Music Video Lesson: What is a Chord?

Is that chord? Well, yes and no.

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com. The question today is, what is chord? Is this a chord? Well, yes and no. What do I mean by that? Well, let's have a little primer. What are chords? Chords are typically built in the intervals of thirds. What are thirds? Thirds, simply put, are every other note of a scale. If you had a scale which was built on seconds, for example, a C major scale, and you played every other note, there you have a chord and it can keep going. Now, once you get here, if you went up one more third, you're back to your original note. That's the total number of notes you can have an a chord.

Now, here's the interesting thing. Think about the fact of how many notes there are when you play all those thirds. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and they're all different notes. How many different white keys are there? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. When you play a 13 chord, why is that a 13 chord? Root, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, eleventh, 13. When you play a 13 chord, you're playing all the notes of a scale. That's why I said, in the beginning, is that chord? Well, yes and no.

Why doesn't it sound like a chord? It sounds more like a cluster. Well, this has to do with voicing. Voicing is everything in chords, how the notes are arranged. It was Rameau in the 1700s, I believe, or might have been even earlier, when he theorized that this is the same chord as this. By putting the bottom note on top, it's just an inversion of the same chord, as is this. Even though this has a fourth, one, two, three, four, and a third on top, that's still a chord. It's just an inversion of a chord.

Now, when you get to seventh chords, it gets more complicated. Now, when you get to ninth chords, eleventh chords, these expanded chords, obviously, you're not going to play all these notes. There's a G13 chord. How would you voice a chord like this to sound like something. Obviously, not like that as we've discovered. Well, you have to have the root and you have to have the 13 because, otherwise, it's not a 13 chord. The important color tones in a dominant, that is the five, one, two, three, four, five, building the five 13 chord, the important notes are the seventh and the third.

For nice voicing. To have the notes closer together on top and more distance between the base note and the rest of them, you take the third and put it up, and now you have a nice voicing of a 13 chord. Yes, that's a chord, but not a very useful voicing of a chord. There are some exceptions to the idea of thirds being used in chords. First of all, the thirds can be augmented or diminished. They can be raised or lowered. A dominant chord, you could have a lowered fifth, and that is still a chord, even though this is a diminished third here instead of a minor third.

You could have other types of chords built on different intervals like quartal chords. Quatral chords are built on fourths. And so, there are other possibilities but, generally, chords are built at intervals of thirds and voicing is what makes them work. Otherwise, you'd have just total chaos. Be thankful the composers crafts it's beautiful music utilizing chords arranged in thirds primarily.

I hope this is interesting for you. Any questions, you can address them to me, Robert, here at LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. Thanks again for joining me.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/what-is-a-chord-2/

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