CHORDS

A chord is a group of three or more note names sounding together. If a note can be called an atom of music, a chord can be called a molecule of music.

The next figure shows an example of a chord. In this example, we see note names C, E and G sounding together.

Figure: A chord

It may come as a surprise that we are talking here about the note names (C, E and G) instead of the notes (C4, E4 and G4). This is intentional. The reason is that chords have a remarkable property: if we know all the note names that a chord contains, we can tell its name. For instance, if we know that a chord is built only of the note names C, E and G, we know this is the C major triad chord. Later, we shall learn more about this.