In aural skills class, we are practicing identifying seventh chords. This is second nature for guitarists and pianists who play anything jazz-related, but I appreciate that it’s harder for singers and players of monophonic instruments. Here’s my reference guide to the four (non-diminished or -augmented) seventh chords.
Tag Archives: chords
The three diminished chords: blues, jazz and classical
Diminished seventh chords are strange creatures: a cliche for Dracula’s castle, but also a cornerstone of the blues. They are also difficult to understand. The good news is that in any given key, there are only three possible diminished seventh chords: the one whose root is the tonic of the key, the one whose root …
Continue reading “The three diminished chords: blues, jazz and classical”
Music Theory Songs
Ashanti Mills from my Patreon had a brilliant idea. He said, hey, you know how you combined interviews with Toni Blackman with hip-hop songs to explain hip-hop pedagogy? You should do that with music theory: have songs that explain their musical content to you. This is one of those ideas that seems obvious as soon …
Chords and modal interchange
One of the most powerful music theory concepts you can learn is how to make chords from scales. If you learn a few scales, then you get a whole bunch of chords for free. The specifics of all the chord names can be complicated and daunting. But the concept of constructing them is very simple. …
Circular chord charts
Being home with my kids all day is not very conducive to dissertation writing, but my fragmented attention is still up to the task of making infographics. I’ve been thinking about ways of visually representing grooves. Since circles work so well for rhythms, maybe they can work for harmonies too. Here’s a circular view of …
Key centers in the Grateful Dead’s China>Rider
My emotions about the Grateful Dead have gone from intense obsession as a teenager, to embarrassment about my former intense obsession in my 20s, to nostalgic re-embracing of my fandom in my 30s. In my 40s, I’ve come to feel about the Dead the way I feel about my extended family: we’ve had our ups …
Continue reading “Key centers in the Grateful Dead’s China>Rider”
Make your chord progressions less boring using secondary dominants
Diatonic harmony is boring. Random dissonance is boring too. How do you make your music less predictable, but in a logical-sounding way? Especially if you want your harmony to sound “jazzy”? One reliable technique is to use secondary dominants. The idea is to treat each chord in a key as the temporary center of its …
Continue reading “Make your chord progressions less boring using secondary dominants”
The Chord Dictionary
I made a big spreadsheet with all the chords in it. It’s not all the possible chords, but it’s the ones you most commonly encounter in Western classical, jazz, rock and pop. I also made some videos explaining how chords work, with handy aQWERTYon visualization. Enjoy!
Announcing the Theory aQWERTYon
A few years ago, the NYU Music Experience Design Lab launched a web application called the aQWERTYon. The name is short for “QWERTY accordion.” The idea is to make it as easy to play music on the computer keyboard as it is with the chord buttons on an accordion. The aQWERTYon maps scales to the …
Chord pizzas
The Groove Pizza uses geometry to help visualize rhythms. The MusEDLab is planning to create a similar tool for visualizing music theory by merging the aQWERTYon with the Scale Wheel. When you put the twelve pitch classes in a circle, you can connect the dots between different notes in a chord or scale to form shapes. My …