So why is this important? Because most of the time when we are playing chords, we are simply playing the Major triad or minor triad.
If we lower the ‘3’ (C#) by a semitone (to C), we get If we lower the ‘3’ (E) by a semitone (to Eb), we get Using our examples from before, the C Major triad is made up of Another way of looking at it is if we take the Major triad and lower the ‘3’ by a semitone, we get the minor triad. The Major triad is made up of the 1, 3 and 5 of the Major scale. The minor triad is made up of the 1, b3 and 5 of the Major scale. You can try this yourself by experimenting with different note combinations. If we were to stack the scale in 4ths (1, 4, 7) it would sound harsh and tense.
If we were to take the first three notes (1, 2, 3) of the Major scale and play them together, it would sound cluttered and tense (perhaps it’s the sound you’re after). There is something that just works and sounds good when we stack notes in 3rds. Therefor, the A Major triad contains the notes A – C# – Eīy taking the 1, 3 and 5, we are stacking notes in ‘3rds’. The A Major scale contains the following notes Therefor, the C Major triad contains C – E – G So for example, the C Major scale contains the following notes. The Major triad is simply the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of any Major scale. The reason why it helps to assign numbers to each degree of the Major scale is that it helps to analyse triads. If we give each of the notes of the Major scale a number, it will look like this: The Major scale is made up of 7 notes, separated by intervals. To understand how triads and chords work, you need to understand how the Major scale works. If you want to read an in depth lesson on triads, you can read the following lesson here, but as a brief summary, triads are simply three-note voicings. But, there are really two main chords that outweigh the others in terms of importance and prominence. There are almost infinite possibilities of note combinations that can be labeled as chords. What Is A Chord?Ī chord is technically any three or more notes played at the same time. If you never analyse the chords you are playing, you’re missing out on a deeper understanding of how music works. We can also learn thousands of songs, using chords, without understanding how the chords work together, so we easy develop a philosophy early on of ‘Who cares why this chord works? It just does’.īut learning about chords opens up a world of possibilities for exploration and analysis. The main one is that we tend to learn shapes, which means that we can play a D minor chord without knowing what it’s made up of. There are a few reasons why this happens. Many guitarists put themselves into the ‘rhythm-guitarist’ category and decide that that’s all they’ll ever learn. But for all the time we devote to learning chords and using them in music, we often overlook what they actually are, at a fundamental level. Guitarists have a great dependance on chords. Ok, not really, but it is the subject of this lesson. Why is a chord a chord? It’s a question philosophers have grappled with since the beginning of time.
0 kommentar(er)
