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This post is one of a 2-part series of free basic music theory lessons on my blog, musictheoryde-mystified.com. You can see the complete list here. Please feel welcome to make a comment or ask a question.
A chord’s inversion is the most significant aspect of chord voicing. However, the pitch order and distribution of the other notes still have some bearing on the chord’s overall sound as well as on how the music flows from one chord to the next.
In many genres, the exact details of chord voicing are left up to the player. To do this well, players should be aware of the effects of different voicing options.
The approach to voicing in the context of a piece is highly dependent on genre and beyond the scope of this beginner course. However, being aware of the parameters goes a long way towards developing a sense of flow in a chord progression.
Inversions are certainly the best place to start: the bass notes of chords are easily felt as a coherent part. When you’re ready, you can add more finesse by tweaking the pitch order of the other chord notes.
Doubling: More Is More
Doubling means to have more than one note of the same name. Usually notes are doubled at a higher or lower octave. If your instrument permits (or if the chord is played by an ensemble) you can also double a note in unison.
Like inversions, doubling a note makes it a more prominent part of the chord, although the effect is less powerful than the chord’s inversion.
Doubling the root note makes the chord more stable and helps it to represent the key.
Doubling the 3rd highlights the major or minor tonality.
Doubling the 5th creates ambiguity, highlighting the potential for a chord change where the 5th becomes the root note of the next chord. This chord change doesn’t need to follow: the sense of ambiguity can also be maintained as part of the chord’s character.
Try This…
The following C major chords are all in root position, with each chord featuring a different doubled note.
Listen for the root note in each chord and sing or play the root note along with each chord, in an octave you can manage. It’s the same note for all three; the lowest note, C
Now listen for the strongest note in each chord and sing that note. This time it’s not the same for all three chords. Is it the note that’s doubled?
Doubled, most doubled
If more than one note is doubled, the note with the most representatives, either in other octaves or in unison, will contribute most to the chord’s character.
The Distribution Of Notes In A Chord
Although less significant, there are other factors that affect chord voicing, such as:
Pitch: is the whole chord high or low?
Range: does the chord cover several octaves or just one?
Density: are there close intervals between some chord notes or are all the notes spread apart?
Try This…
If you play a chord instrument, experiment with different ways of playing the same chord. Test out the effects of inversions, doubling and note distribution for yourself.
You can do this on a melody instrument, too.
On a melody instrument you can create an effect similar to a chord by playing an arpeggio, as we saw in B15. The faster the arpeggio is played, the more chord-like the result.
Arpeggios sound even more chord-like if you play in a reverberant room. If you’re amplified, you can add some reverb instead.
Any pitch order within the instrument’s range can be played as an arpeggio, including doubled notes.
Here are a couple of generalised observations you can test…
Low is strong:
A high chord is weaker than a low chord
Lowering the bass note by an octave makes a chord stronger
Separation equals clarity:
The clearest chords have their notes widely spaced in pitch
Close intervals can clash or muddy the sound, especially at lower octaves (Note: this could be a desired effect. It’s not a critique, just an observation)
If you found this post helpful, please feel welcome to like, share or leave a comment. If you have any questions, leave them as a comment and I’ll respond as soon as I can. To stay up to date with new posts, please subscribe.
This post is one of a 2-part series of free basic music theory lessons on my blog, musictheoryde-mystified.com. You can see the complete list here. Please feel welcome to make a comment or ask a question.
What Is A Chord?
In the most general sense, a chord is a combination of two or more (some would argue three or more) sounds which occur at the same time. This definition potentially includes non-musical sounds such as ambiences.
Although always true, this is such a general definition that it isn’t very useful in most genres.
A more useful definition would be:
A chord is an instantaneous representation of a key.
NOTE: This isn’t always true but it’s a good starting point. The majority of chords fit this definition.
Typically, chords are used to accompany and support a melody as it travels on its journey through various keys. Chords are signposts for keys that the melody visits.
The Most Important Notes Of A Key
Most chords represent a key. In order to do this, a chord needs to contain the most important notes of that key.
We could try playing every note in the scale of that key, but it’s a very cluttered sound.
The closer together the notes in a chord, the more cluttered and confusing the sound.
The clearest sounding chords are made up of just a few notes which are far apart in pitch. If we want a chord to sound clear, we need to use only the most important notes of the key.
The Root Note And Perfect 5th
The single most important note of any key is the first note of the scale, the root note or tonic. Without a root note, we have no reference to interpret the mode, the pattern of intervals that give a key it’s character.
The other important note, at least in conventional Western modes, is the note a perfect 5th above the root note. As we saw in 15. Modes, the perfect 5th blends in to the root note and supports it. This helps us to feel the root note in the music.
Modal Chords/Power Chords
Chords made up of just the root note and perfect 5th are quite prevalent in both early music/folk music as well as rock and metal. They are called modal chords in folk based genres and power chords in rock genres.
Modal chords fit all traditional Western modes including both major and minor.
Example
Let’s say we want to find the modal chord on C. We want the root note, C, and the perfect 5th, G. There it is; C and G played together.
A modal chord consists of the root note and perfect 5th
The above chord sounds a bit small. Chords can be made to sound bigger by including other octaves.
Content And Voicing
The list of different notes in the chord (excluding other octaves) is called it’s content.
When playing a chord, each note in the content can be played at any octave. You can even play one or more notes at several different octaves at once, to make the chord sound bigger.
The order and pitch distribution of the notes of a chord is called voicing. We’ll look at chord voicing later in this course.
…If a chord is a recipe then the content is the ingredients and voicing is the quantities…
Major And Minor Chords
The problem with modal chords is that you can’t tell major from minor.
To truly represent a key, a chord needs a note that differs between major and minor. If we look at a major and minor scale on the same root note, we can see that there are 3 possible notes we could use; the 3rd, 6th or 7th.
The Third – The Other Important Note
Most music in minor keys is written in either the melodic or harmonic minor, or sometimes a combination of both. As we saw in B3. Melodic And Harmonic Minor, the harmonic minor has a major 7th and the melodic minor ascending has both a major 6th and a major 7th.
Given these variations, the 3rd is the only consistent difference between parallel major and minor keys.
There’s another reason why the 3rd is the best choice to represent major or minor. Look at the example in C major below:
When the 6th or 7th is used in a chord, there is a close interval between one pair of notes in the chord, which can cause clutter.
When the 3rd is used, the notes are almost evenly spread within the octave.
Major chords are made up of the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the major scale they represent.
Minor chords are made up of the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the minor scale they represent.
For example:
The chord A major = A + C# + E
The chord A minor = A + C + E
Triads
Chords that are made up of the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the scale are called triads because the interval between each pair of notes is a third. Major and minor chords are both triads.
A triad is a chord whose content is made up of a sequence of 3rds.
Note: we don’t usually bother to call a major or minor chord a triad unless played as an arpeggio. We just say major chord or minor chord.
Major triad = major chord = Root Note (1st) + Major 3rd + perfect 5th Minor triad = minor chord = Root Note (1st) + minor 3rd + perfect 5th
Arpeggios: Playing Chords On A Melody Instrument
If you can’t play chords on your instrument, don’t worry. In a way, you can!
Many pitched instruments, including the voice, are monophonic; they can only produce one note at a time.
You can still create the effect of a chord on these instruments by playing the notes quickly one after the other and holding the last note or by repeating the pattern several times.
This sounds even better if you finish on the octave of the root note.
You can also ascend and descend like a scale. This one’s an A minor triad:
Triads played in this way are called arpeggios.
Arpeggios are also variously known as arpeggiated chords, broken chords or simply triads.
For pitched instruments, arpeggios, together with scales, make up an important part of practice technique known as technical work. Technical work limbers up the fingers/vocal chords. It also prepares a player for playing in different keys.
How to Notate Chords
Chords can be notated on a stave by writing the notes one above the other. The great stave, as used for piano and other keyboard instruments, is especially useful for this.
The following example uses the chords C major, A minor, F and G:
Chords aren’t as easy to read as a melody. Depending on how many notes there are and how closely they’re spaced, the music can look quite cluttered. Here’s the same chord progression for guitar:
Chord Symbols
One alternative is to use chord symbols. A chord symbol is a shorthand method of writing down chords as text.
Chord symbols are made up of the name of the root note and the quality of the chord; major, minor or modal.
Other chord types can also be written as symbols, using added text or numbers called a suffix. We’ll look at some of these in coming lessons.
A major chord is just written as the name of the root note. No quality is used.
A minor chord is the root note followed by the letter “m” (sometimes “mi” or “min”) as the quality.
A modal chord is written in different ways depending on the genre, as below:
In folk genres, the letters “mod” are written after the root note, as the quality.
In rock and metal genres, the number 5 is written after the root note, as a suffix.
In Classical and Jazz genres, the modal chord is not considered a complete chord. Instead, it is described as a major chord with the 3rd left out. Accordingly, the text “no 3rd” is written in parentheses after the root note.
Example:
C major chord = C C minor chord = Cm
C modal chord (folk) = Cmod C modal chord (metal) = C5 C modal chord (jazz) = C(no 3rd)
Summary of Chord Types
Modal chords fit both major and minor keys as they don’t have a note to represent the difference between major and minor. They consist of only the 1st and 5th notes of the key they represent.
Major chords consist of the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the major key they represent.
Minor chords consist of the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the minor key they represent.
Modal chord = Rote Note (1st) + perfect 5th Major triad = major chord = Root Note (1st) + Major 3rd + perfect 5th Minor triad = minor chord = Root Note (1st) + minor 3rd + perfect 5th
Try These…
1 Write out the content (notes) of the following chords:
G Gm Gmod Bb F#m D5
2 Name the following chords using chord symbols:
E G B E G# B Ab C Eb C# G# F Ab C D F# A
Answers at the end of this post.
If you found this post helpful, please feel welcome to like, share or leave a comment. If you have any questions, leave them as a comment and I’ll respond as soon as I can. To stay up to date with new posts, please subscribe.
