "double diminished" voicings and all that.

I'd really stick with the basics, though, at least for now:  it'll sound good, you'll use those cadences the rest of your musical life, every single day.  Nobody ever got fired for playing a nice set of chords, I think is how the old adage goes.

[bilgekaana]

Thank you!

[bilgekaana]

My last question would be how to resolve diminished chords ?
I tried C major , neopolitian first inversion (F-Ab-Db ) to diminished chord ( B-D-F-B ) and then to tonic ( C-E-G-C )  It sounds good. But I can't do this progression in C minor it doesn't sound right.
Sorry for asking too much

[j_tour]

My last question would be how to resolve diminished chords ?
I tried C major , neopolitian first inversion (F-Ab-Db ) to diminished chord ( B-D-F-B ) and then to tonic ( C-E-G-C )  It sounds good. But I can't do this progression in C minor it doesn't sound right.
Sorry for asking too much

Apology accepted!     Anyway, I'm just a nutty MF who likes to talk when it's a topic I enjoy.

I do caution you that it's been quite a while since I've cracked open a theory book of any sort, so any sort of correction is more than welcome, from anyone..

Well, just off the top of my head, that's not going to sound right with a minor tonic.  The sequence you spelled out above.

But one of the main ideas of getting a source for the V7 with a lowered ninth added is that's really a disguised diminished seventh chord, right?  Or maybe it's vice versa, however you want to think about it.  So, in C minor you'd have the pitches {B, D, F, Ab} and then you're back into the Im chord.  Or back into a major key, if you conceive of the pitches as just a V7b9.  IOW, just a regular V7 chord with an added tension (the b9).

Since the minor tonality is already a little bit unstable, one thing people would do is prepare the diminished seventh/V7b9 chord with, say, the IV6m chord, perhaps inverted with the plain sixth on the bass.  Most people would probably call that a IIm7b5 or a half-diminished chord, but they're technically wrong:  it's really just the four chord preparing for the dominant chord.

And then it sounds to me like you already know about the harmonic minor "scale" and all the business with the leading tone in minor. 

ETA In general, yes, when you're looking at charts you'll end up seeing oddly-spelled diminished chords resolving to places they really shouldn't, "technically."  I think some of the chart writers get confused from time to time, or just choose the root of the triad or the seventh chord in diminished that makes it easier to read.  Or maybe the copyist just plain didn't feel like writing out notes like Cb or Fb, which admittedly can be a kind of PITA to read off the page, especially if it's a tune you're just seeing for the first time, like on a live date or session or whatever. I don't know, back in jazz-pop land, a tune like "Embraceable You" or many others you'd see spelled out strangely. 

By far it's more important to be fluent with that harmony so you can use it and recognize it ad libitum.

[bilgekaana]

thank you for  your answer , and yes I am aware of harmonic minor scale but sometimes (for example in C minor dominant chord  ) some people don't sharpen the B. Do you know why ? Do you think it would be better to sharpen the B while I am doing a perfect cadence in C minor ( V-I )

[j_tour]

thank you for  your answer , and yes I am aware of harmonic minor scale but sometimes (for example in C minor dominant chord  ) some people don't sharpen the B. Do you know why ? Do you think it would be better to sharpen the B while I am doing a perfect cadence in C minor ( V-I )

Well, the reason somebody would try to establish a minor tonal center without the leading tone?

Yeah, that's the "natural minor" or Aeolian key, and jazz people sometimes do that.

Keep in mind, even if that's their tune, they're 99% of the time still outlining diatonic harmony within their linearly-described harmonies while improvising.  Otherwise, they'd probably have not much to play.

But, no, if you don't have the leading tone, then you don't have a dominant chord, so, to me, that would mean getting stuck.  The harmony, or the establishing of a key center would quickly fall apart, and it'd turn into some, like, new-age sounding kind of stuff.

That's just my opinion, and certainly people do write music without the common practice period harmony.

It's not for me, but yeah, it can be done.  I just think it doesn't sound that good.

[ranjit]

Well, the reason somebody would try to establish a minor tonal center without the leading tone?

To make it sound less "spicy"? I think I do it rather often, but as such I wouldn't consider it a minor tonality, I'd consider it an ambiguous minor/Dorian/pentatonic tonality.

[ted]

I am very distant from common practice of any sort with regard to chords. I was taught all the usual ones with regard to classical and jazz by my teacher who was a prominent professional. Although I memorised large numbers of them I never did understand their names or related use. Years later a casual question from a friend, “How many different chords and scales are there excluding voicings and pitch ?”, struck me as interesting. I quickly saw that, as a simple consequence of the Polya Burnside theorem, there were 352 counting a silence. I published the result but nobody was interested. I worked my way through most of them, playing with them, memorising those I fancied and improvising around them.

That is how I learned chords, ideally suited to my own mad music and not much else I dare say. I strongly agree with j_tour though that memorising heaps of combinations whose sounds you do not like is a pointless exercise. However you explore chords and scales, in the end their sounds and how you use them to please yourself are what count, not what an expert tells you is correct.

[j_tour]

To make it sound less "spicy"? I think I do it rather often, but as such I wouldn't consider it a minor tonality, I'd consider it an ambiguous minor/Dorian/pentatonic tonality.

That's about exactly the same way I'd think of it.

There is a kind of sharp angularity when resolving the basic V7--> I or V7b9 --> Im cadence.

It doesn't have to be a strictly bebop kind of way of outlining the chord tones when inventing an improvised line, although I happen to enjoy that style of playing just for my own sensibilities.

You can hear the angular impulse (that's not a real term, but it makes sense to me) just playing the octotonic diminished scale.  (To refresh everyone's memory, that's just a perfectly symmetrical eight-note scale alternating whole and half steps — or you could think of it as a scale based on approaching every chord tone of the dim7 chord from a half step below, if you prefer).

Yeah, without that, you would probably be in the land of the whole tone scales or various kinds of ambiguity sometimes spelled out in different sorts of pentatonic chord voicings....

To me that would be really tough to make music out of, but then again, people have done it, so, you'd just have to decide if that's a sound you want. 

I mean, I play a bit of Debussy, quite a bit every day, even though I'm not the best interpreter of his music, and there's a good amount that is just plain beyond my abilities as technician, but I couldn't compose or improvise like that to save my life. 

I'm adding a short edit:  just something that came to mind just now.  Yeah, so there is an additional danger if, I don't know, you're playing (I know I'm hitting the jazz references pretty hard, but it's just what comes to mind and is easy to find references for, at least in my own practice), like a tune based off the dorian mode (like "So What" or "Impressions."

Yeah, so you're playing piano, or maybe guitar, and accompanying the soloist.  Or you're taking a solo yourself on a tune that has these static harmonies.

Yeah, so there'd be the other danger of trying to outline in a linear fashion a real "traditional" angular harmony, or superimpose it while 'comping.  Yeah, people, even the greats do and did fall back on that sometimes, but too much and it can sound a bit corny or "try-hard"-ish.  I mean, yesterday or the day before when I listened to Sonny Clark (pianist) on his tune "Melody For C," he absolutely did it in his solo, and it sounded just fine.  But he had the good taste to not hit the diminished or otherwise altered V7 chords in every line he made.  Or, going off memory, the way Paul Chambers made lines playing the bass on "So What."  Of course he had some of those basic outlines from the authentic cadence happening.  He didn't do it every chorus, though, while accompanying people.

Just good taste, I'd probably say. It's part of the toolbox, so it'd be foolish to ignore it, but you'd have to just measure out for yourself how much to draw from.  A lot?  Yeah, maybe covering a James Brown or Aretha Franklin or Sam Cooke tune?  Probably could do that all day and it'd be just perfect.  A little?  Yeah, well, you'd just have to decide.

But you'd be glad you have those options in your trick bag, either way.

I still maintain it's really tough to come up with ideas when you're avoiding the traditional cadences.  Whether they're spelled out in chords or implied by the melody in a linear fashion.

People do it, but I can't make it work.  I don't have enough imagination, I guess.

You can do things like Bill Evans, "Peace Piece," but IMHO that's more an arranging technique that just happens to be worked out on the keyboard.

[ranjit]

I quickly saw that, as a simple consequence of the Polya Burnside theorem, there were 352 counting a silence.

Could you elaborate on this? I'd be really interested in checking out the proof.

[ted]

Here you are:

[j_tour]

That's undoubtedly got to be my man G. Pólya, right?

If i were a dictator, I'd say Pólya's book How to Solve It would be on every shelf. 

Anyway that's not what I came back to this thread for. 

I just had one last little piece of practical advice, for a neophyte who doesn't know that many chords.

It may seem anti-intellectual or dumb to a "serious student" of Western art music.  But eff it.

Just fire up the hi-fi stereo, or whatever, and play along to Aretha recordings.

Or whatever your taste is.  Could be Ray Charles or Billy Preston or Mac Rebennack or whoever.

But I absolutely guarantee if you put on an LP from the Atlantic records by our lady of soul (who was no slouch herself at picking piano).

That's certainly one way you'll never forget the authentic and plagal cadences, and the seondary dominant chords and all the ways of preparing for the dominant seventh chord.

I'd say there's no shame in learning that way:  just put on the records and play.

Maybe it's not the most sophisticated playing, but the OP said it already, he just wants the chords!

Caution:  there's probably a million websites that have the "chords" written out to all those tunes.  Just do it off the record:  at least that way you'll know it's correct.

ETA. Yeah, I'll stand by what I said:  after all, they're just chords, and, the most important thing is the OP can play them, without thinking about it.  It's basic vocabulary, pretty much.

I don't want to step on anybody's toes, but if you can't play along to an Aretha or Ray Charles record, then, you really don't know the chords, right?

I think I'm right.

At least you can have fun while you're doing the foundational work. 

I say do it, and get it over with. 

[ranjit]

Here you are:

Ted -- Thanks for sending the article! I read through it. However, I couldn't properly understand what the table in the second page means. What group are you considering? What does the ij-th element of the table represent?

[ted]

Ted -- Thanks for sending the article! I read through it. However, I couldn't properly understand what the table in the second page means. What group are you considering? What does the ij-th element of the table represent?

The group is the cyclic group of order 12, think of it as a clock face if you like, mapping onto the keyboard with a note at every hour. It suffices to take one horizontal line to explain it, e.g. take the line for 3 notes. The number of combinations of 3 notes out of 12 is 12.11.10/1.2.3 which gives 220. Of these combinations, only those of the augmented triads will remain invariant when the clock face is rotated onto itself, and only for the rotations of 4 and 8 hours. This is where the 4s come from, because there are four augmented chords within the chromatic scale.

(220+4+4)/12=19, from the theorem. And so for the other numbers of notes. Hope this helps.

[j_tour]

The group is the cyclic group of order 12, think of it as a clock face if you like, mapping onto the keyboard with a note at every hour. It suffices to take one horizontal line to explain it, e.g. take the line for 3 notes. The number of combinations of 3 notes out of 12 is 12.11.10/1.2.3 which gives 220. Of these combinations, only those of the augmented triads will remain invariant when the clock face is rotated onto itself, and only for the rotations of 4 and 8 hours. This is where the 4s come from, because there are four augmented chords within the chromatic scale.

(220+4+4)/12=19, from the theorem. And so for the other numbers of notes. Hope this helps.

No kidding.

Yeah, so just a set of pitches, modulo 12, and put triads into a form using a matrix?

Seems pretty much like a good idea.

[ted]

No kidding.

Yeah, so just a set of pitches, modulo 12, and put triads into a form using a matrix?

Seems pretty much like a good idea.

I just used it as a way of investigating and memorising chords, a pleasant and fruitful diversion, no more than that. Aside from providing a way of expanding my vocabulary it had little bearing on my process of improvisation. It did surprise me that the serialists appear not to have known about it though, they would have had some fun with it.

[j_tour]

I just used it as a way of investigating and memorising chords, a pleasant and fruitful diversion, no more than that. Aside from providing a way of expanding my vocabulary it had little bearing on my process of improvisation. It did surprise me that the serialists appear not to have known about it though, they would have had some fun with it.

No, that's a really neat brief treatise, and I'm glad you made it available and doubly glad I took the few minutes to read the attachments.

Indeed!

Yeah, in Pólya's typical dry humor, "Perhaps the article may inspire some serial based local composer"!  Well, I thought it was good, anyway, it gave me a few minutes of respite.

Somewhat similarly to the OP and playing along with Aretha Franklin recordings. 

Who knows?  That might turn out to be the OP's main thing after getting the chords right!  You never know!

[bilgekaana]

Well, the reason somebody would try to establish a minor tonal center without the leading tone?

Yeah, that's the "natural minor" or Aeolian key, and jazz people sometimes do that.

Keep in mind, even if that's their tune, they're 99% of the time still outlining diatonic harmony within their linearly-described harmonies while improvising.  Otherwise, they'd probably have not much to play.

But, no, if you don't have the leading tone, then you don't have a dominant chord, so, to me, that would mean getting stuck.  The harmony, or the establishing of a key center would quickly fall apart, and it'd turn into some, like, new-age sounding kind of stuff.

That's just my opinion, and certainly people do write music without the common practice period harmony.

It's not for me, but yeah, it can be done.  I just think it doesn't sound that good.

Thank you! , I also tried a picardie third in Minor chords. For example When I play C minor  V-I I raise up the third a half step , this way it feels a bit more finished piece. Do you think is it wrong ? Or can I do it.

(Sorry for asking to much I am trying to figure out chords, especially the minor ones.)

[j_tour]

Thank you! , I also tried a picardie third in Minor chords. For example When I play C minor  V-I I raise up the third a half step , this way it feels a bit more finished piece. Do you think is it wrong ? Or can I do it.

(Sorry for asking to much I am trying to figure out chords, especially the minor ones.)

Apology accepted!  No, you're fine, of course.

I'd have to try that one out, your example.  Yes that's one of the augmented sixth chords.

Do me a favor and write out in standard notation what you're talking about.  You know, just pencil and staff paper or whatever.

I'm not following...so.  We're in C minor tonality, and we've got the V7b9 or the dimnished seventh cadence....

Yeah, I understand the words but I don't really follow how you mean.  Raise the third of a minor key?  Yeah, sure, but then you'd be changing the whole key.  I'm just not following too good you there.

I'm a little bit not following what the problem is:  it should sound like a finished piece.  Or part of one.  That's the whole idea, pretty much.  Yes, the tierce de Picardie is a little bit corny, after how many centuies.   Or, if you got my thing about jazz improvisation above ... if somebody doesn't want it to sound too angular or "finished," well, that's an option as well.  But that's not part of my own style, so I can't say too much about that.

All right, I've got some homework for you to try out.

Beethoven, piano sonata Op. 27 no. 1.  Final movement, from the "Allegro vivace."  From that movement, look at mm. 25 through 35.

There's your plagal cadence.  In spades, more or less.

I don't mean to condescend to you, but these are the chords you need to know!

I mean, there's no two ways about it, really, at least how I see it.

This is an edit, but, for more homework, also the second movement from the same piano sonata, the scherzo.  There's exploring the minor tonality, using arpeggiated chords in Cm.  I'm sure somebody has analyzed this particular piece, probably many people in a lot of books, but you can hear how just by playing through it how/why Beethoven is using the instability of the minor tonic as a tool to modulate temporarily.

I know you've only been playing for a little bit, but I'd say you could probably read that off the page, even if done slowly.  The advantage is it's pretty much all triads, and Eb/Cm is, at least to me, a comfortable key to play in at the keyboard.

[j_tour]

Or, here's yet another "homework" thing to do.

Right, you might know the tune(s) already, just by ear, or maybe not.

But, playing "When The Saints Go Marching In" in both the minor key and the major.

I think most people do that using the relative minor key, so, let's say in the minor we're in Gm, and in the major key, Bb.  Or whatever key signatures are easiest.  For me, just coming from jazz, more or less, I think Bb, Eb, Ab, these are the easiest keys for me to just play in.  For somebody else, I couldn't say. 

Maybe that's a bit too elementary for the OP, but I dont think so.

[j_tour]

This seems like a good time to start explaining that curious notation.

Like, why is this called a IV6 chord?

I swear, for a long time I thought when chart writers wrote out that or a I6 chord, I thought it meant you just added the plain sixth to the chord.

I'm pretty sure someone can explain it better than me.

It seems to me this is the good time to introduce this bit of nomenclature.  The OP already knows about augmented sixths or at least the Neopolitan harmony, so it seems about the good time for this.

It's, like a lot of this stuff, more an arranging technique.  The very short answer is you have the interval of a major sixth above the root of the chord, which is how you get that sound of the plagal cadence, or one of the ways.  Certainly that's the way Beethoven exploited this in the last movement of the sonata cited above.

So, let's stick to the model key of C major, what's the IV chord?  Exactly right.  How do you voice the diatonic IV chord/triad so you have the interval of a major sixth above the root?  Yep.  And that's the sound.  Just to clarify, what are the three chord tones in our diatonic IV chord?  Exactly.  So that's how the IV6 is built, which is itself a shorthand for the chord constructed with chord tone in the root position, an upper note a major sixth above, and in our case the third chord tone a perfect fourth above.  An inversion of the triad based off the modes of the major scale.

Here's some more homework:  why is this different than the way things are constructed in a minor tonality?  What's different, and why?

EDIT My description of the plagal cadence is way off.  Can somebody just fix that?  I'm not wrong, exactly, it's just not said in the right terms.

[brogers70]

I may not be following you, but if I see IV⁶ I interpret it to mean, say in C major, that we are dealing with a IV chord in first inversion, so F major, with A in the bass and C and F above. IV⁶₄ would then be F major in second inversion, ie with C in the bass and F and A above.

[j_tour]

Yeah, that's obviously right.  I just misspoke.  The 6 is a shorthand for the 6 3, or the first inversion chord. 

What can I say, I can be pretty absent-minded or stupid much most the time.

Anyway, I'm still right about the Beethoven last movement:  ten measures and it's got all the chords in it.

[bilgekaana]

Sorry but I didn't understand beethoven's last movement I checked it out but still

[bilgekaana]

You might be interested in this video on partimento, an old approach to learning theory that starts with harmonizing bass lines.

The first step in partimento is learning the "rule of the octave", a traditional way to harmonize ascending and descending bass lines. Here's a link with a free pdf of the rule of the octave in all major and minor scales. You could throw a few of those into your daily scales. the idea is that they will eventually make your hands more or less automatically know where to go in a lot of common progressions you'll see in 18th and early 19th century music.

https://www.songbirdmusicacademy.com/post/free-pdf-rule-of-the-octave-in-all-keys-for-piano

One question, why is there # in the third measure's when descending chords

[j_tour]

Sorry but I didn't understand beethoven's last movement I checked it out but still

What do you mean?  The Allegro vivace from Op. 27 no. 1, starting from measure 25.  I've got, looking at the score from the Henle edition, in pop/jazz notation an Eb triad, followed by an Ab, And moving from the Bb7 back to Eb.

And then preparation for the Bb7 again with the subdominant, back to the tonic of Eb.  And then the whole sequence of plagal cadences into the measure 36 with the new bit.

[j_tour]

Well, how'd it go?

I mean, doing all the cadences in all keys, that seems manageable.

It having been Easter yesterday, here's another amusing exercise.  There's a tune by a guy named Hezekiah Walker, IIRC, called "Lift Him Up."

Personally it's not from my particular sect, but speaking of the diminished seventh chord, there's at least one organist from Berklee. I think his name is...well, I'm not going to remember, Dennis Montgomery.

I'm not the OP's teacher, obviously, but that's one place I'd look for a quick inspiration.

There's no doubt at all, we've got to get the basic chords locked down.  I mean, no two ways about it.  And, it doesn't matter if it's a 6 4 or a plain 6 3, these chords and cadences need to be known in all inversions.  Obviously, there's some terminological confusions, as I've demonstrated (oh. the shorthand answer to the figured bass "problem," that's already been fixed thanks to the above:  the simple idea is the 6 and the 4 represent intervals above the presumptive root of the chord....I wouldn't worry about that, except that most theory textbooks will use that notation.  Among players, I would say it doesn't matter:  you've got to know all the chords, all inversions, and the arranging techniques doesn't matter that much.)

I still would highly recommend getting a copy of the Hal Leonard Real Book and just get used to reading charts, as part of a free reading part of your day.

[brogers70]

One question, why is there # in the third measure's when descending chords

That's a V of V (in this case D7 chord) leading to the dominant (in this case, G). It works with the natural, too. That would make it a II7 chord, which is also happy to go to the dominant.