Music Video Lesson: How to Identify Chords in Music - Chords Part 1

Welcome to virtualsheetmusic.com and livingpianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin with the first in a multi-part series on chords. Today, the question is, "How can you identify the chords you're playing?" I know a lot of people are interested, and you play certain sonorities and wonder, "What the heck is that?" Well, I'm going to give you some ways of approaching identifying chords.

The thing to realize about chords are that chords, for the most part, are built upon the interval of a third. What is a third? A third are any notes that are on lines or spaces. That is, they're a letter name apart. Like A to C because you leave out the B or C to E, leave out the D. And that is the secret for figuring out the chords you're playing.

Now, some chords might be rather sophisticated because there could be altered tones. That is, there might be an augmented or a diminished chord where the notes are sharped or flatted from what they usually would be. So how do you figure out what they are? Very simple. You just arrange them in thirds on the staff. If you're reading the music, you look at the notes and make sure that they're arranged in thirds. How do you do that? Look at the notes that are on lines or spaces. Now, sometimes what makes this tricky is there's something called inversions. It was actually Rameau, many centuries ago who figured out that if you played a chord like this and then if you inverted it and put the bottom note on top, that is exactly the same chord, it's just inverted. So how do you know which chord it is? Well if you were to play it like this, this G to the C is no longer a third. So you keep rearranging, voila, until they're arranged in thirds.

Now, if they're written out it's really easy because you just make sure that you arrange them in thirds on the staff if they're all lines, they're all spaces. So you have to take a note from the top and put it on the bottom or take a note from the bottom and put it on the top in order to arrange chords in thirds. Now, some chords can have more than three notes. It's the same principle. In fact, you could build chords all the way to the 13th: root, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, eleventh, thirteenth. Why only 13? Because if you play one more you're back to the original note because there are only seven possible notes within a scale, and you hit them all in the 13 chord. So if you had a chord like that, chances are it would be voiced without all those notes in between, and this is what makes it pretty complex.

Now, we're going to talk about in future videos how to approach expanded chords to figure out what they are, both on the staff as well as what you're playing, and there's a lot to that. But in the mean time, try to arrange the notes on the staff or in your hands in thirds, even if you have to take top notes and put them on the bottom or notes on the bottom and put them on the top to arrange them in thirds. That is one letter name apart, skipping a letter or all lines and all spaces, and you'll be able to find the root of your chord and you'll know what chord you're playing.

Very good, thanks so much for joining me. Robert Estrin here at virtualsheetmusic.com and livingpianos.com.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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