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Ableton Tutorials
Ableton Tutorials
Chords
Chords
What is a Chord?
What is a Chord?
A chord is a group of multiple pitches that play at the same time.
Major Triads
Major Triads
The most common chords are triads, which are built by adding the third and fifth notes in the scale above a starting note (or root). For example, in C major, the triad built on C contains:
C (the root)
E (the third note above C; often called just "the third")
G (the fifth note above C; often called just "the fifth")
This is called the C major triad.
As with major scales, most people hear major triads as "happy" or "uplifting."
Make the C major triad:
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Minor Triads
Minor Triads
In C minor, the triad on C is built the same way:
C (the root)
E♭ (the third note above C; often called just "the third")
G (the fifth note above C; often called just "the fifth")
This is called the C minor triad.
As with minor scales, most people hear minor triads as "sad" or "dark."
Make the C minor triad:
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Chord Examples
Chord Examples
Bob Marley & The Wailers - “Get Up, Stand Up”
Bob Marley & The Wailers - “Get Up, Stand Up”
One of the simplest ways to work with chords is to use only one, sustained or repeated for an entire piece of music.
You can hear a number of instruments playing chords in this song, including electric guitars and both acoustic and electric pianos.
But these instruments are used in very different ways. Some of the guitars and keyboards play chords in regular, repeating rhythms, while others play more improvisatory patterns that are less predictable.
Underlying the entire song is a single repeated C minor chord, as played on the acoustic piano:
Notice that the notes are all halfway between the beats. This pattern of offbeats is known in reggae as the skank rhythm.
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“Mary Had a Little Lamb”
“Mary Had a Little Lamb”
This famous children's song is best known for its melody — the line of single notes that is commonly sung. Here it is in F major.
But combining (or harmonizing) the melody with some chords helps to fill out the texture. This is an example of a simple chord progression: a series of chords played in a particular order. In many types of music, chord progressions are used to create a sense of tension and release, by moving away from the tonic of the song and then back again.
The chords we've added are F major and C major triads. But why did we choose these chords?
If you look at the melody, you can see that the notes that appear most often are notes that are in the accompanying chords. In the first bar, for example, the Fs and As are both part of the F major triad — these notes are chord tones. The Gs are non-chord tones, but they sound like they're simply "connecting" F and A. Non-chord tones that are between two adjacent chord tones are called passing tones.
But there's another principle at work here; these chords are built on the first and fifth notes of the scale (F and C). You can call these chords the 1 and 5 chords, respectively. Chord progressions that alternate between 1 and 5 create a strong sense of departure and arrival, tension and release. Compare the "stable" and "grounded" sound of the 1-chord passages with the "tense" and "unfinished" sound of the 5-chord passages.
Try to experiment with different chords, as well as with using different rhythms for the chords.
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Chords 1, 5, 6, 4
Chords 1, 5, 6, 4
This progression of four chords forms the basis of hundreds of pop songs from the last few decades. In this video, dozens of them are combined together, all transposed to D major.
Try changing (or even just reordering) these chords and listen to how the balance of tension and release changes.
Play with Chords
Play with Chords
Now that you've learned a bit about chords, spend some time creating your own patterns and progressions.
You can also create beats that will play in sync with your chords.
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Advanced Tutorial
Advanced Tutorial
Building Major Chords
Building Major Chords
The sound of a scale is determined by the particular pattern of intervals that makes up that scale. Major and minor scales are the most common types of scales used in many kinds of music, but there are many other types of scales as well.
Major scales contain seven notes (before the scale starts over an octave higher) and consist of a particular pattern of half steps (two adjacent notes) and whole steps (notes that are two half steps apart).
This specific pattern of whole steps and half steps is what defines any major scale, regardless of starting note:
Whole - Whole - Half - Whole - Whole - Whole - Half
You can use the Tonic buttons to shift (or transpose) the scale to a different tonic. Notice that the pattern of whole and half steps (shown by the circles on the piano keys) never changes.
(Note: People who aren't familiar with a piano keyboard are sometimes confused that adjacent notes aren't necessarily differently colored keys. For example, the distance between E and F (and also B and C) is a half step, even though they're both white notes).
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Building Minor Chords
Building Minor Chords
The minor scale contains a different pattern of half and whole steps:
Whole - Half - Whole - Whole - Half - Whole - Whole
You can use the Tonic buttons to transpose the scale to a different tonic. Notice that the pattern of whole and half steps (shown by the circles on the piano keys) never changes.
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Seventh Chords
Seventh Chords
You can build a C major seventh chord as follows:
C (the root)
E (the third note above C; often called just “the third”)
G (the fifth note above C; often called just “the fifth”)
B (the seventh note above C; often called just "the seventh")
In minor, this pattern forms a minor seventh chord.
You can build a C minor seventh chord as follows:
C (the root)
E♭ (the third note above C; often called just “the third”)
G (the fifth note above C; often called just “the fifth”)
B♭ (the seventh note above C; often called just "the seventh")
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Diatonic Triads
Diatonic Triads
Many types of music use only diatonic triads, which are the seven chords built on each of the notes in the chosen major or minor scale.
Create a triad built on each note in the C major scale. To do this, add additional notes a third and a fifth above each note in the scale:
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Triads in Every Key
Triads in Every Key
Try switching to different keys to hear how the diatonic triads sound. Regardless of key, they're always built using the notes in the scale plus additional notes a third and a fifth above each note in the scale.
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Inversions
Inversions
So far, all of the chords have been built with the root as the lowest note. But you can create subtle variations in sound by reordering the notes so that a different note is at the bottom. This process is called inversion.
A triad with the root as the lowest note is said to be in root position. Here is a C major triad in root position.
A first inversion triad has the third of the chord as the lowest note. The root is then transposed up an octave.
Inversions are sometimes written using slashes. For example, you can call the C major triad in first inversion C/E ("C over E").
A second inversion triad has the fifth of the chord as the lowest note.
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Voicings
Voicings
Using inversions opens up new possibilities for a single chord. But we can also distribute or duplicate the notes within a chord to create even more variations. The arrangement of the notes within a chord is called the chord's voicing.
These all sound slightly different but share some important properties in common: they each contain only notes that are in the C major triad, and they each have E (the third) as their lowest note.
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Non Diatonic Chords
Non Diatonic Chords
Kerri Chandler - “Mommy What's a Record”
Kerri Chandler - “Mommy What's a Record”
Non-diatonic chords contain notes that aren't in the key.
The chords in this song are played by some type of synthesizer or sampler — an instrument that plays back audio recordings (or samples). More and more layers are added to the song as it progresses. But for now, focus on the string-like sounds that start at the beginning and play the chords throughout.
This song contains a progression of only three chords:
C minor 7, G minor 7, and A minor 7
These are all the same type and voicing of chord (minor seventh in root position). Chord progressions like this that consist of a single chord type that is copied and transposed are called parallel progressions (because the individual notes in the chords move the same direction and distance when the chords change).
This is an example of a non-diatonic progression because there is no single major or minor scale that contains these particular notes. In fact, it's a bit difficult to get a sense of what the key actually is; parallel chords often result in a "vague" or "floating" sound.
Parallel chords are commonly used in deep house and related styles.
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The 'Spelling' of Notes
The 'Spelling' of Notes
As you change tonics, notice that notes are sometimes written with flats and sometimes with sharps. There are a few simple rules that explain the right spelling for every note in a major scale:
The pattern of half and whole steps is always Whole - Whole - Half - Whole - Whole - Whole - Half
In order to maintain this half/whole pattern, some notes will need ♭s or ♯s in every major scale (except C major).
Each letter name is used only once. For example, a major scale will never contain both A♭ and A.
The letter names always occur in alphabetical order, and restart after G.
Starting on a black key
Starting on a black key
Since each black key can have two names (e.g. D♭ or C♯), how did we choose which one to use as a tonic? For these lessons, we chose the one that has the fewest flats or sharps. For example:
D♭ major has five flats.
but C♯ major has seven sharps.
so we show only D♭ as an option.
Did you notice...?
Did you notice...?
As this example shows, sharps and flats can sometimes refer to "white keys" as well. Some scales (like the C♯ major scale shown above) use note spellings like E♯ and B♯ that might seem strange; why don't we just call these F and C?
The answer comes back to the rules about spelling. Since each letter name is used exactly once in each major scale, some scales require these sorts of uncommon note spellings. In C♯ major, the "slots" for E and B require both to have sharps (in order to maintain the pattern of whole steps and half steps), while the slots for the letter names F and C are raised as well, to F♯ and C♯.
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