What is this chord called?

[someone called simon]

To the original OP: Does it matter how the chord is called? Do you like the sound? Use it. If not, don't. Who cares how is it called? As long as it's written, people will play it (assuming it's physically possible to play it).

Humans tend to name things, it helps communicate with others, even helps us remember things for our own benefit. It appears you have one yourself...

This!!

THIS is for people who don't know music. Those that know music read the notes, and that's enough for them. A chord with E, G, B, D, F, A... whatever, is what it is. Naming it isolated, without a context, is not possible (at least for me, and I know something on the subject). You need to know where it comes from and where it goes to, because there are notes there that may simply not belong to the chord (and probably, there are). I prefer to read the entire text instead of memorizing isolated words. It's better and gives me a better picture (and avoids mistakes, too).

THIS is an elitist view of what music is about. And is also IMHO incorrect. I think what you meant was:

"THIS is for people who don't know, or need to use, standard western music notation."

Are you implying that the jazz greats didn't know music? I don't know that miles davis was reading notation very often when he played. A chord chart is good way of providing the foundation of what's going on musically, leaving plenty of room for improvisation. Notation would be silly for a lot of jazz, folk, rock, whatever music, that require some spontaneity.
In fact, it can be of more use for the less musical, the people who need to read what notes to play, to mimic a recording perhaps, rather than be given freedom to make their own contribution within a song framework. Obviously I'm not talking of the classical context. But that's not the only context.

I would actually like to be able to read music, fluently, but it hasn't stopped me from being a fairly well respected musician, playing guitar for a living several nights a week.

[fmr]

1. When you are using ennharmonic notes, it is no longer the same chord, since it has other notes (no matter if the sound is the same, the chord is not the same, because what matters is what's written, since that will make a difference in what follows - in written music, you don't use enharmonic notes just because you can, but because the new written notes serve a purpose, for example for changing tonality).

Okay but the example I gave was Eb7#11 vs A7#11 - a tritonic substitution - and tritonic substitions only make sense if you allow for enharmonic notes.

This doesn't change a bit of what I said.

2. A chord inverted doesn't sound the same... True. But it is also true that a chord in the same position (meaning - with the same bass, because that's the only element that determines which position the chord is) don't sound the same, depending on which notes you double, which octaves you play them, etc. That doesn't mean the chord is not the same... it is, just the way it is written/played differ... therefore, also the sound differs.

Fine, inversions are on an intermediary level of difference between "different voicing of the same chord but with the same bass" and "different chord". Can you at least agree with this?[/quote]
We can. But that's why naming a chord is meaningless. Who cares what's the name of a certain chord if we don't know where and how to play it in the contexts of a apiece. That's why notation was invented/created (and exists).

3. You may give me 1.000 more examples. I can even give some to you. That doesn't change what i said. A chord is named after its fundamental position. If you then change the bass note of the chord you have an inversion of that same chord

THAT'S A TAUTOLOGY![/quote]
May be whatever you want but... IT'S ALSO TRUE

[fmr]

To the original OP: Does it matter how the chord is called? Do you like the sound? Use it. If not, don't. Who cares how is it called? As long as it's written, people will play it (assuming it's physically possible to play it).

Humans tend to name things, it helps communicate with others, even helps us remember things for our own benefit. It appears you have one yourself...

This!!

THIS is for people who don't know music. Those that know music read the notes, and that's enough for them. A chord with E, G, B, D, F, A... whatever, is what it is. Naming it isolated, without a context, is not possible (at least for me, and I know something on the subject). You need to know where it comes from and where it goes to, because there are notes there that may simply not belong to the chord (and probably, there are). I prefer to read the entire text instead of memorizing isolated words. It's better and gives me a better picture (and avoids mistakes, too).

THIS is an elitist view of what music is about. And is also IMHO incorrect. I think what you meant was:

"THIS is for people who don't know, or need to use, standard western music notation."

Are you implying that the jazz greats didn't know music? I don't know that miles davis was reading notation very often when he played. A chord chart is good way of providing the foundation of what's going on musically, leaving plenty of room for improvisation. Notation would be silly for a lot of jazz, folk, rock, whatever music, that require some spontaneity.
In fact, it can be of more use for the less musical, the people who need to read what notes to play, to mimic a recording perhaps, rather than be given freedom to make their own contribution within a song framework. Obviously I'm not talking of the classical context. But that's not the only context.

I would actually like to be able to read music, fluently, but it hasn't stopped me from being a fairly well respected musician, playing guitar for a living several nights a week.

I don't know what "jazz greats" know or don't know. Nor do I care. I don't even know if they are that great - only in 100 years will we know if they are really great and how great they are. Ignorance was never beneficial to anyone. And a chord chart is a very imperfect way of writing music. Saying that "A chord chart is good way of providing the foundation of what's going on musically, leaving plenty of room for improvisation" to me means "we don't know for sure what that intends to be, so we play something that fits in there." Improvisation exists in music since ages. In the Renaissance and the Baroque musicians were used to improvise. Mozart piano concertos' cadenzas (classical period) were not written, because he was used to improvise them himself. So wasn't cadenzas of any composer before him. All solo concertos in the baroque contained passages that were used by the soloists to play improvisations. So, jazz didn't brought anything to music that wasn't already known and being done. Improvisation was progressively abandoned because it didn't fit with higher musical demands, and composer will. That's why everything became written.

Regarding your statement. "...people who need to read what notes to play, to mimic a recording perhaps, rather than be given freedom to make their own contribution within a song framework." what are we exactly talking about here? If I write a piece, I don't want anyone to "make their own contributions" to that piece. If they want to "make contributions" they should write their own pieces. I want them to play EXACTLY what I wrote. Interpretation is not playing other notes, is the way you play the notes that are there. If someone feels the urge to change those notes then he/she should play something else. I feel terribly when I hear people "interpret" some songs I love... IMO, they are simply killing them, and doing a bad service to music as a whole.

Regarding the "classical context": For me there's only one context - the musical context. Everything else is not musical. Maybe it's me that are displaced here, but that will not change the way i see these things. If you can't read music, learn how to do it. If you were able to learn to play the guitar to the point of being a fairly respect musician, doing that for a living, I'm sure you are able to learn to read music.

[peteman]

Referring to my original question, I just wanted to know what this chord is if I play it in isolation (in no musical context) and someone asks me what this chord is. But after reading this thread I guess it's impossible to tell for sure.

[someone called simon]

[reply to fmr]

Wow.

Well, I can understand where you're coming from for your own music, wanting to dictate everything note for note (not that it's even possible to dictate a lot of performance nuances in notation). I can be a little like that myself, for what I write, but often in a group you get a better result from letting someone else bring something to it.

However I find it surprising that you can't concede that much music, whether it's to your taste or not, is collaborative, and varies from performance to performance. If reading a score was a prerequisite to performing, I'd be missing out on whole lot of inspiring wonderful music, much of it from people I know. Some of whom are perfectly able to read music but will not tend to use it in many situations where it is unnecessary.

Your comment about people interpreting songs is interesting. Sure, I've seen many performances where someone hasn't got something quite 'right', though I've also heard many cases of well known artists making variations to their own songs when performing live. Jose Gonzalez' version of Heartbeats is rather a nice version of that song, should he be chastised because he didnt use the jagged synths and drum machines of The Knife's original version? Or Jeff Buckley's sublime (though overplayed) version of Hallelujah, or Corpus Christi Carol? Cowboy Junkies' Sweet Jane? Johnny Cash's Hurt ? They all did a 'bad service to music'?

[someone called simon]

Referring to my original question, I just wanted to know what this chord is if I play it in isolation (in no musical context) and someone asks me what this chord is. But after reading this thread I guess it's impossible to tell for sure.

No it's not. Using Occams razor, it's an Em 9, like the first respondant said. And you don't need to worry about what octave it's in. If you're jamming with a friend who plays guitar, just tell him/her that. You probably couldn't play that chord on guitar with exactly the same sequence of notes anyway.

[Boardwalk]

It's not that hard to learn. Basically a chord is just thirds (intervals) stacked on top of each other. In relation to the notes in the key. So in C Major you will get:

I. C E G (5) B (Maj7) D (9) F (11) A (13) C
II. D F A (5) C (Min7) E (9) G (11) B (13) D
III. E G B (5) D (Min7) F (b9) A (11) C (b13) E
IV. F A C (5) E (Maj7) G (9) B (b11) D (13) F
V. G B D (5) F (Min7) A (9) C (11) E (13) G
VI. A C E (5) G (Min7) B (9) D (11) F (b13) A
VII. B D F (b5) A (Min7) C (b9) E (11) G (b13) B

[MadBrain]

Fine, inversions are on an intermediary level of difference between "different voicing of the same chord but with the same bass" and "different chord". Can you at least agree with this?

We can. But that's why naming a chord is meaningless. Who cares what's the name of a certain chord if we don't know where and how to play it in the contexts of a apiece. That's why notation was invented/created (and exists).

I do care about the name of the chord because that's what you put on a lead sheet (and also my sight reading is too atrocious to read a whole piano arrangement in one go, it has to be concentrated down to something more manageable - hence chord names).

[KBSoundSmith]

This reminds me why 1) I stopped pursuing a PhD in music, and 2) why I stopped looking at this sub-forum. Listening to other people talk about music theory is insufferable, and trying to teach it to others is even more insufferable.

To the OP: the chord is an em9. That's it. Objectively.

What can't be determined is its function, since you showed us only the chord in isolation rather than in context of a piece of music. Everyone else is making this far more complicated than it needs to be by talking about a bunch of shit that's peripheral to your question (voicings, doublings, inversions, etc).

I'll simplify all of that for you. Let's take a simple example: a C Major triad. It's made up of C, E, and G.

If you have C, E, and G, it is ALWAYS a C Major triad. It doesn't matter if E is in the bass (1st inversion) or if G is in the bass (2nd inversion) -- it's still a C Major triad. The inversions are simply going to imply that the behavior of the C Major triad is going to be different. It doesn't matter if C is in the top voice, in the bottom voice, or one of the middle. Or the E. Or the G. If you have C, E, and G, it's a major triad.

It doesn't matter if only one instrument is playing E, but 10 are playing C and 4 are playing G -- the chord is made up of C, E, and G, so it's a C Major triad. This is simply a matter of doubling -- the reasons why a person doubles a certain note in a chord is simple: voice leading, how the chord is going to behave, what instruments are playing particular notes, etc.

The name of a chord doesn't change -- it's objective. C, E, G is a C Major triad. What changes is its behavior, and that is a matter of context.

That's why Roman Numeral chord symbols and inversion symbols were adopted -- they imply the normally expected behavior of a chord. But today, most people prefer to read a chord symbol rather than a Roman Numeral symbol for a simple reason: if you read Roman Numerals, the specific chord you should play might change because of a modulation (IV in the key of C is an F chord; but if we modulate to the key of F, now the chord IV is a Bb, and the chord F is a I). If the music is complex, than having to spend mental energy figuring out which chord to play is a burden, especially if you are improvising.

Using just a chord symbol, for example em9, is objective. It doesn't matter what key you are in. There's no ambiguity about which chord to play -- if you see the symbol em9, you play a chord with an E, G, B, D, F#. Period. How you voice them and double them is up to you. Typically, the chord symbol also tells you which note should be played in the bass. If you see C/E, then that means play a C Major triad with E in the bass (1st inversion).

Anyway, I'm one-and-done in this discussion, as I've already exhausted my tolerance for talking about music theory for the weekend. Hopefully that straightens things up for you.

[ImNotDedYet]

Referring to my original question, I just wanted to know what this chord is if I play it in isolation (in no musical context) and someone asks me what this chord is. But after reading this thread I guess it's impossible to tell for sure.

It's an Em9 man. It could be called other things as well, but the most conventional chord naming of it would be Em9. When you start extending chords into 9ths, 11ths, etc they could be viewed and named as different chords. This whole musical context thing...yes, it's true it could be named something different based on context.

But if all you want is to tell someone who asks you what chord that is - you can say Em9 and they'll know what notes they are. (which is all you're trying to communicate to him/her in the first place)

[ImNotDedYet]

I don't know what "jazz greats" know or don't know. Nor do I care. I don't even know if they are that great - only in 100 years will we know if they are really great and how great they are. Ignorance was never beneficial to anyone.

Maybe it's just me, but that statement in itself seems pretty ignorant. You don't care what some of the jazz greats knew? If you knew what they knew, I'm guessing your musical knowledge and would increase a good deal. I'm guessing you would be much better at arrangement by listening to other instruments that are playing and fitting in your instrument, your rhythmic capabilities would get better and your theory would get better. If you think you have nothing more to learn in the world of music, you're in for quite a surprise.

You don't know if they were great? Is this a joke? Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, Monk, Herbie Hancock - it's still up in the air if they're great? (there are countless others, but I'm just naming the ones I think are the most heard of jazz musicians) I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's an artist in pop, contemporary, rock, blues, whatever that has only played songs in the last fifty years that you and many others think is great. (Beatles, Michael Jackson, ...) But yet we're supposed to wait another 100 years to see if these supposed jazz greats are indeed great while accepting these pop and rock legends are indeed already great? (even though some played damn near one hundred years ago now) These jazz musicians I listed aren't in Taylor Swift area, having made music for the last ten years or whatever it was. They played in the 40s, 50s, 60, and some into the 70s - they ended around 50 years ago. And they've still provided what many consider to be the most classic of jazz music in history.

There are two ways to look at music - the spell everything out method and the here's the charts, now let's improvise on it. Both are wonderful ways of looking at music and composing. There's no right or wrong answer in music - it's an art form, there's just the final result. But discounting all of these things as unworthy is as you say, pretty ignorant - and dangerous.

[fmr]

I don't know what "jazz greats" know or don't know. Nor do I care. I don't even know if they are that great - only in 100 years will we know if they are really great and how great they are. Ignorance was never beneficial to anyone.

You don't know if they were great? Is this a joke? Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, Monk, Herbie Hancock - it's still up in the air if they're great? (there are countless others, but I'm just naming the ones I think are the most heard of jazz musicians) I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's an artist in pop, contemporary, rock, blues, whatever that has only played songs in the last fifty years that you and many others think is great. (Beatles, Michael Jackson, ...)

Did I say that I consider those great? Where did I say that?

There are two ways to look at music - the spell everything out method and the here's the charts, now let's improvise on it. Both are wonderful ways of looking at music and composing. There's no right or wrong answer in music - it's an art form, there's just the final result. But discounting all of these things as unworthy is as you say, pretty ignorant - and dangerous.

Music is an art form, yes. But music as a build, created with a purpose. The "here's the charts, now let's improvise on it" attitude, while it may be fun, and give you a lot of fun, will hardly produce anything worthing mention in terms of art. If a painter go to the Louvre, and decide to "improvise" over the Mona Lisa, he/she may come over with a good paint (hardly, but we have to consider that as a possibility), but it will be a strike of pure luck if something worthing the "art" classification would come out of that action. So, why would I trust the "let's improvise" as a way to come out with something artistically and musically meaningful?

Now, regarding your "compliments". Ignorant why? Because I don't agree with you, and dared to say that your sacred monsters may not be so sacred, after all? Why are they great? Compared to whom? Would you consider any of the quoted greater than, for example George Gershwin? Charles Ives? Elliott Carter? Aaron Copland? Leonard Bernstein? Take note I am just mentioning these as they are all american, not because I consider these the greatest.

As I wrote, improvisation was present in music during the Renaissance, Baroque, and the first classics. It was abandoned because composers decided that they couldn't trust on the musician "moment" to come up with something on pair with the written parts. Bach (which was reportedly a fantastic improviser) didn't trust on musician abilities to improvise. Mozart left the cadenzas unwritten in his piano concertos because he was supposed to play them himself (and Mozart was... well, Mozart). Beethoven was the first one to write everything. And he even wrote cadenzas for many of the Mozart piano concertos.

From then on, everything was written down. Stravinsky, for example, was so keen as how his music should be played that even when it was supposed to be played "normal" he wrote that on the score. Composers started to write everything down because they considered their music as "art", not just something to "have fun". And they want it to be played as they conceived. Someone who simply writes a chart has no idea what he/she wants from that (or just have a musical idea, but going from that to a music composition is a long way to go).

The dangerous... Maybe you consider this dangerous because I shake your predefined scale of values, but that's the way it is. For me, the ones you mentioned may be great in the jazz context (which is not the greatest thing on earth to me, as you probably already guessed), but in the music absolute context, not so much. And I have little to learn from them in terms of rhythm, arrangement or anything else (I would need to be very little knowledgeable to have to). Apparently, you are the one who needs to know more to have something to compare to.

I will finish quoting something in your reply to the OP: "But if all you want is to tell someone who asks you what chord that is - you can say Em9 and they'll know what notes they are". This is exactly the point - they will know what notes they are - but they will not know anything else. This is a pretty reductionist and meaningless way to look at music, yet it's pretty common in people used to charts - everything is reduced to notes, chords and chord progressions.

[datroof]

THIS is an elitist view of what music is about.

Yeah, elitism really doesn't have any place in a discussion like this. When it rears its ugly head, it's always ego-driven. Take elitist comments with huge grain of salt, and be patient with the person making them. They're having a rough time.

[someone called simon]

... someone needs to get out more ...

[someone called simon]

... Stravinsky, for example, was so keen as how his music should be played that even when it was supposed to be played "normal" he wrote that on the score.

Interestingly, a guy you cite to supprt your argument had a way broader appreciation of music than you. Maybe his taste was just not as highly developed?

"At the beginning of his second chorus he [Charlie Parker] interpolated the opening of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite as though it had always been there, a perfect fit, and then sailed on with the rest of the number. Stravinsky roared with delight, pounding his glass on the table, the upward arc of the glass sending its liquor and ice cubes onto the people behind him, who threw up their hands or ducked."

"The loud applause at the conclusion of “Koko” stopped in mid-clap, so to speak, as Parker, again without a word, segued into his gentle version of “All the Things You Are.” Stravinsky was visibly moved."

http://www.jerryjazzmusician.com/2004/0 ... travinsky/