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We are studying theory here, and in theory terms need to be defined correctly. A chord is not just triads. A chord is not just the notes belonging to diatonic music. If we give an incorrect definition of chords, it will mess up understanding of theory. The idea that chords only consist of pleasant sounding groups of notes as in major and minor triads is incorrect. It already falls apart for a V7 chord, which contains the dissonance of a major third, as well as a tritone.

These are all chords:
- major, minor, diminished, augmented triads (the latter not sounded that "pleasant" to the ear.
- all seven chords
- cluster chords
- polychords
- C9, C11, C13 etc.
- quartal

And then you also get the chords that have been touched on already which we're skirting because it's too advanced for this thread: you have a pedal tone with chords dancing over it. I'm analyzing a Mozart concerto right now which is "basic" in most things, but it has pedal.

In addition, if you stay with "pleasant sounds", you are avoiding an essential element of music - the movement of dissonance to consonance which is elementary to making music work.

Thank you for schooling me in such elementary topics, Keystring.

For your information, by "pleasant" I meant NOT a cluster-style assemblage of notes, which move way beyond "dissonance" into a sound that everyone I have ever demonstrated it to reacted with "unpleasant", like scratching one's nails on a chalkboard.

Of course dissonance is necessary. (except, of course, not in elevator music...at least some elevator music!)

Have a listen to my free song in my signature line...lots of dissonance, V7 chords, etc.

A chord is a couple notes played together, but sitting your butt on a random part of the keyboard does not make a chord.

Sounds like a fine definition to start with. No need to exhaustively list every possible combination until we get to the more complex ones. (Though I do wonder about these dim7 and add9 chords in my book...)

Not in real life, anyways. Good post.

This is an open forum, and a thread where a large number of people are trying to understand basic theory. When I explain something, it is not in order to "school" you, Rocket88. Earlier you corrected Piano88's presentation of what a chord is. You then gave this information:

This implies, to anyone reading it, that the definition of a chord is: "three notes played together", and also "several notes played together that sound good." This will give people starting out the impression that a chord is only a chord if it is a triad.

For this reason, I took the time to write out some of the possible chords that do exist, in order to correct that impression.

1:20

My original post will only give that impression if the reader were to read just the fragment of the post as quoted by you.

The actual meaning of my post, if one reads it fully, is to show for beginners that a fist-pound selection of notes is not a chord, unless you get into esoterica.

My post was in direct response to this from PianoStudent88:



To which you countered with "cluster chords", an odd and rare thing.

As with many threads for beginners, they often morph into people sharing encyclopedic amounts of knowledge.

IMHO, that can be good if the student is in the teaching studio, and the teacher can see whether or not the student is getting it, or is overwhelmed by the avalanche of minutae.

On the web, there are some who will get it, but others will be overwhelmed, and the poster of the avalanche most likely will never hear of their confusion.

But the teacher in me always looks out for the little guy, and always wants to make sure that no one is left behind by a blizzard of info.

Keystring, I have made two attempts in this thread to simplify concepts for beginners (Melody usually on top, Chords not a random mess of notes but a pattern).

In each, you have countered with an encyclopedic showing of your knowledge.

That is a very different approach from mine, an approach that I have never found helpful in teaching adults or children.

I will add that I do agree with you that a quick overview of the overall topic (which I do with some people who I can see are "getting it") is helpful to show that there is more to it than what we are teaching at the moment.

But most know that there is more to it because they are, after all, "beginners", and they know they are beginners, and the music they hear others play contains more that a root triad.

But the operative word is "quick" because I have yet to have a beginner who is learning about chords understand any of the advanced chords. They usually have enough to deal with with inversions!

So if you are going to be the "thread police" and search for all the available exceptions however odd or rare to correct me, then carry on!

You have a lot of good information, just a very different style, and I do not have the time to constantly re-explain myself in an attempt to keep it understandable for the folks.

Rocket88, before responding to your post, I wrote posts of my own. A post which responds cannot be as clearly set out. I covered each topic in a clear and careful manner. It is meant to be studied and maybe kept somewhere. It is not "encyclopedic" - it gives the necessary information. My response to you was of a different order, and here I am also writing to an advanced musician.

This thread attempts to teach basic theory via examples of music, which began with Happy Birthday. The problem with that is that if you want to discuss chords, key signatures, cadences, Dominant etc., the students need to have basic knowledge OF chords, key signatures, cadences etc. For that reason I created reference material.

This is not how I teach when I teach rudiments. Some of the things that I covered in a single post encompass two or three separate chapters in the source book I use. We also don't launch straight into a concept's definition. We explore with concrete things, via experience, build the definition, make sure it's understood, and then work with it.

But the fact is that there is this disparate group of people with all kinds of backgrounds gathering in one place, considering examples drawn form music, and analyzing for chords, degrees, intervals, cadences and whatnot. Some kind of basic concepts have to be there. And we're all winging it.

I usually suggest to anyone that the first step in responding to a post is to ask, "What did you mean by this?" or "Did you mean xxx, which is how I'm understanding your post?" So I'm getting that the impressions I got are not the message you were trying to convey.

Thank you for your explanations.

The Oxford Dictionary of Music, a very respectable publication, defines a chord as "Any simultaneous combination of notes, but usually not fewer than 3". (So now we can sit at the piano or on it to produce chords.)

We don't have to introduce or study more chords than is necessary but we do need to define our terms correctly whoever is the intended audience.

Jerry Lee Lewis does it, with assorted other body parts too.

Exercise:
Once you've played and worked through that exercise, congratulations! You now know every root-position triad built out of only white keys. That means you know ALL the triads native to the key of C major. How many are there, and what are their names?

1.C major CEG
2. D minor DFA
3. E minor EGB
4. F major FAC
5. G major GBD
6. A minor ACE
7. B diminished BDF (so no major or minor..just diminished?)

To help with the major and minor, I tried to match the sounds with two songs: When the Saints Go marching in for the major, (between the first two notes of the triad), and O Canada for the first two notes of the minor chord triads. The major chords sound like Saints between notes 1 and 2 of the triad, and O Canada between notes 2 and 3. The minor chords sound like O Canada between notes 1 and 2 of the triad, and Saints between notes 2 and 3 of the triad. B diminished sounds like O Canada on both ends of the triad. (I am Canadian so this was helpful for me, but I'm not sure what would be helpful for those who don't know this anthem!).

hahaha.....love the rhapsody duet!

Thanks everyone...this is so helpful!

A triad is two stacked thirds; root, third and fifth.

A third can be either major (4 semitones) or minor (3 semitones)

A fifth can be diminished (6 semitones), perfect (7 semitones) or augmented (8 semitones).

A major third and a minor third together make a perfect fifth. If the fifth is perfect we name the chord by its first third, major or minor - that implies the fifth is perfect.

If the fifth is not perfect we name the chord by its fifth. Two minor thirds make a diminished fifth and two major thirds make an augmented fifth (we haven't got to augmented chords yet).

By naming the fifth, diminished or augmented, the third is known by implication. By naming the third, major or minor, the fifth is perfect by implication.

Min 3rd + min 3rd = diminished 5th, dim chord
Min 3rd + maj 3rd = perfect 5th, min chord
Maj 3rd + min 3rd = perfect 5th, maj chord
Maj 3rd + maj 3rd = augmented 5th, aug chord

I got this in less than twenty years

I can't help myself from jumping in when chords are being talked about.

Spot on with the chords Valencia. If you were to come across these in a score, they'd be written as;

C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bdim or B°

Correct it is just diminished (but made up by stacking two minor 3rds.) A dim chord by itself is not all that common. You are more likely to come across a dim7 before just a diminished. Although they do occur.

All of the chords above that you have correctly labeled, can be made in to a 7th chord by adding a minor 3rd (3 half steps) on top.

Example, C would become C7 with the addition of a minor 3rd on top; C,E,G,Bb = C7

Yes, oddly enough I am familiar with the Saints Go Marching in and O Canada. Good observation. I see exactly what you mean.

Alfred's books never say chord = triad (at least I haven't understood it that way), but just that a triad is a basic kind of chord, plus it teaches 4-note seventh chords from the very beginning (adding that in these chords the third or the fifth is often omitted).

It's not really useful to quarrel about the meaning of every word. One needs to start with clear definitions and concepts, even if this means you have to simplify and water down some of them. Less is more.

I sometimes go back and take a careful look at the lead sheet of something I've been playing for a while, and discover that I'm in the habit of playing dim7 where plain dim is written. I always thought that was just me screwing up, not the composer or arranger's intention. Sometimes it's m7 instead of m, too.

A little clarification on the sevenths (though we're not really there yet).

All this will be covered again when it comes up in context.

Adding a minor third to C creates C7 (C-E-G-Bb) but this is a non diatonic chord. Bb is not in the C major scale.

The primary triads are formed first layer of chords is formed using alternate notes, 1, 3 and 5 from each of the seven scale degrees. The next third layer adds sevenths.

In the C major scale the secondary seventh chords are:
C-E-G-B = C maj 7
D-F-A-C = D min 7
E-G-B-D = E min 7
F-A-C-E = F maj 7
G-B-D-F = G 7
A-C-E-G = A min 7
B-D-F-A = B min 7b5

The three minor chords Em, Dm and Am become minor sevenths (minor third + major third + minor third)

The tonic and subdominant major chords C and F become major sevenths (major third + minor third + major third)

The dominant major chord has a major third + minor third + minor third. Because this combination is unique to the dominant step we call this a dominant seventh but notate it simply by appending a 7 to the chord name.

The diminished chord becomes a half diminished chord or a minor 7 flat 5.

We'll come across all this later.

_______________________________

Edited to correct errors in nomenclature. Thank you, keystring.


The primary chords are the tonic, dominant and subdominant formed on the first, fourth and fifth steps of the scale. As I mentioned in an earlier post, they cover all the degrees of the scale between them. The dominant is a fifth away from tonic and the subdominant and fifth in the other direction. The move from tonic to subdominant is one of the most relaxed progressions but the dominant chord announces the imminent return to tonic.

The secondary chords are formed on the 2nd, 3rd and 6th step of the scale. They are the relative minors of the primary chords; D minor, relative minor of F, E minor, relative minor of G, and A minor, relative minor of C.

Tertiary chords are chords formed by thirds.

Also a little OT but...

This is most likely to happen when the seventh is carried in the melody line and a simple minor can be played underneath. The combination provides the minor 7th.

If the note C occurs in a melody (in C major) it can be harmonised by any of three triads, C (C-E-G), F (F-A-C) or A minor (A-C-E). By extending into sevenths it can also be harmonised with D min 7 (D-F-A-C). Because the C occurs in the melody line a simple D minor can be played underneath.

This is another place where it might be better to insert a few more words and say "...usually sound good" or "...almost always sound good".

There are chords that, isolated and examined by themselves, really massively suck. But they serve a purpose in context.

There's an example in a favorite song of mine, "I'll be Seeing You" (Sammy Fain, 1938). Bar 13, the melody note is A4, and the chord is Dm7/G. The way I play it is: G3, A3, C4, D4, F4, which is quite dissonant. It goes immediately to the melody note G4 and a G7 chord. When I was learning the song, that stuck out to me so much that I was wondering if it was a typo. When I was able to play it through at a reasonable tempo, it was obviously right. (BTW, I'm not sure if this chord is as originally written, the sheet is from Wikifonia.)

Concentrating on a single chord by itself is sort of like taking a freeze frame from a movie. Mostly you'll get good looking pictures, but sometimes you catch an actor in the middle of saying a word, and his mouth is frozen in some strange position.

A light just came on. This thread is filling in a lot of blanks for me. I knew about a dominant 7th., but had not put together how it differed from the others in the key (scale.) At least not in this way. Just that it was always in the 5th degree.

Well put, John. Sometimes when I am working on a piece, I think "that can't be right" but when I can play it through and at a reasonable tempo, it often ends up being the greatest part of the arrangement.