Chords, notes, and stuff.

[Triple_B]

So; this thread recently came to my attention; viewtopic.php?f=13&t=902

And it shocked me.

For whatever reason, I had gotten it into my head that chords and scales were for instrumental music only, or simply if you wanted to, and I had been throwing things randomly on the Piano Roll on FL Studio just because it sounded pretty, and then wondering why the entire song sounded so... Bad.

I was only using the white keys, because they didn't clash with each other. I didn't know why, they just didn't, and I accepted that.

Yeah. Bad!

I direct anyone else, more than likely individuals who are very new to music, like myself, to these places;

Chords!
http://www.list-of-chords.com/advanced_chords.php Advanced chords, simple website; easy transition onto a digital medium. 444 Chords
http://www.list-of-chords.com/ This one leads to a page with pictures of sheet music, which may be unnerving, but click the links for the chords themselves, and more piano comes up. These are much more basic chords than the other ones, which are probably better to learn with if you're using a MIDI keyboard for your composition. 72 chords.
http://music.shanemcdonald.org/chordmap/ Another gigantic list of chords, this one is 420 (SNRK-SNRK)
http://www.8notes.com/piano_chord_chart/ This one has MIDI file embeds, Oooh.

Notes!
http://library.thinkquest.org/15413/the ... ervals.htm This one talks about a lot of stuff; intervals are handy for writing music in sheet, but can also be useful for electronically composed music. Scales are amazing, and if I may quote from this page; "They are the backbone of music."

I actually didn't think I need much more than this page for Scales (Or intervals) This has been very handy.

Also, in MIDI Form, here's some Scales;

Major;
A major scale is a series of 8 consecutive notes that use the following pattern of half and whole steps.


Minor;
Minor Scales come in three forms: Natural, Melodic, and Harmonic.

Natural;
Natural Minor scales use the following pattern of half and whole steps.


<Not Related> My 13 year old sister is sitting in her room listening to Eminem's Relapse album and trying to rap along right now. It is the cutest thing ever. Except Fluttershy.

Melodic;
Melodic Minor scales ascend and use the following pattern of half and whole steps. When descending, they do so in the natural minor form.


Harmonic;
Harmonic Minor scales use the following pattern of half and whole steps.


Chromatic;
Chromatic Scales are made up entirely of half steps. When ascending, the scale uses sharps, when descending it uses flats.


Uh; yeah. Tired, headache, might add more to this later.

TL;DR: ITT Scales, Chords, Intervals, and miscellaneous music theory.

Go.

[Versilaryan]

So, in a given scale, you can make triads. Triads are technically just three notes, but in this context, they are a note, a third above the root, and a fifth above the root. We call these chords.

For example, in C major, the chords are:
C E G, D F A, E G B, F A C, G B D, A C E, B D F, C E G
Or, C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, B diminished, and back to C major.

Every major scale is made up of these chords. Major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished (don't worry about that one), and back to major. In traditional music theory, we label these with roman numerals. Capital letters mean major, lowercase letters mean minor. So, they go:
I ii iii IV V vi vii(dim) I

Play these chords on a piano and you'll see what I'm talking about. Going up the scale like that (only the white keys, FYI), you'll notice this pattern of major and minor chords. This is the foundation of all Western music. Almost everything you hear is made up of these chords. (Unless Dr. Dissonance shows it to you. Then it probably isn't.) What composers and songwriters do is they string these different chords together in a certain order called a chord progression.

So if you hear "chord progression", "harmonic progression", "changes", or any variant thereof, it's just talking about what chords the songwriter strung together in the music.

In traditional theory, these chords are divided into three groups: Tonic (I), Subdominant (ii, IV, vi), and Dominant (V, vii(dim)). We don't really use iii at all -- it usually doesn't sound too good. Feel free to use it if it sounds cool, though. Anyways, what happens is that most music goes tonic - subdominant - dominant in terms of chord structure. So, most music starts with I, uses any combination of ii, IV, and vi, goes to V, and then resolves back at I.

Take, for example, "Good Riddance" by Green Day. If you listen to the guitar part, you'll hear three distinct chords at the end. They are G major, C major, D major.
Looking at the G major scale really quickly (G A B C D E F# G), you can see that G major is I, C major is IV, and D major is V. So, the chord progression in Good Riddance is I-IV-V. Later in the song, he uses E minor, D major, C major, G major. So, that part of the chord progression is iv-V-IV-I. It doesn't follow our tonic-subdominant-dominant, does it?

Well, right after that, he plays E minor, G major, E minor, G major, E minor, D major, G major. So, he repeats iv-I for a bit before playing iv-V and then resolving at I. There we go.

What about minor, then? Let's look at a minor scale. Using only the white keys, that's A B C D E F G A, or
A C E, B D F, C E G, D F A, E G B, F A C, G B D
Or A minor, B diminished, C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, or
i ii(dim) III iv v VI VII

But, what if we use a melodic minor scale? That lets us use F# and G# as well as just F and G. That adds:
D F# A, E G# B, G# B D
or D major, E major, G# diminished
or IV, V, and vii(dim), just like a major scale.
(Technically, that also adds a plethora of other chords, like F# diminished and B minor, but those aren't used as much. Again, if it sounds cool, feel free to use them.)

Apply the same rules as major, but with the minor chords. Tonic is just i. Subdominant is ii(dim), iv, IV, v, VI, VII. Dominant is still V and vii(dim).

What a lot of pop songwriters end up doing is they don't end with a dominant chord. So they do something like I V vi IV, which is really easy to copypasta and just repeat the entire song without it sounding too hackneyed. Technically, this is a harmonic regression, but we just call it a chord progression all the same.

Hopefully that cleared up chord progressions without too much of it going over your head! If you need anything clarified, just ask. If I have time, I can make a video demonstrating all of this.

---

You don't really need to know this too much, because people hardly ever use the vii(dim) chord outside of classical music and bebop-era jazz, but a diminished chord consists of a root, a minor third above the root, and a tritone above the root. It's just a minor chord where the fifth is moved down a half step. Sounds evil, doesn't it?

[Dr_Dissonance]

I'm going to post some weird chords:

Mystic/Prometheus Chord/Scale!

(Stolen from Wikipedia)

(Made myself)

Weirdness! This chord is based on nothing but 4ths. Quartal harmony is when you base your entire harmony on 4ths (normally, you base it on 3rds and 5ths) and this is one of the more extreme quartal chords.

Petrushka Chord/Scale!



Figure this one out! Any ideas?

The answer is it's two chords a tritone apart stuck together! In this case, C Major and F# Major.

Tone Clusters!


There's a nice tonal one for you. Basically, it's very dense, but isn't that dissonant, due to all the notes still fitting within a key.


This one is a bit more dissonant, being a collapsed 13th chord (so if a typical chord is 1, 3, 5, a 13th chord is 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13)


And this is just awesome!

And then we get things like these:


I understand how to make these chords, but I'm still researching on how to use them effectively!



WOAH, quarter and sixth tones! SCARY!!!

And there's my post of weirdness for the week!