simple question about a term: when the same notes on different octave positions sound together

[jancivil]

So if I play C, D and G together this is NOT a chord then because the D is no third away from its root C if your definition is right?

"Well, it actually is a chord because the third can be mediated..."

I'm saying "it's a chord" is not as narrow a thing to say as this is a tertial construction is. Quartal harmony indicates vertical construction by fourths; so I would freely exchange 'harmony' and 'chord' unless the movement is too fluid for there to be any useful idea of a block chord at this or another point in time.
Secondal chord means chord made by seconds. Objectively speaking, the word chord is used in pedagogy, in academic study, in the real world, for things not built by thirds as a matter of course.
"A chord must have a root, third and fifth" is an opinion. The "2 chord" is not mediated, for instance. And I think there is not a better word for the Satie mixed and planed fourths (ca 1890) than chord, since they're in fixed blocks and planed in that voicing. And that the chords (which aren't going to be easy to name), in the 'theme' part of that movement are chords, there's no great call to avoid that word using other words as though it has to circle back to "Must be tertial & triadic". "A sound aggregate in vertical terms", pedantry rules ok. Not. Also, there is a thing called 'the atonal triad' which mixes fourths (eg., F B E).<- orig. typoed

C D G is a chord if you like the word chord for it. Probably, like the power chord is through itself/its usage, a major third appears acoustically even from a strong fundamental. Power chord having only the two tones actuated on the instrument is de facto a chord. A minor chord with that quality of overdrive is going to be dissonant and is dealt with as such. Probably few are going to call it 'major/minor' chord but a real analysis will indicate it.

[jancivil]

there is also much older music than the classical music from which we derive the basis
so the whole thing of chords in that kind of definition represents a rather small chunk of music historically (let alone how culturally specific), really

as a beginner in my day the likelihood of seeing what I said in one place wasn't highly likely. But, since it was brought in, is C D G not a chord because they saw it asserted that a chord needs a third, I think it should be said. And we are not restricted in terms of information like that. You can do whatever, even as a start. The notion of 'for regular classical basic study' is a narrowed-down thing which (like any discipline) has its uses, but as information it isn't necessary. I remember being showed extended quartal stacks on like the first day in community college diatonic harmony. It was very exciting. Frank Zappa said the same thing about his high school theory teacher, he brought in something on a record. Q: what is this I'm liking here? A: quartal harmony.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

"A chord must have a root, third and fifth" is an opinion.

Sure, but it can be a conventional and powerful opinion I tried to avoid semantic mistakes like above and wrote:

... it is not a chord or triad in the usual sense, because you only have the
base tone of the chord and not a third (or a substitute, e.g. sus) and a fifth to complete the chord/triad.

So, my definition of chords was inclusive for substitutes without thirds and that term is all you need in classical music when learning basic composition. So within this simplified pedagogy, C,D,G is but a substitute that you would expect as mediating chord, but not as tonic.

Basically what I am working with here is chords as triads in a classical framework. It gets way more complex with Jazz, tetras and beyond. Triads usually refer to three different tones and not octaved intervals. Triads (chords/harmonies) can be incomplete or complete (having root, third and fifth). The complete ones are those you would usually start and end a piece with + a lot in between, and the incomplete you would expect as mediators between the complete triads.


Kind Regard
Gothi

[jancivil]

Well, if someone argued that to me at 18 when the ear-opening stacked fourths were demonstrated, I wouldn't have found it more compelling or powerful an opinion as my ears telling me 'this is a good thing'. "Cool, some totally new chords, a whole type" " But those aren't chords!" not so much.

Semantically I find no difference between "it actually is a chord because the third can be mediated..." and "To be a chord it must have a third". I wasn't trying to strawman that statement, the OP thought it was the meaning and the second explanation of the "2 chord" needing "mediation" reiterates the meaning. I personally think classical music is not as a priori as all that, as much as I drew from it as a discipline.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Well, if someone argued that to me at 18 when the ear-opening stacked fourths were demonstrated, I wouldn't have found it more compelling or powerful an opinion as my ears telling me 'this is a good thing'. "Cool, some totally new chords, a whole type" " But those aren't chords!" not so much.

Well, you are more resistent to brainwash than others, appearently. Once I did not like Jazz until I started working with it for the purpose of passing an exam. Fortunately the brain makes it revolts now and then. However, the system I use here as terminology is just a simplified system made for educational purposes. You have to take it as is, for the good and the bad of it, and when the learner has learned the basics, he/she can challenge the system too one day.

I personally think classical music is not as a priori as all that,

No, and if the OP had asked for some Jazz chord knowledge, I would have chosen differently. However, if he is blank, this system is the most simple and yet informative I have encountered in my own learning. It stems from Johann Joseph Fux. After all, common sense harmony is filled with classical cliches too, so it should be still somewhat foundational to mainstream music, e.g. rock and pop el classico.

Kind Regards
Gothi

[jancivil]

"the incomplete [triad] you would expect as mediators"
This is bound to a context you find necessary, while I don't. The so-called "2 chord" cannot reasonably be called incomplete in a practice where it's a (if not the) main type of the style. Classical music practice is a blip on the screen, it won't dominate my thought like that at all. What if someone finds "The Black Page" as their impetus, or mixed fourths there in le fils the whole thing that got them excited in the first place? or grew up in a culture where the whole sound of classical music is alien? argument to wrongness, idk about that...

Cultural hegemony, exactly what spurred me to get out of that little box. Donald Grout and all that... so music of a small section of Western Europe in a practice which a great deal of amounted to dinner music for the nobles once it was so codified rules ok.

I heard the quartal thing before I had an experience part-writing in the usual restriction, one thing does not have to obviate the other in one's studies.
If the goal ultimately is a kind of attempt at obtaining a transcendental technique, probably one wants both and grasps distinctions.

[jancivil]

"when the learner has learned the basics, he/she can challenge the system too one day." - one day? day one, question authority.

Am I not conveying? I'm challenging that this is 'the' system or 'the basics'. Fourths are more basic than thirds, if the argument is from historical. If all one cares about is pop music or like that, sure, chords are it. And it's well known, more than three are pretentious and wrong-headed! Melody may now be passe, as well.
Still, the point of saying that is you may be more free than that, since the OP actually has found C D G as, well, a chord.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

I did not make this basic learning system. Johann Joseph Fux did. It is just a conventional terminology for learning composition that would not be controversial for composers at first levels, but trivial. There are many other ways to learn about (conventions about) chords, but this is what I can offer the OP when he seems to stand at the doorstep.

[vurt]

f**k fux and the horse he rode in on!

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Well, he wouldn't be friend of an experimental musician or Zappa heir by default, I get that

[jancivil]

I don't find any remark I'm making controversial though. I was arranging things I actually got to hear using chords that weren't going to appear in a classroom for years, if ever, and the [intense] classical part-writing for two years didn't have me writing classical music. Fux is a basis in the abstract for principles and a way of thinking - linear, contrapuntal, which before very long in the scheme of things became significantly less crucial and was deprecated stylistically - but as a basis for how music sounds in life, or a definite fundament for "the system" didn't happen for me, and I'm not regretting the decision to bypass Species.

I can offer the OP, 'yes, the C D G is as good as anything else' outside of subjectivity and a culture insisted on as hegemonic. FZ is inspiring to me also as someone who saw those "rules" in high school and said 'forget this'. I was more interested in the late romantic practice and in JS Bach so I did the things. At 15 he was writing Varese regarding his idea of Ruth Crawford's atonal counterpoint, I was asking girls in jr high basic questions because they'd had piano lessons.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Still, the point of saying that is you may be more free than that, since the OP actually has found C D G as, well, a chord.

As said: It is a chord/triad, also in Fux's definition, but an incomplete chord or harmony as he calls it, and expected to have mediating functions and not as tonic. Basic tonality stuff.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

I can offer the OP, 'yes, the C D G is as good as anything else' outside of subjectivity and a culture insisted on as hegemonic.

That is not necessarily a negative and not complementary to my own offer. Now he has one definition embedded in conventions and one that is not to consider. However, both of them still claim CDG is a chord, one more restrictive than the other, naturally

[jancivil]

Well, in case there is an argument 'that's not and can never be a chord' (which is not a straw man, I've seen it more than once here)... "chord" is just a name for a sound aggregate that occurs more or less at the same time, which my brief academic experience and later experience with edumacated musishums seems to bear out.

I have literally zero interest in a definition from Fux outside of his primitive milieu, nor do I find the concept of 'incomplete' anything more than an insistence that a very narrow slice of study is in itself "the" correct way.
"Basic tonality stuff." Ok, not arguing that, but I wouldn't miss the fact that the OP likes the so-called incomplete chord as a sign people may, in their ear and their body, want things which are 'illegal' like that.

When I was a beginner, I wanted to get Foxy Lady. The main chord is (F#) 7 #9. A guy in school showed me it (albeit on E). Or you could call it a major/minor chord with that kind of vocabulary. Fux don't enter into it. Never has. There lies me basis, quite outside some dead era. Life is short.

[juno987654321]

f**k fux and the horse he rode in on!

Who is "fux" vurt? I don't understand you or why he or she or it was riding a horse!

Anyways, this has all been very informative so far so thank you very much.
I think a chord is always something like "harmonic" notes that sound together but people can't say what belongs to this category any more because it's no longer clear what "harmonic" actually means and where it ends. I'd tend to say that you need 3 notes to give a chord its necessary character that shapes it. I like this idea which the one guy brought forward and it was very convincing to me! E. g. major and minor for a happy and a sad chord. I think that's what this one guy meant by his words. Otherwise it wouldn't have enough character, maybe... and that they can't just be the same notes on different octaves. This also convinced me very much for the same reason. ...and so they'd have to be in harmony or in "accordance" with one another like 3 good friends. But maybe I'm demanding too much because 3 good friends don't fit into our time any more and so people naturally tend to think it could only be 2 at a max. I can understand that...