First Noel - Incorrect Chord Descriptors ?

[dond]

I am just beginning to work on THE FIRST NOEL. The first thing I notice about the written music is that the first two chord descriptors are C-Major 7th and D-Minor 7th. However, upon examination of the notes in the score it would be my judgement that the first two chords actually being played are C-6th and D Minor 6th. I realize that sometimes the "color" notes which sometimes are played within a chord are not necessarily written out in the chord descriptor. However, it would seem that in this case, there is no 7th in either chord so ... why call them 7ths ? Is this just an oversight ? If so, no problem. I am just wondering if there is some generally accepted practice in this area.
Thanks.

[wmyette]

Hi dond.

What probably happened is that I wrote the music first but when playing it liked the sound of the -6 instead.

However, this does bring up a great point, and that is that you always need to take chord changes with a grain of salt.

A great example is a dominant 7th chord. Many times, players will not write out all of the tensions that they would play in the chord symbol.

For example, they might write C7b9 but not write C7b9b13 because it just clutters up the chart.

Most of the time, I'd rather see just C7 and see that the melody note is a Db and naturally add the flat 9.

Yes, this is confusing, but...in the long run...it does make sense.