As the original thread got somewhat convoluted (even if it does have some nice information in it, you can still find it here), I thought I'd start with a fresh one.
However, here's the original question.
Ok, a bit late, but let's see.No name wrote:Ok, I haven't really yet understood still how to really use chords in music. Suppose I should get into that some time
. Anyways, what I propose we do here is simple, and will help many folks.
Give an example of a chord progression. Note which Key you are in, which progressions you use, and then make a small snippet of music using the progression. I think this would help a lot of us grasp how to implement chords into their music.
So any takers?
First off: You're asking how to implement chord progressions into your music. The answer is: You don't!
No, stop! Of course you do, but you may not start like that. Let's have a look at the "typical" songwriter approach - I'm not saying you should be working as a typical songwriter, but the approach is making much sense, at least IMO.
It's usually like this: At one point in time, you may pick up a guitar and some friend will show you the most essential chords in open position. Then you just fool around with them, probably playing a bunch of wellknown songs that are all written using nothing else but those rather simple chords (and believe me, there's tons of them). All of a sudden a nice melody/hook might come to your mind, and there's your tune.
Yes, when fooling around with those chords without playing any tune, there's quite some trial and error involved. But that's all fine! A lot of great tunes are written using just that very trial and error approach.
And, even if I'm not a "native" piano/keyboard player at all, I assume it's rather similar on those instruments. You may just start to fool arond with the white keys only.
However, to give you more of a trial and less of an error approach, it might be good to know a few fundamentals. These include (note that this is a personal list, nothing of global value):
- Which notes are in a given scale/tonality.
- How to build the "basic" chords using nothing else but notes of that given tonality.
- How to actually play those chords and their inversions.
- How to probably "expand" these chords, by using "color" (or "option") notes.
In addition, it's really a great thing to know about intervals. Their names and things such as "how many halftones are involved in a major 3rd". Believe me, it makes communication a LOT easier.
I won't concentrate too much on all these, you can find some good information in other threads on this very theory forum. JumpingJackFlashs introduction to music theory is an excellent source to get back to, should you have any problems with understanding certain theoretical terms.
And you may of course just ask, in case something's unclear.
Alright, for a start, I'd like to cover a few things about the major scale and the chords involved.
A major scale is always build like this:
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - j7 - 8 (which is the octave, with that things start to repeat)
Now, this, by itself, doesn't tell you much, if anything. If you already know intervals, it should tell you something already, though. However, let's fill this up with concrete note names, for a start, in the key of C (even if I sort of hate to always use that key).
C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C
As you may see, that's all the white keys on your piano/keyboard. Or in your piano roll.
It is, however, a great idea to not only remember this scale as "oh, all white keys" but rather stick to the "formula" behind it, which is why I wrote that one down first. After all, you want to be able to play in all keys.
The formula given is using standard interval names, so you may really want to look them up.
Another way to remember whatever scales structure is to keep the involved steps from one note to the next in mind.
In case of our major scale (which is what we'll be dealing with for now), it's:
1 + WT = 2 + WT = 3 + HT = 4 + WT = 5 + WT = 6 + WT = j7 + HT = 8
WT = wholetone (two halftone steps)
HT = halftone (one halftone step)
Please note: Interval "indexes" aren't consistent throughout all styles, so you may, for instance, find 3+ and 3- for major and minor thirds. You may as well find M3 or m3 instead. The approach I'm using is indexing them as they will be indexed in a chord symbol, so a major third gets no additional indexing whereas the minor third will get a 3min.
The same goes for chord symbols and their representations using capital roman numbers. I will stick to the system most jazz/rock/pop musicians agree upon, which might at some places be known as the Berklee system. And which is as well what you'll find in things such as the "New Realbook".
Unfoertunately, there's still no general, worldwide agreement on this, but I find the system I'm using to be rather accurate and easy to understand.
Ok, please, if something is unclear so far, don't hesitate to ask - or look things up in other threads of this theory forum.
Fwiw, you may also want to download the ravenspiralguide, which is a really good read on these basic subjects:
http://www.ravenspiral.com/ravenspiralguide.pdf
Ok, on to chord building.
Now, all the fuzz about scales and intervals - why?
Because that's the raw material our most often used chord progressions will build upon. In case we don't use any other material but the notes from one scale (or better: in one key), we call things "diatonic" (= strictly part of a given key). Those diatonic chord progressions are the main thing you'll find in the sort of music most of us western folks should be familiar with.
There's styles going further away from it, there's heavily modulating (going from one key to another) music and whatever, but most of what we are familiar with is usually based on diatonic chord progressions. So that's what I will concentrate on. And that's also why one should really know the notes of a given key/scale.
In general, chord building inside a scale/key is really easy. You can build up a chord on any degree of a scale. And the basic principle behind it is easy as well: You just take any note of a given scale and put other notes on top of it in thirds (that's one of the reasons why you should be familiar with intervals...). In praxis, this means that you take a note and build up using every other note.
For instance, in the key of C, our C chord would be like: C - (skip D) - E - (skip F) - G.
C-E-G being the resulting chord.
This principle is open to expansion. We could add further thirds on top of it - even until we're using all the notes of the given key. For our C chord, it could look like this:
C-E-G-B-D-F-A
Before you head over to your keyboard to try this, stop! It usually doesn't make much sense to use all notes of a given key on one chord. In fact, it would even sound weird (there's something called "forbidden" notes - don't take that literally, but stick to it for a start).
What we usually stick to in "general chord building" is the first 3 or 4 steps. Even if this is a blatant generalisation, a lot of classical music is based on 3 part chords, whereas a lot of jazz/pop stuff is based on 4 part chords. At least the theoretical principles behind them are (so, that doesn't mean you couldn't just use any chord in any style - just the explanations behind things are a bit different).
Once it comes to actual examples, I will stick to the 4 part system and its possible extensions. Oh well, I will actually start with 3 part examples...
Anyways, once we expand our 3 part chord to a 4 part one, our C chord in the key of C would look like this:
C-E-G-B
Note: The four parts of our chord so far are called: root, third, fifth and seventh. They are often described by numbers: 1, 3, 5, 7.
In case we don't use the 7th, the chord is a plain triad. Whether you'll be using triads or 7th chords is largely depending on the style you're after.
In addition, as briefly shown above, the principle of putting further notes (in 3rd intervals) on top of what we already have, can be expanded, so we would have to deal with 9ths, 11ths and 13ths as well. But we won't do that just now.
For most explanatory things, triads or 7th chords are doing a sufficient job.
Now, the next thing we can (and should) do is to analyze the resulting chord.
It's got a major 3rd and a major 7th in it, so it's a Cmaj7 chord.
Then, the next thing to proceed with is doing the same for all available notes of our scale.
So we may just build a chord on the D. Following our "skip every other note" formula, it'd look like:
D-F-A-C
When analyzing it, we will find out that it has a minor 3rd and a minor 7th. So the chord name is Dmin7.
A note: I *should* probably explain the nomenclature of chord namings right now ("why is the min 3 mentioned in the chord symbol?", "why does the major 7 have an index?", "how comes only the flatted 5th is mentioned in a chord symbol?" - things like that), but as said, you will most likely find the explanation elsewhere. If you look at whatever explanation of intervals, things will defenitely become a lot more clear. I don't want this post to become more of a monster than what it already appears to become.
In addition, some things might as well become a lot more understandable once I post some examples.
Ok, let's proceed with our diatonic chords. We would now do the same thing for each note in our scale. In the key of C we would end up with a list like this:
C-E-G-B = Cmaj7
D-F-A-C = Dmin7
E-G-B-D = Emin7
F-A-C-E = Fmaj7
G-B-D-F = G7
A-C-E-G = Amin7
B-D-F-A = Bmin7/b5
As we don't want to stick to the key of C for the rest of our lives, just as with whatever scale formula, it's a nice idea to put this into a more formulaic pattern as well. Which would be like:
Imaj7
IImin7
IIImin7
IVmaj7
V7
VImin7
VIImin7/b5
Ok, I will make a break with the explanatory stuff here and start with some "practical advice".
What is all that stuff so far good for?
Well, we do now have a picture of what sort of chords to use in a given key. Sure, for now it's just major keys, but a whole lot of these things also apply to minor keys - I'd say that around 90% of minor key progressions can easily be treated as "derivatives" from major keys.
Alright, what to do now? A few things:
1) Learn to play (or program) the various chords. You may want to start with triads (3 part voicings, leaving out the 7ths) instead of going for the full 4 part thing instantly. The reason being that they're easier to figure out on most instruments and that their sound is probably more "clear" as well.
2) Try to play all those triads in all three "inversions". In case you don't know what inversions are, it's really no biggie, you just arrange the 3 notes differently. So, our C triad in socalled root position would be "C-E-G". The first inversion would bring the C on top, so it'd be "E-G-C". Second inversion would then be "G-C-E". These inversions are extremely important when it comes to chord progressions, as you most likely want to avoid larger jumps.
As an example: Let's assume we want to move from a C to an F.
The C in root position would be "C-E-G", the F in root position would be "F-A-C". Going from one chord to the other would require a 5 halftone jump. Sure, we can do that, but very often it just won't sound too well. So, instead of just jumping around, we would probably still use the C in root position, but take a look of what would be the closest F inversion. As there's even a common note (the C), our closest F inversion would be "C-F-A", which would be the second inversion. Actually, you don't even have to know which inversion is which, as soon as you know the notes in whatever chord, you can just try to achieve the smallest possible movements between two chords.
3) Play "random" diatonic triads. The only rule here: Stick to one key.
Make sure you check out all possible inversions, so there's minimal movement between the individual voicings.
4) Repeat steps 1-3 with 4 part voicings. This is going to be more tricky. Some inversions won't sound as good as others, you need one more finger, the notes in whatever chord are harder to remember and the sound will probably not be as clear.
I will end this post here and proceed with the next one in a bit, hopefully showing some of the most often used chord progressions that can be covered with what we have so far (I already have some examples ready but need to bounce them down and export the MIDI files).
Oh, and sorry for the rather lengthy explanatory stuff, you may not necessarily need all that, but I thought I should write it down as some sort of quick'n'dirty reference.
It was very kind of you to do this! I thought all of your information was very clear and concise. My problem now is that, for some reason i'm noticing that when people describe chords in a given key, they never do the minor keys. I understand that major is easier because it is all white keys, but i'm not so sure what to do when it comes to the whites and blacks. I read on musictheory.net about chords in a minor key, and while I can understand it pretty much, all the terminology I see just drowns me and I get lost. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I devote myself to reading during all the free time I have, but shopping around for info from different sites on the net causes me a lot of confusion due to the fact that everyone uses different ways to describe the same thing. I'll explain where i'm stuck at right now at this point.
