Class 6

Chords. The foundation of modern Western music. I have not yet talked about another very important side of composing -- counterpoint -- but perhaps soon we can talk about it. In today's class we finished our study of chords (for now) by learning about inversion and seventh chords. Last week we studied triads -- chords of three notes. We learned how to spell major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords in what is called root position (or the snowman look). Because there are three notes, there are actually three different arrangements of the notes, meaning the order they appear. In an F major chord (F A C), we can arrange the notes three ways:

F A C (root position)
A C F (1st inversion)
C F A (2nd inversion)

When we change the order of notes, the important note sounds at the bottom, so that each of the three notes gets its turn at sounding the lowest. We talked about labeling the inversions in Roman numeral analysis (e.i., I⁶) and modern day chord writing (e.i., F/A).

We then discussed seventh chords, which have four notes. The main purpose of seventh chords is to operate as a dominant chord so that it leads your ear to the tonic. That means that a lot of seventh chords, serving as the dominant (5th scale degree), suggest a strong movement up a 4th. Can you figure out why? We'll talk about it. Anyway, there are several types of seventh chords. The more important are:

• Dominant seventh (e.i. C7, or C major minor 7) -- major chord with a minor 7th
• Major seventh (e.i. Cmaj7) -- major chord with a major 7th
• Minor seventh (e.i. Cm7) -- minor chord with a minor 7th
• Diminished seventh (e.i. Cº7th) -- diminished chord with a diminished 7th

There is also a half diminished seventh chord, and the symbol for that is the degree mark with a slash through it -- ^ø. The half diminished seventh chord is a diminished chord with a minor seventh.

If you are having difficulty with chords or have any questions, please email me (jstewart@bellevue.org). You need to understand chords in order to go on with this class. Melody lines are very important, and we will continue developing our melody writing skills, but chordal harmony is what gives life and color to melody, and we will spend a good deal of time in the next weeks harmonically analyzing songs and pieces.

Thanks for all your participation. We had a great time listening to everyone's ideas yesterday. God bless!

Josh

P.S. Here's a link to the homework.