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[stevel]

Originally Posted by Aron Alexandrine

WOW! thx guys. thx a bunch to you Stevel. I came up actually now with something very simple to get to teach me self pluking and stuff. I used to chords C major and A minor, and I pluk them using pull offs and bends I came up with a very sweet melody and I based my new lyrics to it. It sound amazing in my opinion (for me it sounds good cause this is my first solo and stuff xD) and I can't wait to record it and show it to you guys!

Aron, I thought about some other things I wanted to mention, and the discussion about chord tones and tensions is a good jumping off point:

We've already mentioned finding the notes of the chord and using them to create a melody. As a bit of an advanced topic, we've also mentioned a way to use notes that are not in the chord (non-chord tones or tensions) to add "flavor" to a line.

Jazz tends to get fairly complex about this (as does classical music) so I wanted to give you a pop music "shortcut" to help you explore some other things:

A word of caution here - some people refer to this as a "magic" scale, or thing with these properties that make it the basis of this that and the other. I'm going to warn you that that's not true at all, but it is a valid tool, and a simple one to implement - just remember there's other things to explore as well.

If you don't already know it, you need to learn the Pentatonic scale. Now, there are a bunch of pentatonic (5 note) scales but when western pop musicians (especially in rock) say "the" pentatonic, they mean the following:
C D E G A

Which is a Major scale (C in this example) missing its 4th and 7th notes.

Most people also make a distinction between Major Pentatonic, and minor Pentatonic:
Major: C D E G A
minor: A C D E G
So minor is like a minor scale missing it's 2nd and 6th notes (and notice that C Major pentatonic and A minor Pentatonic are related in the same way C Major and A minor are).

They're also stupidly easy to play on guitar - Am pentatonic would be:
5 (8)
5 8
5 7
5 7
5 7
5 8

C major pentatonic is the same, except you start on the 8th fret of the 6th string and go to the 8th fret of the first string (the (8) above). Once you learn the fingering pattern:
1 4
1 4
1 3
1 3
1 3
1 4
You can play it anywhere.

There are literally millions if not billions of example of songs that are pentatonic based: The intro melody to "My Girl" is alternating major pentatonic scales on C and F. The melody to "Amazing Grace" is major pentatonic. The break riff from Clapton's version of "I Shot the Sheriff" (I swear------------) if G minor pentatonic. Most of the "riffs" you hear in blues-based rock and metal are pentatonic (mostly minor). All the "licks" you hear in things like the solos at the end of "Freebird" are all pentatonic (minor again). I mean, it's everywhere.

And the bonus is, since pentatonic is a subset of Major and minor scales, you can use it anywhere you could use Major and minor - and in fact in more places ! :-) - That's because the "avoid" tones - or other notes that usually cause you problems in your scale are not there!

It's also very versatile because you can add a 6th note to it (Major pentatonic add the 4th note of the major scale) and get many "hexatonic" licks (Dicky Betts of the Almann Brothers does this a lot). You can add a "blue note" (to pentatonic minor, add a b5 - A-C-D-Eb-E-G) to it and get the other million riffs the plain pentatonic doesn't get you!

There are also a lot of sneaky ways blues players switch back and forth between major and minor forms of the same pentatonic to get other "blue notes".

And since jazz has a lot of blues tradition, the pentatonics are a great way to step into the more complex use of modes and altered scales in more complex settings (note, pop music uses these scales as well, and jazz certainly uses plain pentatonics too).

So if you're improvising over a progression like:
C-am-F-G, the B in a C Major scale only "goes with" the G chord.

Using pentatonic Major (C-D-E-G-A) gives you, let's say, the optimum number of "good sounding" notes that work on all the chords.

Best,
Steve

[Stenir]

If I didn't understand chordal theory before, I do now. I think when I used the word tension, I really meant resolving. I was reading the word tension, but processing as resolving.

In C, B and F are resolving. B to C, F to E or G (but E usually if you have an A resolving to G).

So, I guess the word chord doesn't mean what we think it does. Even our dictionaries are conflicting. Take this excerpt retreived from Yahoo's dictionary (not the best of sources to cite, but it proves the point):

NOUN:

1.) A combination of three or more pitches sounded simultaneously.
2.) Harmony, as of color.

ETYMOLOGY:
Alteration (influenced by chord, musical instrument string), of Middle English cord from accord, agreement, from Old French acorde, from acorder, to agree ; see accord

I guess there's major confliction between three notes being in accordance and what a chord should be. In my honest opinion, if the definition were to hold true, wouldn't that mean that a C-E-G chord would have to be three chords? C-E, C-G, and E-G. Three-note chords would be therefore considered multi-chords. Think about a 4 note chord...

Am7 = A C E G
Chords = A-C A-E A-G C-E C-G E-G
For Your Information, that's:
2 Minor Third
1 Major Third
2 Perfect Fifth
1 Seventh of some sort (A-G) or a Major Second after inversion

Kind of cool how that adds up...

I think I've confused myself. Let me know if anybody can clear up the mess I may have made.

[stevel]

In C, B and F are resolving. B to C, F to E or G (but E usually if you have an A resolving to G).

The usual way of referring to this Stenir is C E and G are "stable" tones, and D F A and B are "active" or most commonly "tendency tones". Their tendency is to move to the closest stable tone, so B to C, and F to E.

However, I should point out that in context, a note's stability or instability is based on other factors than it's position in the scale. For instance, C in a dm7 chord is a 7th in need of resolution, so the Tonic note, usually the most stable note, is now active and needs to move to B! Likewise, the leading tone B can be stripped of its leading tone function by making it the 5th of a iii chord, or the 7th of a IM7 chord.

1.) A combination of three or more pitches sounded simultaneously.
2.) Harmony, as of color.

Two notes sounding together - not a chord, but a "Dyad". Three notes are a "triad". However, obviously you've come upon the fact that we use "chord" to mean specifically "name-able" chords, like G7, and we use it for collections of 3 or more notes we can't "name" - like C Db F# (though Jazz players will always try to find some name for it!).

Add to this that two notes can *imply* a chord! The Chuck Berry style accompaniment of C/G - C/A - C/Bb, often now written as C5-C6-C7 imply C, C6 and C7 chords. Also, the Yahoo thing omits the possibility that the sounds don't have to sound simultaneously - they can be arpeggiated - they merely need to be understood as belonging together.

Modern theorists usually say "chord" when they mean traditionally named chords, and "sonority" when it's a non-chord chord (so a German Augmented 6th "chord" is called a sonority for example).

I guess there's major confliction between three notes being in accordance and what a chord should be. In my honest opinion, if the definition were to hold true, wouldn't that mean that a C-E-G chord would have to be three chords? C-E, C-G, and E-G. Three-note chords would be therefore considered multi-chords.

Nope. You're taking Dyads out, which, though they can imply chords in various contexts, they are not "chords" proper.

Think about a 4 note chord...

Am7 = A C E G
Chords = A-C A-E A-G C-E C-G E-G
For Your Information, that's:
2 Minor Third
1 Major Third
2 Perfect Fifth
1 Seventh of some sort (A-G) or a Major Second after inversion

That would be minor 7th (when you invert intervals, M becomes m and vice versa, + becomes o and vice versa, and Perfects stay Perfect; 1 becomes 8, 2 becomes 7, 3/6 and 4/5 - so M2 inverts to m7).

You're on to something, but breaking it down too far.

Many people do see something like am7 as a combination of an am triad and a CM triad. But people also divide it up into a C triad with an A bass (this is helpful in improv because you can play for instance, a Bo7 arpeggio over a Gb9 chord).

There are also people who see things like a whole tone scale as two augmented chords - C E G# plus D F# A# = C D E F# G# A# - a whole tone scale. While I despise this as being an "overly chordal" approach (because obviously we could see the scale coming from stacking whole tones, which is what it is!!!!) it can be helpful in improv - for example, seeing a "diminished scale" (octatonic scale, or alternating half and whole steps) as being a diminished 7th chord decorated with half steps to each chord tone (and thus two o7 chords a half step apart) can be kind of handy.

What you're doing above, when breaking them down to Dyads, is telling us what the interval content of a chord (or set of notes) is. For example, C-E-G has a M3, m3 and P5 in it. In atonal (set) theory, this is "Interval Vector" which is helpful for making connections between sounds. For example, a Major triad has no m2, no M2, 1 m3, 1M3, 1P4, and no +4 (the other intervals are inversions of these) so the Interval Vector is:
0 0 1 1 1 0

Interestingly, the IV for a minor triad is exactly the same! In traditional tonal music, Major and minor are kind of treated as polar opposites, but from the stand point of interval content, they are "similar sounding" (not to mention one is an inversion (set inversion, not tradition inversion) of the other.

In conclusion, I'd say you're safe using the word "chord" to refer to any 3+ note sonority.

If you tell someone C-E is a "chord", you're going to have to explain, so to make yourself sound smart, you can say "It's really a dyad, though it can imply a chord".

If you have a set of notes that don't make a traditionally name-able chord - say C-C#-D-F-F#-G, you can call it a "chord" and get away with it, especially if it's played "as a chord" in the piece. But if you want to be persnickety, you can call it a "sonority", or if you want to be overly smart, you can call it a hexad or hexachord and open up all kinds of conversation (and arguments!).

Best,
Steve

[Stenir]

It'll also open up a bottle of aspirin, I think.

Lots of good information. I figured there was another named for a "two-note chord" or sorts. Thanks for clearing it up. So Interval Vectors somewhat are the connection we perceive as chordal?

[stevel]

Originally Posted by Stenir

It'll also open up a bottle of aspirin, I think.

Lots of good information. I figured there was another named for a "two-note chord" or sorts. Thanks for clearing it up. So Interval Vectors somewhat are the connection we perceive as chordal?

He he.

Let's say that Interval Vectors are kind of like a "description" of a sound or set of notes in an abstract sense (so can refer to chords or scales - any sound). It's kind of like when we say "C Major chord" we know we can have a C, E and G, or 10 Cs, 5 Gs and 2 Es, that it can be in any voicing and inversion, etc.

When you look at an interval vector for something like a pentatonic scale, you can see immediately that it contains no half steps, tritones, and an abundance of P4s.

Likewise, a diminished 7th chord contains nothing but m3rds and tritones.

Wanna hear something interesting - the Major scale is the ONLY set of notes that contains one of every type of interval, and a different number of each type of interval!

That tells us that, as a resource, there's a lot of possible note combinations available in that set of notes. In a whole tone scale, you can pretty much build far fewer types of sounds. So the IV can help you decide on a set of notes to use in a composition if you have a particular goal in mind - like a lot of similarity of sound, or, avoidance of half steps, etc.

Steve