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Garnish Music Production School

Major, minor and extended chords on the keyboard and piano

Major, minor and extended chords on the keyboard and piano:

Music Theory Practice part 2 – Extended chords:

Just some more music theory rules. You will need to have some music theory knowledge or you could always book workshop 4 of my Logic 9 Music Production course. These notes are for recap purposes.

7 chords have the 7th note in the scale FLATTENED

9 chords have the 7th note in the scale FLATTENED and the 9th ADDED

11 chords have the 7th note in the scale FLATTENED, the 9th ADDED and the 11 ADDED

13 chords have the 7th note in the scale FLATTENED, the 9, 11 and 13 ADDED

Major 7 chords have the 7th note in the scale ADDED

Major 9 chords have the 7th note in the scale and 9t note in the scale h ADDED

Major 11 chords have the 7th, note in the scale 9th note in the scale and 11th note in the scale ADDED

Major 13 chords have the 7th, note in the scale 9th note in the scale,11th, note in the scale and 13th note in the scale ADDED

Suspended 2 = add the 2nd note in the scale and suspend (lose) the 3rd (mediant)

Suspended 4 = add the 4th note in the scale and suspend (lose) the 3rd (mediant)

Always count the root.

You can add notes to chords:

C add 11 you would add the 11th NOTE only

C add 13 you would add the 13th NOTE only.

Augmented is when you sharpen the 5th (dominant)

Diminished is when you flatten the 3rd (mediant) and the 5th (dominant)

Root is always the tonic. If it’s the first note it is called the major root. We will mainly be working like this in this course. Don’t worry about “tonic”, “mediant” and “dominant” now. The chances are that you will never need to know and most hit song writers haven’t heard of them either! I just mentioned them in case some of you were interested and wanted to look them up one day.

http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano/

A ‘+’ sign means sharpen and ‘-‘ means flatten the note.

Using the piano chord URL to see your major scales, work out the following chords:

Am, Gb7, E11, F sharp M-9, BbM9-5, CM maj7

To work out your major scales you can use the following rule starting on the root and working your way up in these steps:

Tone, Tone, Semitone, Tone, Tone, Tone, and semitone.

Now, work out the following chords WITHOUT using the piano chord URL.

Cm b9, Eb7, Fsharp M11, Db major7 add13, EbM7-13

Some of you may want to talk about voicing and inversions and we can later in the course. For now, here’s a brief summery below:

The terms “voicing” and “inversions” are often used interchangeably. However, the term inversions refers to the lowest note sounding in the chord (whether it’s the root or not). A chord with the root as the lowest note is said to be in root position; with the 3rd as the lowest note it’s called first inversion; with the 5th as the lowest note it’s called the second inversion; and with the 7th as the lowest note it’s called the third inversion.

To play in a different key the easy way on the keyboard, you have a transpose button. So, to play your chord you’ve written in C and you want it to be played in D, you press your transpose button UP twice to go UP two semitones. To play your chord sequence you’ve written in C and you want it to be played in A flat, you press you transpose DOWN button four times so you go DOWN four semitones and so on.

Chords in  the key of:

http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/chords/chordchart.htm

Relative minor is the minor chord which uses most of the same notes as the major scale. It has a lot in common with it’s relative. The same rule applies in reverse so C major is the relative major of the Am and Am is the relative minor of the C major. The reason it sounds ‘minor’ is because of the starting position (or root note) is different and is in a different place so in perspective it sounds ‘minor’

Look at the chords chorus of hotel California while I play it:

Chorus :

G                        D

Welcome to the Hotel California.

Em                   Bm7

Such a lovely place, such a lovely face

G                               D

Plenty of room at the Hotel California

Em                                      F#

Any time of year (any time of year) you can find it here

Listen to how the G and Em ‘relate’ to each other and the D and Bm7 ‘relate’ to each other too.

To work out a chord sequence by ear, I firstly figure out what the root note is for each chord and write it down. You can usually tell which note is the root note because the root note sounds the most like the whole chord! Then you have to figure out if it is a major or minor chord by listening and experimenting. Most of you should be able to do this with some practice and a bit of patience!

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