OT-Definition of a chord

[Raymond62]

See Wikipedia. But why must it have three notes? Why not two or one? With today's musical practice anything should be possible.

Raymond

[FLWrd]

It's a definition question. Two notes is an interval in music theory. One note is just one note. Combinations of three notes, or two intervals, however, have different qualities and these qualities stay the same when you put the notes in different order. And then they named that phenomenon a chord. Extra notes (6, 7, 9, 11, or 13) don't change the basic qualities of the chord (or so they say, but to argue that you've got to know more about voice leading than I do), so that's why a chord has three notes, even though you might play four or five...

The root note plus the 5th (so just two notes) are sometimes referred to as an open chord, or power chord, but mainly by guitarists to hide the fact that they cannot play anything more complex.

[BenNichols]

The root note plus the 5th (so just two notes) are sometimes referred to as an open chord, or power chord, but mainly by guitarists to hide the fact that they cannot play anything more complex.

lol - very funny, but not entirely true. My guitarist also knows Bm...finally.

[SeanHannifin]

Mostly because a Wikipedia article stating "a chord is whatever you want it to be" wouldn't be very helpful, especially to people wanting to analyze much of the Western music of the past and present in terms of chord progressions. One or two notes are too ambiguous for such analysis.

Similarly you could question almost any music theory definition. Why only 11 notes in an octave? Why 5 black keys on a piano? Why only 7 notes in this scale?

There might be some psychological reasons for some of these properties emerging, but they're just properties that emerged from musicians' decisions over hundreds of years of writing and sharing music. If you want to "redefine" it, nothing bad will happen. (Though probably most of the world will not necessarily want to change their definitions too...)

[keithjfuller]

i like the definition of 3 or more notes, but i like the definition that 2 or more 3rd intervals makes a chord even better. one note by itself obviously can't evoke the kind of feeling a chord can. even with two notes its left a little ambiguous.

if you have a A-C it feels minor i guess, but put an F in the bass and all of a sudden it will feel major with just about any other notes you add.

i know there are suspended chords that might have 1-4-5, but if played alone they really aren't chords because they don't have that major or minor feel. i think they become chords withing the surrounding progression. if you're in D and you play an Gsus chord it just feels major because your brain knows the B is on its way, but in D minor your brain would probably hear the Bb instead.

two intervals of a 3rd seems to be the magic of a chord in my book.

[jesshmusic]

A chord doesn't have to be built on thirds. It can be built on 2nds and 4ths as well... (5ths, 6ths, and 7ths being inversions of 4ths, 3rds, and 2nds respectively).

[qccowboy]

As has already been stated, it is NOT a question of "feeling".
It is purely a music theory question.

one note = a note

two notes = an interval

three (or more) notes = a chord

It has nothing to do with the "sound", or whether it implies, or is, or is not, major or minor.

A chord, additionally, does NOT need to be composed of superimposed 3rds. A chord can be composed of 4ths, 5ths, or other intervals.

And even in a major or minor triad, any inversion of the the chord other than the root position means that there is no longer a superimposition of 3rds, but a combination of 3rds, 4ths, or 6ths.

Additionally, a more widely spaced chord can contain absolutely no 3rds yet still be a "major" chord.

[marce]

Mostly because a Wikipedia article stating "a chord is whatever you want it to be" wouldn't be very helpful, ...

Hi Sean. Where Wikipedia says that? I only can found a traditional definition of it:


In music and music theory a chord is a set of three or more different notes from a specific key that sound simultaneously

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_%28music%29

[Raymond62]

OK, a new thesis. What is a note? A note is never alone, it has several harmonics (they go up to 8f as I remember well, where f = the fundamental). So one note maybe one note, but it sounds like a chord.

Raymond

[FLWrd]

The harmonics of a note have very different properties. For one, they are not necessary. Harmonics are multiples of the base frequency of the note. E.g., a piano that plays a "standard tuning" A (440Hz) will have harmonics at 880Hz, 1320Hz, 1760Hz, etc., all the up to (and beyond) 20kHz. It will however also have other frequencies, which are inharmonic to the original note (e.g. at 890Hz or 1250Hz). Normal musical instruments produce these, but at a much lower amplitude than the harmonic frequencies. A traditional clock tower bell, however, has dominant inharmonic frequencies, which makes it sound in minor all by itself.

The ratio of the harmonics (and "inharmonics") determine the character of the sound. A pure sine wave has no harmonics, yet produces a note, a saw tooth only has odd harmonics, etc. If you rustle a piece of paper, it will produce all frequencies in the spectrum, but not a nice sequence of harmonics, and that makes that our ears cannot find a tone, and so it's unsuitable as a musical instrument.

Note that the topic is slightly more complex than this (e.g. the amplitudes change over time, and phase also plays are role).

[SeanHannifin]

Hi Sean. Where Wikipedia says that?

Yes, I was saying Wikipedia does not say that, because that would be unhelpful to most people seeking to study traditional music theory. :D

[sonata5920]

Gday Theo,

Well said.

The general term is “Overtone” which covers harmonics and any frequency that is not an exact simple multiple of a fundamental.

Herbert

[sonata5920]

Sean – You said:

“There might be some psychological reasons for some of these properties emerging, but they're just properties that emerged from musicians' decisions over hundreds of years of writing and sharing music.”

No, it has nothing to do with psychology but has to do with physiology and is firmly based in physics. Harmonies are simply based on harmonics by transposing harmonics down by one ore several octaves. Even simple voicing in orchestration is based on harmonics.

Herbert

[upsider]

Theres a psychological/philosophical element to the evolution of music theory also - in addition to the straight physics interpretation.

Remember the tritone was called 'diabolus in musica'? The maths reflects this - the ratio of the augmented fourth always gives an irrational number - and its interesting that the aesthetic interpretation of this interval in medieval times, managed to worked in some Christian theology. Of course its still used by various bad boys in rock to show they've made a special deal with Beezelbub.:n: )(~. Well, falling from the fifth, anyway.

The reverse, rising from the augmented to the fifth, is code for "Paradise". (Eg: 'South Pacific'?). Deliver me from Satan, Hallelujah!!! Its all part of a long term cultural overlay that goes beyond the fact of the sound waves.

Well, I'm interested, anyway!

[marce]

Yes, I was saying Wikipedia does not say that, because that would be unhelpful to most people seeking to study traditional music theory. :D

Oh! Sorry the confussion.

[Raymond62]

This thread is going complicated, but interesting!!!
Go on, please. Overtones or harmonics, I don't care. But your answers prove that it is rather complicated, just one note. How about the overtones with three notes? Do we have then: for every note/tone separate overtones?
Or, is phasing playing a role here? Some overtones rule out others?

Raymond - just teasing you

[Pingu]

Sean – You said:

“There might be some psychological reasons for some of these properties emerging, but they're just properties that emerged from musicians' decisions over hundreds of years of writing and sharing music.”

No, it has nothing to do with psychology but has to do with physiology and is firmly based in physics. Harmonies are simply based on harmonics by transposing harmonics down by one ore several octaves. Even simple voicing in orchestration is based on harmonics.

Herbert

Herbert, I'm not sure you understood Sean's post. He wasn't talking about why music has evolved the way it has (and I'm not about to have that argument with you again) but why our definitions have arisen as they have. For instance why do we start calling a sonority a chord when it has three notes - why didn't we choose 2 or 4?

I realise that the question of why there are 11 semitones in an octave is intrinsically different. Although even then you'd have to say that psychology is the ultimate root, since we could have invented any number of other systems. In the west our psychology/philosophy led us to hope that the tone itself contained mathematics that could be replicated at higher levels, and that the organisation of the universe reflected the same. In other cultures different value systems have been applied, and the harmonic series has been almost entirely ignored. So you might say it was the mindset of Pythagoras et al that determined we would have 11 semitones in the octave.

[Pingu]

This thread is going complicated, but interesting!!!
Go on, please. Overtones or harmonics, I don't care. But your answers prove that it is rather complicated, just one note. How about the overtones with three notes? Do we have then: for every note/tone separate overtones?
Or, is phasing playing a role here? Some overtones rule out others?

Raymond - just teasing you

That's a really complicated question Raymond - and I realise you were just teasing, but I find the area fascinating. There's a great book by Richard Parncutt, that tries to model how we perceive chords. It suggests that we combine all the partials from the several constituent tones, then build perceptions of tones depending on how many 'complete' harmonic series can be found in the whole, and their relative strength. So it should be possible to build a chord with just the right harmonics, and hear a new note in there that wasn't actually played on any instrument.

On the other hand, as you suggest with the mention of phase issues, there are also lots of other things at work. Parncutt's model assumes that each chord is an isolated sonority, whereas this is rarely the case. At this point you should read Albert Bregman's 'Auditory Scene Analysis' which is all about the many factors that cause us to group sounds, whether into horizontal groups or vertical. The basic conclusion of the book seems to be that when a sound contributes to one grouping, its ability to be part of others is massively reduced. For instance, if you play a complex tone, and alternate it with a sine tone that has a very close frequency to one of its harmonics, the sine tone will 'capture' the harmonic into a melodic stream. More importantly some very clever experiments demonstrated that the harmonic ceases contributing to the complex tone which it was formerly part of.

In real terms this means that, even when we hear a chord with masses of overtones in it, various 'horizontal' forces probably cause all those harmonics to remain in separate series. For instance, each instrument will modulate its dynamics slightly differently, and our ear will pick up that several harmonics within the chord all modulate similarly, and assign those to one sound. Harmonics arriving from a similar location are also likely to cohere. Then you need to factor in our amazing ability to deliberately focus on a particular sound, and remove it from the aggregate simply by force of will.

The whole area is still only poorly understood, but can be really exciting.

[Fabio]

In the Italian Musical Theory, that has a root in the history of harmony, (being it a continous evolution of renaissance books, up to modern jazz theory) the solution to the question is very easy:

2 notes are making harmony, but are not defining a "chord", because in our language a "chord" has a functional meaning.

A bicord is ambiguous, then it's not enough to be functionally relevant in the historical harmony (e.g. the bicord E-C is it missing an A to make Amin or is missing a G to make a Cmaj etc. etc. according how many notes your tonal system is targeting)

Of cours you can create your own modern system, based on whatever number of notes, including a bicord, but if you call it "chord" you should force the historical meaning of the word to a misleading generic value of "simultaneous sounds".

You know that Wilki try to be "disambiguous"...:p

My 2 cents.

[sonata5920]

Gday Upsider,

You are quite right. My comment in relation to Sean’s post was in relation to:

”Similarly you could question almost any music theory definition. Why only 11 notes in an octave? Why 5 black keys on a piano? Why only 7 notes in this scale?”

The basis for this is in physics.

Herbert

[sonata5920]

Gday Pingu,

You said:

“Herbert, I'm not sure you understood Sean's post.”

My dear David, I will leave you in your uncertainty.


Herbert

[Ranger]

for me two note makes harmony three makes a cord one note suggest a key

[SeanHannifin]

I was not talking about the physical properties about sound. I was talking about why we choose to define and organize musical properties in the ways we do. These are choices collectively made by us humans. We could call a "C major chord" a "L3 spread chrim" if we had a different naming system. We could have no black keys on our pianos. We could have 9 notes in an octave, or 2 notes in a chord. How we perceive sound is psychological (and perceiving music is purely psychological), so it definitely has an effect.

So... the reason a "chord" has three or more "notes" is simply because that's the way the humans that came before us chose to define it.

You could say that the psychological aspect is affected by the human physiology of the nervous system, the physical properties of sound and such, but that stuff doesn't change. How we define and organize elements of music, on the other hand, does.

[Pingu]

Gday Pingu,

You said:

“Herbert, I'm not sure you understood Sean's post.”

My dear David, I will leave you in your uncertainty.


Herbert

Thankyou, but I was being polite. You didn't understand Sean's post and responded to what you assumed he was saying.

[sonata5920]

Gday Sean,

You said:



“I was not talking about the physical properties about sound.”

Yes, I know, neither was I.

You said:

“We could have 9 notes in an octave”

Do you mean an “octave” or do you mean a “nontave”? Most interesting. Perhaps we should have a competition for devising new systems of music.

We are talking here about chords. The organisation of scales and basic chords in European music is not an invention but a discovery, already recognised in ancient Greece.

Herbert

[FLWrd]

Let's not confound issues here. An octave is, by definition, composed of 8 thingies (apparently from Latin "octava dies", eighth day). However, an octave also means nowadays: a specific interval or ratio. So this interval could be divided into nine parts, giving nine notes in an "octave".

[sonata5920]

http://web.telia.com/~u57011259/eng7.htm (http://web.telia.com/~u57011259/eng7.htm)

Herbert

[SeanHannifin]

“We could have 9 notes in an octave”

Do you mean an “octave” or do you mean a “nontave”? Most interesting. Perhaps we should have a competition for devising new systems of music.

I mean the word "octave" but I don't mean what it traditionally means ... I'm saying it can mean what we want it to mean. And we can call it what we want to call it.


We are talking here about chords. The organisation of scales and basic chords in European music is not an invention but a discovery, already recognised in ancient Greece.

Aha, perhaps this is what it really comes down to. I agree there is a discovery aspect to it, both with the physical properties of sound, and with the pscyhology of what sounds we hear as pleasing and musical. But I also think collective decisions of us humans plays a role. It's hard to say exactly what that role is without studying a bunch of non-western music theory, which I'm not really that interested in, but even then there are a bunch of ways we could've organized our music theory differently, even within our already established discoveries what pleases the ear. I'm not sure I'd say that the "organization" is what was really discovered, put rather "what sound patterns please the ear and sound musical?" Then it was up to human decisions to organize it, name it, systemize it, etc.

I think the "invention vs. discovery" debate could almost be a philosophical or semantic one... couldn't almost any invention be seen as a discovery? But even so, that doesn't mean that human choice doesn't play a role...

EDIT: Come to think of it, I'm not sure how organization can ever be a discovery; organization itself is something our brains project onto the world.

[FLWrd]

I've been doing psycholinguistics and cognitive neuro-science for 20+ years, and I picked up some psychoacoustics along the way, and the story about the organization of some brain part doesn't convince me. The visual system is (according to similar research) organized in columns that recognize straight lines. However, we have no problem recognizing curves. It is only that nobody found a relation between the cellular structure of V1 (or any other part of the visual system) and curved lines. Nobody knows how we recognize people, yet we do so with the greatest ease.

Secondly, we use harmonical relations to identify a sound as a whole instead of separate partials (or overtones). We also use these relations to infer frequencies missing from the actual perception. E.g., you can suggest a bass of 50Hz without really using such a low frequency by playing its harmonic overtones (100, 150, 200, etc.). We also need these relations to do spatial location. The pathways from the ear to the brain compute phase differences between the left and right ear, and where harmonic series match, a sound is perceived, and that determines our perception of the location of the sound.

But even if there is a brain structure that corresponds to octaves, that does not mean we use it and only it to perceive octave relations. For all we know, these structures may only be used for identifying single sounds, and not for harmonies, and that seems to be the topic of the discussion.

Another interesting point is that the interval we perceive as a fifth, would sound slightly off key to 16th and 17th century musicians, who were used to just intonation or mean tone temperament. And Indian musicians perceive our equal temperament as off key as well, but nobody suggests that their brains are wired differently.

It is tempting to think that since common intervals and harmonics have similar relations, they have the same base, but that is not necessarily true. E.g., the perfect fifth has a relation of 3:2 to the tonic. That is however not a harmonic. There is a harmonic with a ratio of 3:1, but not 3:2. If you play a fifth, it will produce overtones at 3, 4.5, 6, etc., times the tonic's frequency, and, as you can see, its second harmonic is extremely inharmonic with respect to the harmonics of the dominant (with the exception of 9, 18, ...). And chords are even more complex, so there must be more to it than just physics and Pythagoras' whole number insight.

There is a lot of physics in sound, but our perception of it is heavily influenced by our culture.

[Pingu]

We are talking here about chords. The organisation of scales and basic chords in European music is not an invention but a discovery, already recognised in ancient Greece.



That's not entirely true. You might as well say the jet plane was a discovery because it relies on natural principles, or that the skyscraper was discovered as soon as we learned to balance forces.

The discovery was frequency ratios that we find pleasing. Western scales are an invention that try to exploit the discovery, and one that we still haven't perfected. More to the point, several other principles had to be discovered before the scale could be invented. Not only consonant intervals, but the notion of chroma and octave equivalence. Otherwise nobody could have projected that collapsing a pile of 5ths (or 4ths) would give a set of sequential tones.

[Pingu]

I've been doing psycholinguistics and cognitive neuro-science for 20+ years, and I picked up some psychoacoustics along the way,

OK Theo, completely random OT, but you seem like the person to ask. I've often read the theory that sung vowels can't be recognised once their fundamental has a higher frequency than the lowest formants for that vowel, since this prevents the formants necessary for recognition being present in the sound.

The thing is, this ought to mean that the vowels in almost all soprano parts are indistinguishable, but I'm fairly sure I can tell whether a soprano is singing 'Ahhh' or 'Ohhh' right up to the top of their register - even when the part is nothing but melismatic vowels, and there are no cues from consonant patterns.

Since I've only ever heard the theory stated as a simple fact, and have never seen any experimental results, I'm wondering where it came from.

[proscuang]

This is an interesting discussion. thank you for sharing
However I think you should vary more examples to your writing much more interesting !

[sonata5920]

Gday,

I would be most interested to learn more about the physics and physiology of voice production. Over many years, I have read a lot about the singer’s voice. My wife Margaret is a classical trained dramatic soprano, a very loud one.

David said:

“I've often read the theory that sung vowels can't be recognised once their fundamental has a higher frequency than the lowest formants for that vowel, since this prevents the formants necessary for recognition being present in the sound.”

This is true for sopranos. The very high sound pressure levels a soprano can produce, particularly in the higher range of the voice, very much rely on the resonance created by air chambers inside the singers head and by lip formation. The very narrow bandwidth of the resonating air space suppresses formants. Most singers simply sing “Ohhh” quite intentionally, though an “Ahhh”, if not to open, is possible. Lazy Sopranos don’t bother to sing consonants. Dame Joan Sutherland is a prime example. You never know in what language she was singing, when listening to her recordings.

A good source for more information on the physics of music is the website of Joe Wolfe, professor of Physics at the University of NSW at Sydney:

www.phys.unsw.edu.au/STAFF/ACADEMIC/wolfe.html (http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/STAFF/ACADEMIC/wolfe.html)

www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/Joe.html (http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/Joe.html)


Herbert

[FLWrd]

OK Theo, completely random OT, but you seem like the person to ask. I've often read the theory that sung vowels can't be recognised once their fundamental has a higher frequency than the lowest formants for that vowel, since this prevents the formants necessary for recognition being present in the sound.
I'm afraid I've got no idea. Singing is something that completely escapes the attention of (most) cognitive psychologists. For speech to be recognized properly, formants are not enough (just try a formant synthesizer and you'll soon find out that most things sound somewhere between an [e] (as in "pet") and a schwa (the e in "the"), even though they shouldn't), but they do make the character of the (voiced) sound (voiced as opposed to unvoiced sounds, such as [p] and [k]).
What Herbert (sonata5920) says sounds logical to me in this context, and also explains why you might hear something resembling an ooooh or an aaah. The (two main) formants of the [a] lie around 1000Hz and 1400Hz, the ones of [o] around 500Hz and 1000Hz (says wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formant)). If the note you want to sing is very high, e.g. A5 at 1760Hz, the fundamental interferes with the formants, and I can imagine detection for the ear becoming very difficult. If what Herbert says is true, then it should be possible with some effort to change the balance in favor of the formants. However, I would expect that this is not possible with every note, since some will interfere more than others, so that even a good soprano singing a scale would not be able to create a difference between [a] and [o] for every note, but that's speculation.

[PaulR]

2 notes are making harmony, but are not defining a "chord", because in our language a "chord" has a functional meaning.

A bicord is ambiguous, then it's not enough to be functionally relevant in the historical harmony (e.g. the bicord E-C is it missing an A to make Amin or is missing a G to make a Cmaj etc. etc. according how many notes your tonal system is targeting)



That covers it properly for me. Perfect Fabio.

On a side issue Raymond -be careful playing 'chords' all at once with samples like strings or brass for instance. Try and play the notes that make the chord or interval separately if possible. Sounds better that way.

[garymosse]

I think maybe the original question has been obscured.
Can a single note be a chord?
If you look at a good painting, there is a point(s) where the painting lets your eye complete the picture--an incomplete form, etc.
If a single note is placed at a point of finality or at a pause, it's tonality relates to the key preceding it and probably will be the I, 4, or 5 in the key. Any 2 notes can be a member of numerous keys. To be recognized, it needs a 3rd note.

Gary

[SeanHannifin]

One note can definitely imply a certain harmony within certain contexts. But that doesn't really change the definition of a chord.

[Raymond62]

That covers it properly for me. Perfect Fabio.

On a side issue Raymond -be careful playing 'chords' all at once with samples like strings or brass for instance. Try and play the notes that make the chord or interval separately if possible. Sounds better that way.

Are you referring to me or the other Raymond? May I amend this thesis? Be careful using full chords when using strings and/or brass. They may sound terrible when played all at once.

I already noticed this, but sometimes I can't avoid this. When it happens I tend to spread the chord a bit over the instruments used, keeping constant control that I won't fall into the "disonant pit" due to that same spreading. In other words, don't make it too distant.

Raymond - the one and only true Raymond from The Netherlands, who is still busy trying to make his "condo/apartment/house" a better place to live in for the last 20 years of my life.

[Raymond62]

If a single note is placed at a point of finality or at a pause, it's tonality relates to the key preceding it and probably will be the I, 4, or 5 in the key. Any 2 notes can be a member of numerous keys. To be recognized, it needs a 3rd note. Gary

Why should this be recognized? Just one or two notes at the end of a phrase can add some tension into the piece, giving room to develop to a complete different direction then originally thought or imagined. In other words it may give some surprising outcome.

We keep this discussion going...... why is one note note a chord?

Raymond

[qccowboy]

We keep this discussion going...... why is one note note a chord?

Raymond


why is one person not a crowd?

because one note is one note.

why are you looking for some sort of deeper meaning to the nomenclature?

it is there to simplify matters, not to generate pseudo-philosophical discussions.

one note is a note.

two notes is an interval.

three or more notes is a chord.

it's easy.
it's simply nomenclature.
it is there to help us function within the parameters that have been established for musical theory.

if we lived on Planet Zebulon VI, then maybe, just maybe, two notes would be considered a "chord".
here on earth, in the society in which we live presently (that is, one that uses the traditional nomenclature of western music), two notes is an interval.

I quite honestly do NOT understand why anyone is going on about this as though it were some sort of big mystery.

[Pingu]

why is one person not a crowd?

because one note is one note.

why are you looking for some sort of deeper meaning to the nomenclature?

it is there to simplify matters, not to generate pseudo-philosophical discussions.

one note is a note.

two notes is an interval.

three or more notes is a chord.

it's easy.
it's simply nomenclature.
it is there to help us function within the parameters that have been established for musical theory.

if we lived on Planet Zebulon VI, then maybe, just maybe, two notes would be considered a "chord".
here on earth, in the society in which we live presently (that is, one that uses the traditional nomenclature of western music), two notes is an interval.

I quite honestly do NOT understand why anyone is going on about this as though it were some sort of big mystery.

No, I'd have to side with those who think it's more complicated than that. Of course, if you want to be absolutely literal, then a note can't be a chord, but music is what happens in our heads, rather than on the page, and context can be everything.

I just looked at a passage today, from Mahler's 4th, where he appears to use chords V, IV, III, II on four beats, but actually the whole bar somehow does the job of V7, even though the dominant note isn't present.

[qccowboy]

I just looked at a passage today, from Mahler's 4th, where he appears to use chords V, IV, III, II on four beats, but actually the whole bar somehow does the job of V7, even though the dominant note isn't present.


admirable as what Mahler did in that excerpt, it has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on whether one note is a "chord" or not.

you are adding a layer of interpretation that is completely absent from the actual discourse.

can a single note imply a given harmony? sure, in the right context.

IS a single note, alone, "harmony"? no. it is nothing but a single note.

can 2 notes - by definition an "interval" - imply a certain harmony? sure, in a certain context.

are 2 notes, alone, harmony? no, they are an interval.



Is a single person a crowd? no. a single person is just that, a single person.

Within the context of a relationship, however, a single person who makes up a "third" becomes a "crowd".

It's all silly and semantics.

A note is a note is a note.

Lots of time being wasted here on a completely pointless "discussion".

[FLWrd]

I tend to side with qccowboy. A chord is the name given to three or more different notes (or rather: pitch classes) sounding simultaneously. Whatever one and two notes can do, is more harmony than chord.

It's nothing more than definition. There is nothing magical or sacred about a chord. Of course, a chord (sort of) fixes harmony, whereas a single note or a single interval is much more ambiguous. If you hear C-E-G, you hear a major. If you perceive a major when you hear only C-E, that's implied (by) harmony (because it will sound minor in a), but that doesn't make C-E a chord.

Now, why chords determine harmony, whereas the other structures don't, that's a wholly different topic...

[upsider]

I tend to side with qccowboy. A chord is the name given to three or more different notes (or rather: pitch classes) sounding simultaneously....../........

Now, why chords determine harmony, whereas the other structures don't, that's a wholly different topic...

Of course we know the definition of a chord, right? Thats early school music education. (Though i admit I'm hazy about the distinction above between notes and 'pitch classes' :o) But this thread branched out into different topics, which is why a bunch of fools like me started chiming in.

However, please excuse me - I promise to defer to the Topic, as defined by the Thread Title, and will not further indulge my own or anyone else's Pointless digressions!!:D

[SeanHannifin]

The question of "what is a chord?" is quite simple.

The question of "how did a chord come to be defined that way?" I think is much more complex, and perhaps still unanswerable today. This question is not like asking about crowds; this is a musical perception and emergent property question.

EDIT: And, come to think of it, the question "Why can't a note be a chord?" is not specific enough ... do you mean "Why can't a note be a chord within the current laws of musical perception?" which we don't know, and it is therefore a question about musical perception (as what a chord is can't change (but what we call it or how we define it can)), or do you mean "Why can't a note be a called a chord? How would the rest of our current music theory work with such a definition?" which is more a question of how we have come to define and organize our sense of music, and how malleable it might be. Or do you mean something else?

[sonata5920]

Gday,

I agree with qccowboy. He says:

“it's easy.
it's simply nomenclature.
it is there to help us function within the parameters that have been established for musical theory.”

I also agree with upsider. He says:

“But this thread branched out into different topics, which is why a bunch of fools like me started chiming in.”

The number of posts confirms the interest. Many of us have a creative mind. It is only natural to stray into related territory. There is a lot more that can be said on the many related subjects.

Imagine you want to mark out a plot of land. Mark a point in the landscape and call the point “C”. All you have is a point. Mark another point and call the point “G”. Now you have a direction. Add a third point perhaps “Eb” and you may have very positively marked your plot of land. Positioning of point 2 and point 3 is critical. Further points add to the character of the plot. Alternatively a table with two legs is not stable. A table with three legs is stable. More legs improve the stability.

Herbert

[SeanHannifin]

Eh... I'm a bit leery of musical perception being compared to land development and table stability...

[sonata5920]

Why?

Graphical representation is often used for analytical and communication purposes. The land development bit is what you see in it.

Herbert

[Raymond62]

Thank you guys. This was a very interesting discussion. A note is not a chord, because one person is not a crowd and a vacuumcleaner doesn't clean the vacuum :wow:

LOL - Raymond

[qccowboy]

...and a vacuumcleaner doesn't clean the vacuum :wow:




well, to put a lot of this discussion in perspective, the equivalent would be:

yes but technically, a vacuum - by definition "a space absolutely devoid of matter" - contains nothing, therefore there is nothing to clean.

[buckshead]

A table with three legs is stable. More legs improve the stability.No they don't - a three legged table doesn't wobble, but a four legged table will if there is the slightest difference in the length of the leg or the slightest unevenness in the ground. Five, six or more make the situation even worse.

The triangular form of three is inherently the most stable shape, three sides always fixed etc. Maybe that's why chords (triads) have three notes, but don't quote me. Notice how the addition of more notes to the chord creates tension - thats like the extra leg.

HE HE)(~


yes but technically, a vacuum - by definition "a space absolutely devoid of matter" - contains nothing, therefore there is nothing to clean.

Semantics dear boy.

A vacuum cleaner doesn't clean vacuums does it?

[qccowboy]

Semantics dear boy.



I think you missed the point I was making.

[Pingu]

I still don't buy this rather simplistic approach, and not necessarily because I'm trying to overcomplicate matters. Definitions change out of necessity. Sure it was OK to say 'a chord is three notes, no more no less' in the days of Rameau, but then noone would have questioned what a note is. In this day and age things have become much more complicated, because we have so many more ways of producing sound.

For those who insist that a chord must contain three different notes, what exactly is a note? It's certainly nothing to do with the blob on a page - I'm not about to give any credence at all to a definition of a chord that says it must contain three different blobs on a page, because music is a sonic art, and the page is just a shorthand. So if we accept that a note is something we perceive aurally, what is it? And before jumping to any quick definitions, think about the following. If I take the even harmonics of an oboe sound and play them out of one speaker, and play the odd harmonics out of another, and make sure that the two sets are out of phase, then you will actually hear two clarinet-type notes, an octave apart, and in separate locations. If I then gradually move them back in phase, at some point you will suddenly hear a single oboe sound located right between the speakers. So are there two notes or one? You may say, well phase is an important part of making a note cohere, so at first there are two, then there is one; but the point at which the partials suddenly gel will be different for different people, so where do we draw the line. Also the partials continue to come from two sources, and no traditional definition of a note would admit that that can be one note.

And if just one note can be ambiguous, how can there be a hard and fast rule about what a chord is. The only time it can be unambiguous is on the page, which I am still not about to give credence to. In actual sound the boundaries are far more blurred. For instance, if I create some kind of ambient pad sound, where pressing a single note on the synth creates a whole wash of harmonics, from many potential fundamentals, how do you determine how many notes are there? There is no hard and fast way. There are models that try to emulate how we build 'note' percepts out of a mass of partials. One very good one (Parncutt/Terhardt) suggests that we attempt to extract complete harmonic series 'profiles' with a particular strength to each harmonic. Where a harmonic becomes too prominent it may alter the timbre of the note to which it is contributing, but will eventually suggest an alternative fundamental. The problem is these models always end by admitting that there need to be several variables built in, to account for our ability to deliberately focus on one fundamental at the expense of others. Which amounts to saying that in any mass of partials I may 'hear out' a completely different set of notes to someone else. So a single pad sound may seem, to me, to contain three or four notes, whilst someone else hears it as a single note. Is it a chord or not?

[SeanHannifin]

Why?

Graphical representation is often used for analytical and communication purposes. The land development bit is what you see in it.

I suppose the quality and helpfulness of any metaphor is a subjective thing. I can't really understand those metaphors having much to do with actual music perception. Seems like apples and oranges.


So a single pad sound may seem, to me, to contain three or four notes, whilst someone else hears it as a single note. Is it a chord or not?

I do not mind at all defining a "chord" as what we hear to be three notes or more, nor do I mind it being a relative thing, or a sometimes ambiguous thing (and same with "note" ... and same with "music" for that matter).

I think you're approaching the question from a perception perspective, while qccowboy and others are approaching it from a semantics of music theory perspective. I don't think you're really disagreeing with each other, as I agree with both.

[sonata5920]

Gday Derek,

Good observation about the stability of a table with numerous legs.

Do you think a centipede will stumble and fall over a lot because of its many legs?

Herbert

[PaulR]

Is a chord a collection of intervals?

[qccowboy]

Is a chord a collection of intervals?


no, apparently it's whatever you want it to be.

[efiebke]

O. K. . . . I've been following this thread for a couple of days. I didn't want to add to it because there is a heck of a lot more smarter people than I am commenting on this subject. I get very embarrassed exposing my lack of knowledge to groups of people which is really, really easy to do on the internet! LOL! :p

But. . . I must step in. I have decided that I'm not lacking in knowledge on this particular subject matter at all! In fact, I believe that I may be MORE knowledgeable than every one of you! Yes! Even YOU who's reading my post at this time!!! LOL! :p

This is what the true definition of chord is:

A line segment joining two points on a curve.

But wait! There's more!

A chord is also:

An edge joining two not-adjacent nodes in a cycle.

An outside member of a truss, as opposed to the inner "webbed members".
(I have no freakin' idea to the meaning of "webbed member". Not a clue.)

The distance between the front and back of a wing, measured in the direction of the normal airflow. The term chord was selected due to the curved nature of the wing's surface.

The measurement of a birds bended wing from the tip of the longest primary feather to the farthest measurable point at the bend of the wrist.

A peer-to-peer system based on distributed hash tables (DHT).

A concurrency construct in some object-oriented programming languages.

A comic book character who is the former mentor of the New Warriors.

The member that is perpendicular to the shear wall that is used to resist bending of the diaphragm (structural system).

Free software useful for creating staff-less lead sheets.

And finally. . .

A aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously.

There! It feels real good to show example of my deep understanding to the term "Chord". Now, you all must please excuse me while I leave my computer and attempt to find my life! LOL! :p

Cheers! :D

[wrayer]

It's a definition question. Two notes is an interval in music theory. One note is just one note. Combinations of three notes, or two intervals, however, have different qualities and these qualities stay the same when you put the notes in different order. And then they named that phenomenon a chord. Extra notes (6, 7, 9, 11, or 13) don't change the basic qualities of the chord (or so they say, but to argue that you've got to know more about voice leading than I do), so that's why a chord has three notes, even though you might play four or five...

The root note plus the 5th (so just two notes) are sometimes referred to as an open chord, or power chord, but mainly by guitarists to hide the fact that they cannot play anything more complex.


ANd this is a very good answer, well done Theo!

Best,
Bill

[buckshead]

Do you think a centipede will stumble and fall over a lot because of its many legs?

A centipede is bendy, a table wouldn't wobble if it was bendy.


(I have no freakin' idea to the meaning of "webbed member". Not a clue.)

A steel beam is shaped like a capital I; the top and bottom are flanges, the vertical part is the web, the beam is a webbed member. A truss is made of individual sections, two chords (sometimes more) held apart by struts and ties. But you didn't really want to know did you?