27
No, and for at least three reasons:
Assuming "chord" to be a tonal entity, we can explain anything as having alterations, omissions, and extensions. With add11, ♭13, no5, etc., we can make sense of any combination of tones.
We can understand harmonies as combinations of chords; such polychords allow any and all possibilities.
We have systems of ...
17
"If I skip any note, its gonna make it another chord..."
No. First: despite the 'pile of 3rds' method of constructing chords in our textbooks, in a 13th chord the 5th may be omitted, the 9th is often omitted and the 11th is ALWAYS omitted. (OK, ALWAYS is just asking for people to come up with exceptions. But it's near enough, and we're talking about the ...
11
We can give it the label 'secondary dominant' or 'V of V' and pass on. But that's too simplistic, and reinforces a mind-set of chords being 'allowed'.
Playing ANY chord is 'acceptable'. There's no requirement to stick close to the diatonic scale (and except in the most simplistic music of 300 years ago composers never have). A piece in G major will ...
8
If I'm understanding the question correctly, it sounds like you are describing what is called appropriately enough, "Chord Melody" which is a popular method to harmonize a melody line often seen in jazz arrangements, but can be used in almost any style of popular music. I'm guessing you got your hands on some of those kind of arrangements, but I can assure ...
8
Technically, yes.
Extended chords are created by a process of stacking thirds, where you continue to add notes from the scale, proceeding in intervals of a third (of whatever flavour) to the highest note. A 13th chord, therefore, is a seven-note chord that theoretically contains all notes of the diatonic scale.
In practice, however, most often used ...
7
I'm not certain if this is what you're after, but you may be interested in the concept of the melodic-harmonic divorce in rock music. In short, it's a theory about this repertoire that states that a melody and its underlying harmonies don't always work in tandem the way they traditionally did (like, for instance, in a Christmas Carol), with dissonant pitches ...
7
With chord symbols alone, no. Chord symbols are not designed to show exact voicings of chords. The most they can show is inversion which is denoted by a slash.
Typically when voicings must be exact, a more detailed notation will be used like in sheet music or tablature.
7
Let me first show you the most common (and good sounding) voicings of 13th chords on the guitar. I take as an example a C13 (from low E to high e):
8 X 8 9 10 10 (chord tones: 1, b7, 3, 13, 9)
8 X 8 7 5 5 (chord tones: 1, b7, 9, 3, 13)
X 3 2 3 3 5 (chord tones: 1, 3, b7, 9, 13)
They all have five notes (instead of seven) because you always leave out the ...
7
I think you need to read an overview about musical intervals. You can get that from a harmony textbook or this Wikipedia page about intervals. It seems like you are inventing your own naming system, but there is a very, very well established nomenclature.
Perfect/imperfect are terms applied only to the unison, octave, fourth, and fifth.
Major/minor are ...
5
Your table is mostly OK. However when using numbers divisible by 5, the major seventh and minor second are taken to be 15/8 and 16/15 respectively. Neither 11 nor 7 is used. The minor seventh is a compound fourth or 16/9 (the inverse of 9/8 reduced to be between 1 and 2 by octave equivalence.
Note that each interval and its inversion have the same ...
5
If you consider every chord made up of notes from a diminished scale to be "of the scale", then a diminished scale contains not just diminished triads. The diminished scale is highly symmetrical, so to find triads in a diminished scale you only have to consider a small number of candidates, which you can then transpose to get the full list.
Let's look at ...
5
No. A widely cited scholarly paper calls them just what you do, ♭VII-I and ♭III-I. It offers a plethora of adjectives to distinguish different kinds of cadences, but none have the centuries of weight of the terms for the cadences that Mozart used.
Edit: One might call them variants of the authentic cadence, but that's an awfully broad name, not the ...
5
Generally speaking Bach likes to establish the home key chord at the beginning of his pieces, but I did find some exceptions on a cursory look through my scores. For example, in Book II of the keyboard Partitas, the Courante of No. 5 has an upbeat based
on the dominant. And the Gigue of the same Partita does something similar, with the home key chord of G ...
4
Depends on your definitions. There are certainly pitch sets that would be difficult (and pointless) to label in the 'C, Gm7, F#m7(b5)(b9)' naming system, or that defy functional analysis in the 'bii7 of iii' way. But some will say that ANY pitch set is, by definition, a chord. And, as @Richard says, any pitch-class set can be labelled.
4
There must be many, many chords using the notes in any given scale.
Yes. If we use C major as the given scale, we could make lots and lots of chords, like : BEF, BCD, EFC, etc. Depending on how we run the combinations we could have as many as 210 three-tone chords!
But, many of them will not sound good, like BCF.
In major key music the follow lists the ...
4
When I write out the chord on the staff do I note the 5th as Db or a C#? Does it matter?
If this is the fifth of the F♯(♭9) chord, then you would want to notate this as a C♯. This is because the fifth of the chord is so named because it is a fifth above the root. Since the root is some kind of F, the fifth must be spelled as some kind of C. ...
3
When we play chords with that many notes we have no choice but to drop a few. This occurs in music theory too. It is a common practice to drop the 5th from a dominant 7th chord, and double the root, for example C7 played as {C, E, Bb, C}. This is often played on guitar in the first position as (x, 3, 2, 3, 1, x). I'm assuming my notation is self ...
3
Is there any combination of up to six chromatic notes that could not be classified and named as a chord?
From the point of view of naming and classification, some would consider that groups/sets of 2 notes aren't named 'chords' as such: A chord is three notes? What do you call just two notes?.
3
I'm assuming that perfect consonance to imperfect consonance to
dissonance, would be the measurement of consonance to dissonance
within an octave?
The grading of intervals as consonant (pleasing to the ear) to dissonant (unpleasant) is not restricted to the octave (if that's what you were asking) but is true for compound intervals as well.
why is ...
3
I wrote this simple meoldy in A melodic minor but I can't seem to be able to find any appropriate accompaniment chords and corresponding 'bass' notes that would give me this Classicism Period feel that I'm going for. ...PS: I've never written any 'classical' music before
Set that melody aside for the moment.
If you have never written anything in classical ...
3
In any chord, the root is the most important. Without that, the chord has no name!
Next comes the third, defining either major or minor. The fifth is often omitted, as its sound can be heard in the second harmonic of the root.
Then onto the 7th. Important again, as there are three different 7th notes, each blending with the others to make the sound of the ...
3
There is absolutely a classification for all possible chord functions and root locations in a key. The concept you need to look up is “chord-scales”. What that means is that every chord in a key has an assumed scale attached even when not all the notes are played. The tensions (9,11,13) CAN alter the chord-scale—they are not just “decoration” but an integral ...
3
Yes, popular editions will often write 'Dm6' even when the bass note clearly indicates that it's 'Bm7♭5'. Conversely, you'll sometimes see what is undisputedly 'C6' notated as 'Am7'.
Don't waste time looking for a subtle reason. The editor isn't thinking about harmonic analysis but purely about chord shapes for ukulele or guitar. (The 'Am7 for C6' ...
3
The chord in the box is a "French" augmented sixth chord (A-C#-D#-F##), which resolves to G# major as V/C#m. The crucial voiceleading is the augmented sixth A-F## resolving to the octave on G#.
(This is a good example of why we need double sharps; the interval sounds like A-G, but it is not a seventh! If it were, the "G" would have to fall back to F#.)
...
2
Composers sometimes use 'tricks' - like treating a chord as if it was suddenly part of another key - to introduce colour through slight but nevertheless unexpected deviations from the tonic key. With a chord like A major there is only one note not found in the G scale - C#.
For example, with G as the tonic as in G major there are only two other major ...
2
TL;DR: it should often be labelled as Dm6/B.
How to label a chord... In discussions around questions like this, there seem to be implied assumptions like the following:
(1) for any combination of notes, there exists one way to label it as a chord symbol that's "correct" for all intents and purposes in all imaginable contexts
(2) chord symbols in songs ...
2
You can try turning this question around and see how voice leading paradigms result in the different root movements.
Basic voice leading holds common tones between chords and moves the other voice the smallest distance to the tones of the other chord.
With triadic harmony there are only 3 possibilities for moving the voices: move 1 voice, 2 voices, or 3 ...
2
The name for moving from I to III or I to VI or the like is "chromatic mediant." The normal movement is I to iii (though not necessarily very common). The chromatic mediant move is very smooth (common tone) and allows one to introduce "distant" harmonies quickly.
2
Because the chords is wrong. Someone transposed it from Eb to C and forgot to transpose this chord. Here is a better version https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/misc_cartoons/neon_genesis_evangelion_-_a_cruel_angels_thesis_chords_460280
Try a Bdim7 instead.
But as the comments say: it sounds more like a suspended chord to me.
2
There really are two questions.
...if I play D, E, G#, B and C...
First, arrange the tones in third to see the tertian chord C E G# B D
Cmaj9#5/D a major ninth chord with a sharp fifth and the ninth in the bass. That's really stretching things, not a likely chord. If that point is debated, we need to see the harmonic context to know what is the ...
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