Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. What is a chord? That’s the question for today. Is a chord just any notes played together at the same time? Well, yes and no. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s have a little primer.
Chords are typically built in intervals of 3rds.
Simply put, chords are built upon every other note of a scale. For example, a C major scale has all the white keys from C to C! If you play every other note of the scale, playing C, skip D, play E, skip F and play G, you have a C major chord, C – E – G! (It consists of a root, a 3rd, and a 5th.) You can keep going adding B, D, F and A. to form a 13 chord (adding the 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th). Once you get to A, if you went up one more 3rd, you get back to C, your original note. So, that’s the total number of notes you can have in a chord. Now, here’s the interesting thing. There are 7 different notes in that chord C – E – G – B – D – F and A. And how many different white keys are there? Also 7. When you play a 13 chord, you’re playing all the notes of a scale! But if you just play all the white keys at the same time, it doesn’t sound like a chord? It sounds more like a cluster of notes. You may wonder why this is. Well, this has to do with voicing.
Voicing is everything in chords.
Voicing is how the notes are arranged. It was Rameau in the 1700s who theorized that by putting the bottom note of a chord on top, it’s just an inversion of the same chord. So even though it has a 4th in that arrangement, it’s still a chord. It’s just an inversion of a chord. Now, when you get to 7th chords, it gets more complicated. When you get to 9th, 11th, and 13th chords, you’re generally not going to play all the notes.
How would you voice a 13 chord?
If you voiced it with 4 notes, you would have to have the root and the 13, because otherwise it’s not a 13 chord. The important notes are the 7th and the 3rd. For nice voicing, you want to have the notes closer together on top and more distance between the bass note and the rest of them. So you can take the 3rd and put it up an octave. Now you have a nice voicing of a 13 chord. C – B – E – A. (If it was a more typical dominant 13 chord, the B would be B-flat.)
There are some exceptions to the idea of 3rds being used in chords.
First of all, 3rds can be augmented or diminished. (They can be raised or lowered.) So, for example, in a dominant chord, you could have a lowered 5th. That’s still a chord, even though you have a diminished 3rd instead of a minor 3rd. You could have other types of chords built on different intervals, like quartal chords. Quartal chords are built on fourths! So there are other possibilities. But generally, chords are built on intervals of 3rds, and voicing is what makes them work. Otherwise you would have tonal chaos! We should be thankful that composers craft such beautiful music, utilizing chords primarily arranged in 3rds so creatively. I hope this is interesting for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
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6 thoughts on “What is a Chord?”
Robert:
Can you argue that two notes are a chord?
My piano teacher says YES. I say No!
Two notes (a third apart) are harmony.
Any comments?
Thanks!! gib rogers
Technically, chords usually contain 3 or more notes. But context is everything!
Very good to play and say is this a chord or not.
What does the organ player feel about chords and different voicing in parison with the piano player?
Organ players have the benefit of pedals to add to the voicing. However, they don’t have a sustain pedal. So piano can actually play more notes than organ!
actually not true as an organist has the advantage of different stops to add to the single note. Play middle C with an 8 ft. flute, 4 ft. flute and 2′ flute you have one key playing 3 octaves of C and then couple a 16 ft. pedal stop to the manual and you add the octave below (up to 4) then add a mixture which adds different intervals to the primary note. etc. Kind of a mixed bag (no pun intended) But using the sustain pedal on the piano you could play quite a lot of notes by doing a few arpeggios … P.S. I am a vocalist/pianist/music history major who studied organ briefly and has had a life long love of piano and organ music.
These are actually not chords, but overtones. Piano also has overtones. But they are not adjustable like they are on the organ!