New answers tagged chords
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Because it's a Major+minor+minor you get a tri-tone between the 3 and 7 (six semitones). A tri-tone is the 'devil's interval' because it's the most dissonant.
In Cmajor the G7 (V7) chord is GBDF ... B to F is a tritone... strongest pull to resolve, hence it's 'dominant'.
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For the sake of just just defining a dominant seventh chord, the chord is not created by using a flat on B in the key of C major.
C7 is the diatonic seventh chord built on a root which is the dominant scale degree of F major.
The chord is named for the scale degree of it's root within a diatonic major scale.
If the scenario is music in C major, then ...
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if there is a C Mixolydian(or F major scales), is the key considered as F major or C major?
C major and F major are keys in the major/minor system.
Modal music is a different system, and there are a few different modal styles.
For practical purposes you can think of major and minor keys as "major mode" or "minor mode." In fact in theory ...
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If you feel the tonality of a piece is C Mixolydian, and you want to talk or write about that tonality, the most concise thing to say is that it is in C Mixolydian.
Simply saying that it is in F major will imply that F is the tonic, and if you say it's in C major, you lose the information about the mixolydian tonality.
One of the unfortunate things about ...
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I think it works like this --- the long road, and the short-cut (rule of thumb). The first thing to note with the long road, or first principles approach is --- a chord such as C7 (C dominant seventh) -- is that the scale that this is 'built' from is some scale other than C major.
Cutting a few things short, and looking at 'circle of fifths' - it is known ...
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I’m going to answer solely based on your chord progression of C to Bb. If that’s all there is the ear will likely hear the C as the I tonic chord and the Bb as the bVII. There is no F chord in sight so there’s no reason to think of this as V to IV. This chord progression sounds like it is derived from the C Mixolydian scale.
You can’t necessarily say the ...
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There is a lot of good advice here already. I have one piece to add: keep sight of the "big picture." Often we can tie ourselves in knots as we try to hyper-analyze small details of chords and progressions, but if we've already identified the broad outlines of where the music is going, we can more easily explain the minute details. To use an ...
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Let's stick with, for now, the 6 main chords used diatonically. I, ii, iii, IV, V and vi - omitting the not-so-common viio.
Establishing the I is the most important start, and we're looking for the chord that sounds like the piece has come 'home' - to a place where it could end satisfactorally.
Back to the start of the piece - which most often is I. Contnue ...
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The primary job of a jazz pianist is not to write chord symbols for groups of notes. The primary job of a jazz pianist is to look at already written chord symbols (or even better, know the changes without staring at a music sheet) and make an artistic contribution by coming up with notes. So if the book is about jazz piano, written for aspiring ...
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In addition to other good points made:
For me, in the context of jazz standards like "What's New?", with the piano left hand in that range, that tritone F B is the dominant feature, with whatever-it-is in the right hand being "just harmonics". Even without seeing the C-chord next (yes, as other have said, a C6/9...), I would wager that ...
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Probably because it came from a jazz resource where authors notoriously combine chord names or Roman numeral analysis with enharmonic misspellings.
Second you may not know about rootless chord voicings in jazz. Typically, rootless chord voicings involve the chord root played by some bass instrument, like the piano left hand or an upright bass player, and ...
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Can any diminished chord be used as V anywhere?
In tonal harmony you can play a diminished chord on any root any time and have it act as a dominant (better to call it a dominant and not a V, it's Roman numeral should always be viio) to some tonic. But that statement is broad to the point of not being useful.
You asked about "anywhere?" What do you ...
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No, you cannot use any diminished 7th chord as a dominant-function chord and get away with it.
Any diminished 7th chord that does not include the home key's leading tone and is immediately followed by a tonic chord is a common-tone diminished 7th chord instead. This is called that because it shares at least one chord tone with a neighbouring chord. Common ...
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In addition to what Tim has said, not in contradiction to it, I'd add: Yes, it's good to practice jamming, and improvisation is its own skill. But when we improvise, we often simply re-use skills that we learned elsewhere in new combinations. When we practice scales, arpeggios, I-IV-V chord changes, etc., we're building a vocabulary that we can pull from &...
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With a Tritone for the left hand and a major triad for the right… an experienced jazz pianist would immediately recognize this as a rootless upper structure voicing.
So without any context, the options are either Db7#9 or G13b9.
The next chord (a rootless fourth voicing) helps to narrow it down to G13b9.
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Sounds like your problem is basically you are not good enough or quick enough changing chord shapes. It doesn't matter too much whether those chord shapes are major or minor, but you just happen to be weaker with, I guess, Am, Dm and Em.
Which is strange, as all three shapes, on open chords, are actually easier to get to than C, F and G open!
If you wish to ...
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But by looking at the chord in isolation (without the context of the following C major chord), can we tell that this is a G7b9?
We can't. Without context I could call it E7b9 (although 9 in bass is rather unusual). So is it then not G7b9?
This seems to be a demonstration (or transcription, it's from Levine's book, isn't it?) of how an instrument (piano in ...
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4 things:
Barry Harrisy chord right there. Could think of it as resolving to Cmaj6/E spelled (E G A C). Sounds very nice when approached with a Ddim7.
That Ebdim is a #superhip way to spell a g chord that gives jarring bright results
As suspension rather than dominant, because Ebdim7 spelled (Eb Gb/F# A C) is like just a C6sus where the 5th and 3rd are ...
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Both are correct.
Both are very widely used.
Both convey clear and well-understood meaning.
Both terms convey the intended meaning.
Both appear in authoritative sources.
Is "close position" more formally used [in Western classical music institutions]? Probably, but that's a very long way from making "closed position" incorrect.
First, ...
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Chords can 'go together well' in many ways. Here are some of them.
If they are all constructed from notes of the same scale. (Beginners sometimes think this is the only one. But there's LOTS more possibilities!)
If both chords have one or more notes in common.
If a tension in the first chord is resolved, the surrounding notes can be pretty well up for ...
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The term arpeggio gets used in two ways, as a type of embellishment of a chord represented by the ways line...
...and also to mean playing the tones of a chord separately in a line...
The second mean is often called arpeggiation - as a process, like in composition - and sometimes it's called broken chord.
The embellishment is normally played from bottom up,...
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This relationship of chords in minor third distance was already used in Renaissance music: it is called in German QUERSTAND and in English FALSE RELATION
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_relation
like Aaron mentions the music theory and harmonic analysis for the common practice period doesn't fit to explain all Pop music and neither the early music of ...
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An arpeggio is a chord played with the notes in ascending or descending order.
A broken chord is a chord played such that not all pitches are sounded at the same time.
In this case, it's both an arpeggio and a broken chord — both terms are appropriate to describe the music — but it also happens that each note is sung by a different voice. The multiple voices ...
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This technique has a few different names, a pyramid, bell, or cascade chord. It can be considered a classification of arpeggio since sometimes when arpeggios are played the notes are sustained.
Here is an excerpt from the “Arpeggio” article in Wikipedia:
A bell chord, also known colloquially as "bells", is a musical arrangement technique in which ...
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"Music Theory" — or more specifically, "Common Practice" or "Tonal" Theory — isn't designed with popular music in mind, and popular music frequently isn't constructed with music theory in mind.
View #1: Voice leading
In the case of this particular chord progression, I find it productive to consider it in terms of voice leading. ...
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Chromatic Mediant!
Take any two major triads with roots a major or minor third apart. They will always share one note between them. They have a very distinct, fresh, fantastical sound. The last four chords are all chromatic mediants.
C# to A#. Common tone is E#
A# to G. Common tone is D (spelled C double sharp in the A# chord)
G to B. Common tone is B.
...
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Yes there is indeed a term for this. This is a very interesting phenomenon of harmony. You have described it well, the same grouping of tones can be interpreted as two different chords depending on how we organize the tones in our mind.
Just to make sure we are on the same page. An example could be the following two chords:
F-A-C-D
D-F-A-C
The first chord ...
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There's two pairs of chords you're likely to come across doing this, exemplified by C6 / Am7 and Em7♭5 / Bbm6.
There's no real confusion between the first two. They do different things - C6 is a tonic with a purely decorative added note, Am7 is likely to be part of a 'cycle of 5ths' sequence like Am7 - Dm7 - G7 - C. You will occasionally see a tonic C6 ...
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There is no special name. They're not even inversions - unless you want to call root C6 as an inversion of Am7 1st inversion - which it obviously isn't - it's the same chord with the same voicing.
The names may well show what particular function one or the other has, as far as analysis is concerned, but in a piece of musc, particularly pop, there's no ...
-2
It's called chord inversion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(music)
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...Minor 6th chord containing the exact same notes as the Minor 7th Flat 5 AKA Half Diminished 7th chord but are in different root positions...
Not different "root positions" I think you're looking for the terms "inversion."
A min6 chord and min7b5 chord can be inversions of each other.
It's funny you brought up the word "root" ...
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Like Aaron said, there is no specific name for these similar chords, they are simply inversions of each other, or chords with different bass notes. For clarification, C6 and Am7 have different roots. C6 and C6/A have the same root but different bass notes. Here are some examples:
C6 = Am7/C or Am7 in 1st inversion (3rd in the bass)
Am7 = C6/A or C6 in 3rd ...
2
E, Bm7, E, Bm7, C#, A#, G, B
E Bm7 that's a root progression by fifth, ordinary, just as you said. Eventually the B chord returns to E, and the melody dwells on E. We could say it's nominally in E, but with all the chromaticism, it isn't strictly E major.
The progression repeats so write that out for clarity...
E Bm7 E Bm7 C# A# G B | E...
The progression ...
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The thing that's caused confusion here is that often we see the slash notation and we think of the plain triad chord (on the left of the slash) and the bass note (on the right of the slash). This lets us do a harmonic analysis of the whole chord. Often you can identify that the bass note is the third or fifth of the triad.
But - in the given chord example, E/...
2
It is indeed the NNS - Nashville Number System. Each chord in a key is given a number, corresponding to the note number in that key. Here, in D♭ - D♭ =1, E♭ = 2, F = 3, G♭ = 4, A♭ = 5, and B♭ = 6.
That may seem to be extra stuff for little purpose - just write the perishing chords, please!
But, the idea is far reaching. In the recording studio, for example, ...
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This is Nashville chord notation system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_Number_System
The numbers refer to the scale steps on which the chords are built.
The song is in the key of Db major. 1 means chord built on the first step, Db major. 1/3 means Db chord with 3rd scale degree in bass, F. 3m is a minor chord built on the 3rd scale degree, F minor. ...
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As you say, C, E, and G make a C major chord. But those notes can be played in any order, and they can appear multiple times, and still be considered a C major chord. E G C is a C major chord; C C G E E G is a C major chord; .... As long as there aren't any notes other than C, E, and G, it's C major.
This is true on all instruments, not just guitar. And it's ...
4
The C chord comprises C E and G . That's all. So any strings that make any of those notes will be up for grabs.
As you rightly say, some strings need fretting to make those notes, BUT others are already producing those notes while they're open. So why wouldn't they be left open to play as we strum that C chord?
OP mentions only 5 strings! A lot of guitar ...
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By "unique" chord progressions, I would argue that he's saying that they're unique in comparison to other rock musicians. Because most of his progressions are, frankly, relative "classical" in nature.
And so this is the trick: knowing that Elton is a classically trained musician, study some of the music that he would have studied to get a ...
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If you're doing simple strumming, a root position chord generally sounds best. So this may be the voicing first offered to a beginner. That's all.
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Yes, of course you can put any notes you like in a chord, so the question is more about naming convention.
Typically words augumented and diminished are used for triads only (at least in jazz/pop nomenclature). An exception is a fully diminished chord or diminished seventh chord 1 b3 b5 bb7, e.g. Eo7 (E G Bb Db).
Extended chords still can have diminished/...
2
The note augmented or diminished in these chords is ^5. So C7+ will be spelt C E G♯ B♭. Cm7♭5 will be C E♭ G♭ B♭ - often referred to as C half-diminished.
The same works for 9ths, but it's confusing as the 9th part itself can be seen as diminished - as C7 with D♭ added, or augmented - as C7 with D♯ added (as in the 'Hendrix' chord).
Written names will help - ...
0
A ♭6 chord isn't a thing. No-one's fingers fall automatically into a ♭6 shape when they see that symbol.
A maj7 chord is. Call it Emaj7/G♯. A quick read of the symbol won't result in anything WRONG. As always, if you want a specific voicing write notation.
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Option 1
My preference is G♯m♭6.
Slimming things down to basic triads, we have A G#m F#m, a perfectly reasonable sequence of descending triads.
By naming the chord this way, it best reflects the descending bass line as well as the fact that B and E are present in each chord.
Option 2
The chord is EM7/G#, making the overall progression A(add2) EM7/G# F#m7/11....
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Generally, spread out the notes in 3rds if you can for naming:
E, G#, B, D#
That's an inverted major 7th. (i.e. a major 7th but the lowest note isn't the root of the chord)
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Without knowing the context, such as the key of the song, the rest of the chords and their functions it is difficult to suggest an effective alternative chord progression. One thing I can suggest is a different way to play the C#m, which might make it easier for you to make the switch. Try 6-4-4-4. You can barre the top 3 strings with your 1st finger and ...
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Your progressions re-written with capitol letters and Roman numeral analysis after...
G Em C Cm --- G:I vi IV iv
B F# G♯m E --- B:I V vi IV
G D C Cm --- G:I V IV iv
D G Em7 A7 --- D:I IV ii7 V7
I assume all of these get repeated.
There are some similarities between them.
The only one that jumps out as having a sort of name is B F♯ G♯m E, that's the I ...
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