Most important notes in chords

[danika]

There seems to be two different, and in my mind inconsistent, standards for the most important notes in a chord. On the one hand, there is the classical standard based on note harmonics (see the first staff on the score sheet below) for doubling notes. On the other hand, the rules I know for eliminating notes are more oriented towards jazz theory (see the second staff on the score sheet below). So for doubling notes the U and P5 intervals are most important whereas for eliminating notes, these are the least important notes. Am I missing something here?

[jancivil]

yeah, you're trying to believe there are a lot of principles that are going to work per se. it's all going to follow use case and context!

doubling is an instrumentation issue. it's going to be affected by texture, always.

as far as jazz [vs classical], a principle to give priority to a perfect fifth is not apt.

now, there are principles to heed such as doubling thirds in a major chord; that can affect the weight of tension. in many if not most applications that's something to eschew.

but in the larger sense this has to be applied case by case.

[jancivil]

if you're going to wonder about the harmonic series, NB. the loudness of the note that's theoretically considered fundamental and at what pitch.

I have NO IDEA what the second stave is supposed to tell us or why.

[jancivil]

my advice is to ignore this kind of abstraction [rules???] and look at music.

[jancivil]

if you are going to look at charts, that harmonic interval one is not the thing.

for instance partial 13 is going to boil down to 13:8 which is more like Ab.

it is true that jazz extensions correlate with harmonics in practice a lot of the time but I would not draw real overarching inference from that.

[Sendy]

In my experience, it's not so much what rules or limitations you impose on your work, so much as having consistency and coherency, which stems from knowledge and decisiveness. If you avoid paralell or doubled 5ths or something like that all the way thru a track, but there's a couple of points where they slip through, in a way that produces no interesting musical effect, it may sound "lumpy" or clumsy.

Of course, breaking a rule to coincide with a "master plan" is a whole other story and is often where the great music is, IMO.

[tapper mike]

I've heard wonderful music which resides in foundational principles albeit few and far between.

If you want to gain a mastery of an instrument or music your focus should be first on expressiveness of performance. Expressiveness comes from mastery of technique. Which means practice and developing a sense of note articulation over simply what notes. Expressiveness/technique/wisdom only come via application (practice) It is not something that can be overcome via squiring rudimentary knowledge of harmony and melody. It's better to know a little and play well then to know a lot and assume you've got it down whist lacking any true practical experience in the medium.

As well so long as you choose only to understand things at the most rudimentary level it will act as a crutch keeping you from understanding more advanced concepts. It's not math, it's not rocket science, it's not programming. Music is an expressive craft/artform. Concepts that are very applicable in some circumstances aren't even applicable in others.

[JumpingJackFlash]

So for doubling notes the U and P5 intervals are most important whereas for eliminating notes, these are the least important notes. Am I missing something here?

Just to clarify, "classically", the "rules" in a nutshell would be:
- Double the fifth over the third (except in diminished or augmented chords),
- Never omit the third.

There are of course many exceptions to both.

For further information, I recommend this textbook on Four Part Harmony (get a 50% discount if you agree not to photocopy it).

[Tricky-Loops]

I've heard wonderful music which resides in foundational principles albeit few and far between.

If you want to gain a mastery of an instrument or music your focus should be first on expressiveness of performance. Expressiveness comes from mastery of technique. Which means practice and developing a sense of note articulation over simply what notes. Expressiveness/technique/wisdom only come via application (practice) It is not something that can be overcome via squiring rudimentary knowledge of harmony and melody. It's better to know a little and play well then to know a lot and assume you've got it down whist lacking any true practical experience in the medium.

As well so long as you choose only to understand things at the most rudimentary level it will act as a crutch keeping you from understanding more advanced concepts. It's not math, it's not rocket science, it's not programming. Music is an expressive craft/artform. Concepts that are very applicable in some circumstances aren't even applicable in others.

Notes are not an art, notes are the restrictions of the art...

BTW, there are a lot of theoretical books about chords. But is there one book about composing with chords EMOTIONALLY? A book that describes which emotion can be achieved with which chord? For example: You want to make dark, sad music - so choose this chord (not only minor, but more specifically)?

[Sendy]

BTW, there are a lot of theoretical books about chords. But is there one book about composing with chords EMOTIONALLY? A book that describes which emotion can be achieved with which chord? For example: You want to make dark, sad music - so choose this chord (not only minor, but more specifically)?

You can't teach emotion. Even the major=happy minor=sad tritone=suspense guideline is only a very general thing. Arrangement and timbre can influence the emotional impact in music as much as the notes and chords, and even transform them.

[Tricky-Loops]

BTW, there are a lot of theoretical books about chords. But is there one book about composing with chords EMOTIONALLY? A book that describes which emotion can be achieved with which chord? For example: You want to make dark, sad music - so choose this chord (not only minor, but more specifically)?

You can't teach emotion. Even the major=happy minor=sad tritone=suspense guideline is only a very general thing. Arrangement and timbre can influence the emotional impact in music as much as the notes and chords, and even transform them.

This is the mad thing...if I use a slightly different chord (only one note transposed) or even if I pitch-shift some sound only a few cents, the emotional impact changes dramatically. But I've never found a (good) book about that...

[jancivil]

"Notes are not an art" then "composing with chords EMOTIONALLY?" Chords are an art then?

'which emotion with which chord' is hopelessly reductive. a chord isolated has technical, physical properties. now, you can voice a major chord to be 'majestic', or something, but it really must be next to something 'not majestic' for that to work. it could just be 'big' sounding. the real meaning of the word happens in a sentence.

writing cannot be taught like that. for comparison, playwriting has to be taught by technique, by devices; by form. EG: you develop backstory to make a character palpable; you develop three palpable characters with like needs or conflicts. then you have vehicles to carry ideas; you have character in personality and the dialogue sounds like people talking. You put them in say a three-act, exposition/development/denouement. You make beginnings, middles, and ends all along the way.

In music it is not that different. Once you're at a level of some command of the language, you'll have substance, ideas, and you make choices to convey them: instruments have character, which imparts something to the lines the instrument speaks (can speak, actually). You clothe the character in colors, say chords, that suit the character and present her argument in the light of your intention. Chords as primary consideration; why do you want the chords? Because 'chords' is the facile way to proceed? There ought to be a musical reason, as with a narrative reason. "What is my motivation?". People don't go around humming chord changes so much.

the idea to reduce music to components and facile paper analysis instead of reading the whole, the context, the texture, is never going to amount to anything. it has to be more than sum of parts.

[Plasuma!!!]

Note 'importance' is pretty straightforward:

For doubling, you generally want to avoid bulking up the 3rd, especially if it's in the bass. The fifth and root (at the octave) are great for doubling if you need a bigger sound, as they reinforce the root. This is true in pretty much any music from classical to jazz.

For removing extra notes from a chord, the octave and the fifth are the first to be eliminated to reduce congestion. Those two are the most transparent and, as mentioned before, reinforce the root, which isn't always desirable in thin passages or where you want to use complex harmony. This is, again, true in both classical and jazz, although jazz musicians sometimes like to keep the notes congested to create a specific kind of feeling.

You almost always want to keep the root and 'color tones' intact when you decide to use them - those being anything but the octave and fifth.

In a word: all the parts of a chord are important. You use each note for different things. If it helps, you can pretend that every chord is a 13th of some kind and you're deciding that, anytime you're using a basic triad, you simply don't want the 7th, octave, 9th, 11th, and 13th in there.



I'm not sure what help any of this will be without some understanding that chords are created from melodic intent and only exist as analytical devices by themselves. This may be what Jancivil means when they describe a narrative being of utmost importance; the narrative being 'what you want to say' in a literary sense, or, in musical terms, the melody.

Chords and instruments only convey emotion when they move air - when notes become tones. On paper, in a static existence, they only describe materials. We can afford to be scientific about the procedures of an artform, but vision and emotion can't be reliably taught, so those are owned by the creator and what makes the art special.

[wrench45us]

as I understand it the 'rules' in jazz aren't so much rules as about basic information theory.
aside from the root, the 3rd and the 7th inform the listener about the type of chord (major or minor 3rd, major or minor 7th). The 5th is present in minor 7th, major 7th, dominant 7th, so doesn't convey a lot of 'type' information.

So if one has so many workable fingers on a keyboard and wants to add a bunch of upper tension notes, one could drop the 5th without losing a lot of information. otoh 1 and 5 emphasized in the left hand (and on bass) is fairly old school common, as they do establish the root and 1st fundamental of the root.
emphasizing 1 and 3 in the left hand (or on bass) has a much more ambiguous sound as the 3rd asserts its own tone and can shift the sense of root tone.

[tapper mike]

The 5th can be ommited and more often then not is when "comping" in trad jazz. However you can't pigeonhole all jazz as traditional. Phish is very jazz fusion yet leaves much of the traditional and some of the fusion rock elements behind.