The "Chord" what exactly is it?

[00:00:02]All right, welcome to the video. Today we're going to talk about the chord.

[00:00:07]And by that, I mean the elements that make up a chord, the all the different options that you have with a single chord, and that will help us to understand building a chord progression much better in the future.

[00:00:22]So, understanding the basic elements will lead into you um creating better chord progressions.

[00:00:29]So, let's use Rapid Composer to demonstrate that with a piano instrument. And I've got certain helpers turned on in the uh settings here. So, we've got the color notes by render, and we've got show the rendered note labels. So, let's demonstrate that.

[00:00:51]And we're in the note editor, so I can use my uh little pencil tool here to draw in our first note on C3, the middle of the keyboard. So, I draw that in.

[00:01:04]We hear our first tone, and I'll turn down the velocity a little bit.

[00:01:10]And it's a piano.

[00:01:13]And we get what we expect. But, you may be asking, "What does this R mean?" And the C3 you probably understand, but the R means that this first tone is a note that is considered to be the root of the C major possible chord that we're going to build. So, it's the root note of our C major, now also known as a note. I think that's pretty obvious. And then if we go to G3 above it, we can uh draw in the fifth.

[00:01:44]And now we get the R, the root, and the fifth above it.

[00:01:51]So, that's what the five means. And the G is because it's the G note, and the three, of course, is it's the third octave in our keyboard. So, that's what all this means.

[00:02:02]This is also considered to be now what's called a parallel fifth or a dyad. If we play it and I just make sure that it's got a lower velocity to match.

[00:02:18]So, now what we've done is we had one flavor, we've added another harmonic flavor above it or a harmony note, and we do get a different more complex result.

[00:02:33]And it's the harmony between these two notes, the fifth above, that give us that parallel fifth or that dyad. Now, if we add in the third note, it's the third above it. So, the third and the fifth create the triad now. And if I just adjust the velocity, so it makes sense from that point of view, and we play it, we get a even more interesting and complex sound as we build up these different flavors, so to speak, of harmonies.

[00:03:08]So, now it's the triad.

[00:03:10]It's the uh third interval above the root and the fifth interval above the root give us the the C major chord. And that's basically um how you start building chords. Next, we're going to talk about all the different options now available with that simple C chord.

[00:03:33]So, now we have what's known also as a closed chord, meaning there's no possible chord notes that could be between these different intervals here.

[00:03:44]So, it's closed up as tight as it can be. And that's fine for your upper register uh uh instruments, generally.

[00:03:52]Um but if we go to phrase uh edit mode and we just bring it down from a C3, so we're moving it down on the keyboard.

[00:04:03]Let's go all the way down to C1.

[00:04:07]So now we have this closed chord and you're going to hear these notes played and it's it's going to sound quite different. It's going to be lower notes, but let's listen.

[00:04:19]And we get a result that isn't very nice because as you go to the lower registers in most instruments, almost every instrument, I think.

[00:04:29]Um the notes when they're close together like this, it's going to sound muddy and just it's not going to be pleasing to your ear.

[00:04:37]So how can we still have a C major chord um playing a lower register instrument and still have it sound good? Well, that's when you would want to open up your chord. So let's go back to uh note edit mode.

[00:04:53]>> [snorts] >> We're at C1 in the register because now it's gone from the G3 and the E3 and C3 to the G1.

[00:05:02]So we know we're lower down on the register and uh to remedy that, one thing you could do is to open up this chord. So um immediately we could grab the third or the second position note and we could move it up.

[00:05:19]And you know, how open you want it to be, it's up to you.

[00:05:24]But in this lower register, you might end up inverting some of these notes to something like this. Now let's listen.

[00:05:32]Now we're beginning to hear each note as a nice harmony. It's gone from a muddy a muddiness that just wasn't pleasing to a more pleasing low note. So let's play it again.

[00:05:46]So now what we've done, we still have a C major chord. We've got the C, the G, and the E, but we've inverted the E up to first position, and we've got notes possible chord notes in between, but we don't want to use them because we want this open. So now the again the lower register instrument can be heard in three notes, but cleanly and clearer.

[00:06:13]All right?

[00:06:14]So that's when you would want to have an open chord opposed to a closed chord.

[00:06:22]So now we're back to where we started with a closed triad up at C3 on the register.

[00:06:29]I've made three copies, so I can demonstrate the inversions options for a chord.

[00:06:37]So we've opened and closed the chord.

[00:06:39]Now we're going to invert the notes of the chord up and down in position to give us different flavors of this same chord. So that's great because it just gives us more variety of the same thing, so to speak. So this is our original closed triad. Now we're going to take this root note, the C3. I'm going to invert it up by dragging it up above into the first position from the third position to the first position.

[00:07:09]And when we move that root note up to the first position, that's called first inversion of that chord.

[00:07:17]If I take the root note here and want that to be in the middle position by dragging the G3 say down, now the root note is in the second position or also known as the second inversion.

[00:07:34]So now we have three different flavors of the same chord, and let's take a listen.

[00:07:41]Original, first inversion, second inversion.

[00:07:46]So, that gives your chord three different varieties just by using inversions of the notes.

[00:07:56]Sometimes people refer to chords, they'll say drop the one, drop the two, or drop the one and three. And so, what does that mean?

[00:08:05]Well, it's uh basically when you're inverting notes, but downwards. So, if we have our original here, and I wanted our second copy here to be, say, drop one, you would take the first position and drop it one down, which essentially is inverting it downwards.

[00:08:24]If uh it was a drop two, you would have the first position, which we just moved, and the second position dropped down.

[00:08:32]And if you, say, said drop three, you're essentially moving your chord down by one octave.

[00:08:39]So, that's what's meant by a drop one, two. And depending on how many uh notes are making up your chord, um you could have uh drop the first and the third, the second and the fourth.

[00:08:53]So, you know, when you hear that term, they're taking different chord position notes and dropping them down.

[00:09:01]Kind of inverting them downwards, so to speak.

[00:09:06]So, obviously, you can have more than three notes to make up a chord. You could take that triad and expand upon it by adding more harmonic notes.

[00:09:16]In the case of a C7, we're adding the seventh above the root note, and that gives us a more complex and rich chord, more interesting.

[00:09:26]And if we add the C major seven, you're adding another tone, but in a different position, and that gives us another type of C uh seven, a major seven. And if you start to stack these extra chord notes, which Rapid Composer assigns a different color to, so you know you have your triads, but when you add a 7th interval, or in 7th and a 9th, you they each receive their own colors, so you can just see visually what's going on.

[00:09:58]But let's listen to what that sounds like when we start to add extra interval notes to our already interesting triad.

[00:10:16]So we're getting by the end here, we're getting more into that jazz tone type of idea.

[00:10:22]So thankfully, a chord can be more than two notes, it can be more than three notes, it can be a bunch of notes, and they can be inverted and spread over the keyboard.

[00:10:33]And next we're going to look at some of the other types of chords that you can have. Obviously, you can have suspended chord, C suspend, or sus, a C diminished, C augmented, you can have a C minor, and all these chords can be spread across the registers to enhance whatever instrument that is using them.

[00:10:58]>> [snorts] >> So we really get a huge variety of tones from one simple chord idea.

[00:11:05]If we take the triad and simply move some of these notes by a half step up and down, we get a new variety of possibilities for that C.

[00:11:18]Now, we're not going to be inverting them, or moving them up and down in register, or adding notes, we're going to take these notes and just move some of them up and down.

[00:11:29]So we have C major, to get a C minor, we move the middle note down 1/2 step. And now we get the C minor.

[00:11:39]If we take that middle note and move it up 1/2 step, we get now the root to the fourth to the fifth and we get what's known as a C sus4.

[00:11:50]You can also have a C sus2 if we move it in the other direction.

[00:11:55]If we take the C and we augment the top position one um 1/2 step upwards, we get a C augmented. And if we want a C diminished, we take the top position and the middle position and move them both down by 1/2 step and we get a C diminished. Now let's listen to the variety of tones and sound we get from making those changes.

[00:12:24]C major, [music] minor, sus4, augmented, [music] and diminished. So, they're all uh using the C but a huge variety of interesting combinations just gives you new flavors to work with.

[00:12:43]We can also play these chords in different ways. We can have a sustained chord, which we know as the triad and we just play it.

[00:12:53]And all three notes sustain and play at the same time. You can also have what's called a rhythmic chord where the all three notes play, but timing is now brought into the picture, which gives us a more rhythmic feel.

[00:13:11]But it's still using all the notes of the triad.

[00:13:14]And we can have that triad that the notes or the different uh harmonic elements are brought in at different times. So, and that gives us a again another different flavor on how to play that chord. And we can also have the chord evolve into a more interesting and complex chord as it plays.

[00:13:40]So, not only do we have the different shapes of chords and varieties and versions and the way you can play it in different registers and stack the notes, but of course you can add a rhythm and timing features to these tones.

[00:13:58]Now we've got the C major and we have a C/G. What does that mean?

[00:14:05]Well, when you have a slash chord, it's simply adding a bass note to your chord and that bass note doesn't have to be in the G2 register, it could be G1.

[00:14:14]But it's simply adding a bass note. So, let's just play the regular chord.

[00:14:21]And then the slash G, so you're adding a lower G as a bass note.

[00:14:27]So, that just adds a little variety again by including another lower tone.

[00:14:33]So, why do we learn all these different varieties of our basic chord?

[00:14:39]It gives us so many options when you're creating a chord progression. For instance, you could have the C major triad with the G and F and an E minor as your first progression. And if you wanted to have a different variety of that progression for your chorus or verse, you have so much to pull from simply by using the same chords, but you could have a different variety of those chords.

[00:15:06]So, I hope this helps you to understand the basic chord and that next time we look at creating a progression, you'll see all the different options available for these progressions. Have a great day and we'll see you on the next video.