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In Western music theory, a chord is a group of Musical note played together for their harmony consonance or dissonance. The most basic type of chord is a triad, so called because it consists of three distinct notes: the root note along with intervals of a third and a fifth above the root note. Chords with more than three notes include added tone chords, and , which are used in contemporary classical music, jazz, and other genres.
Chords are the building blocks of harmony and form the harmonic foundation of a piece of music. They provide the harmonic support and coloration that accompany melodies and contribute to the overall sound and mood of a musical composition. The factors, or component notes, of a chord are often sounded simultaneously but can instead be sounded consecutively, as in an arpeggio.
A succession of chords is called a chord progression. One example of a widely used chord progression in Western traditional music and blues is the 12 bar blues progression. Although any chord may in principle be followed by any other chord, certain patterns of chords are more common in Western music, and some patterns have been accepted as establishing the key (tonic note) in common-practice harmony—notably the resolution of a dominant chord to a tonic chord. To describe this, Western music theory has developed the practice of numbering chords using Roman numerals to represent the number of diatonic steps up from the tonic note of the scale.
Some chords can be Microtonality. This means that it has chords outside the normal accidental range of a normal instrument.
Common ways of notating or representing chords in Western music (other than conventional staff notation) include Roman numerals, the Nashville Number System, figured bass, chord letters (sometimes used in modern musicology), and .
Ottó Károlyi writes that, "Two or more notes sounded simultaneously are known as a chord," though, since instances of any given note in different may be taken as the same note, it is more precise for the purposes of analysis to speak of distinct . Furthermore, as three notes are needed to define any common chord, three is often taken as the minimum number of notes that form a definite chord. Hence, Andrew Surmani, for example, states, "When three or more notes are sounded together, the combination is called a chord." George T. Jones agrees: "Two tones sounding together are usually termed an interval, while three or more tones are called a chord." According to Monath, "a chord is a combination of three or more tones sounded simultaneously", and the distances between the tones are called intervals. However, sonorities of two pitches, or even single-note melodies, are commonly heard as implying chords. A simple example of two notes being interpreted as a chord is when the root and third are played but the fifth is omitted. In the key of C major, if the music stops on the two notes G and B, most listeners hear this as a G major chord.
Since a chord may be understood as such even when all its notes are not simultaneously audible, there has been some academic discussion regarding the point at which a group of notes may be called a chord. Jean-Jacques Nattiez explains that, "We can encounter 'pure chords' in a musical work", such as in the "Promenade" of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition but, "often, we must go from a textual given to a more abstract representation of the chords being used", as in Claude Debussy's Première arabesque.
In the medieval music era, early Christian featured organum (which used the simultaneous perfect intervals of a fourth, a fifth, and an octave), with chord progressions and harmony - an incidental result of the emphasis on melodic lines during the medieval and then Renaissance (15th to 17th centuries).
The Baroque period, the 17th and 18th centuries, began to feature the major and minor scale based tonal system and harmony, including chord progressions and circle progressions. It was in the Baroque period that the accompaniment of melodies with chords was developed, as in figured bass, and the familiar (perfect authentic, etc.). In the Renaissance, certain dissonant sonorities that suggest the dominant seventh occurred with frequency. In the Baroque period, the dominant seventh proper was introduced and was in constant use in the Classical and Romantic music. The leading-tone seventh appeared in the Baroque period and remains in use. Composers began to use nondominant seventh chords in the Baroque period. They became frequent in the Classical period, gave way to Altered chord in the Romantic period, and underwent a resurgence in the Post-romanticism and Impressionistic period.
The Romantic period, the 19th century, featured increased chromaticism. Composers began to use Secondary chord in the Baroque, and they became common in the Romantic period. Many contemporary popular Western genres continue to rely on simple diatonic harmony, though far from universally: notable exceptions include the music of , which often use chromatic, Atonality or Post tonal harmony, and modern jazz (especially ), in which chords may include up to seven notes (and occasionally more). When referring to chords that do not function as harmony, such as in atonal music, the term "sonority" is often used specifically to avoid any tonal implications of the word "chord".
Chords are also used for timbre effects. In organ registers, certain chords are activated by a single key, so playing a melody results in parallel voice leading. These voices, losing independence, are fused into one with a new timbre. The same effect is also used in synthesizers and orchestral arrangements; for instance, in Ravel’s Bolero #5 the parallel parts of flutes, horn and celesta, being tuned as a chord, resemble the sound of an electric organ.
In some conventions (as in this and related articles) upper-case indicate major triads (e.g., I, IV, V) while lower-case Roman numerals indicate minor triads (e.g., I for a major chord and i for a minor chord, or using the major key, ii, iii and vi representing typical diatonic minor triads); other writers (e.g., Schoenberg) use upper case Roman numerals for both major and minor triads. Some writers use upper-case Roman numerals to indicate the chord is diatonic in the major scale, and lower-case Roman numerals to indicate that the chord is diatonic in the minor scale. Diminished triads may be represented by lower-case Roman numerals with a degree symbol (e.g., vii7 indicates a diminished seventh chord built on the seventh scale degree; in the key of C major, this chord would be B diminished seventh, which consists of the notes B, D, F and A).
Roman numerals can also be used in stringed instrument notation to indicate the position or string to play. In some string music, the string on which it is suggested that the performer play the note is indicated with a Roman numeral (e.g., on a four-string string orchestra instrument, I indicates the highest-pitched, thinnest string and IV indicates the lowest-pitched, thickest bass string). In some orchestral parts, chamber music and solo works for string instruments, the composer tells the performer which string to use with the Roman numeral. Alternately, the composer starts the note name with the string to use—e.g., "sul G" means "play on the G string".
| +Common conventional symbols for figured bass ! colspan="4" style="background: Silver" | Triads | ||
| Root position | None | \override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\new PianoStaff <<
\new Staff <<
\relative c' {
\clef treble \time 3/4
| |
| First inversion | |||
| Second inversion | |||
| Root position | {
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\new PianoStaff <<
\new Staff <<
\relative c' {
\clef treble \time 4/4
4
| ||
| 1st inversion | |||
| 2nd inversion | |||
| Third inversion | or |
For example, in the figured bass below, the bass note is a C, and the numbers 4 and 6 indicate that notes a fourth and a sixth above (F and A) should be played, giving the second inversion of the F Major chord.
If no numbers are written beneath a bass note, the figure is assumed to be , which calls for a third and a fifth above the bass note (i.e., a root position triad).
In the 2010s, some classical musicians who specialize in music from the Baroque era can still perform chords using figured bass notation; in many cases, however, the chord-playing performers read a fully notated accompaniment that has been prepared for the piece by the music publisher. Such a part, with fully written-out chords, is called a "realization" of the figured bass part.
Chord qualities are related with the qualities of the component intervals that define the chord. The main chord qualities are:
| ! colspan="3" style="background: Silver"Chord ! colspan="13" style="background: Silver" | Components | ||||
| Major triad | C CΔ | ||||
| Major sixth chord | C6 CM6 | Cmaj6 | |||
| Dominant seventh chord | C7 | Cdom7 | |||
| Major seventh chord | CM7 C∆7 | Cmaj7 | M7 | ||
| Augmented triad | C+ | Caug | |||
| Augmented seventh chord | C+7 | Caug7 | m7 | ||
| Minor triad | Cm | Cmin | |||
| Minor sixth chord | Cm6 | Cmin6 | |||
| Minor seventh chord | Cm7 | Cmin7 | |||
| Minor-major seventh chord | CmM7 Cm/M7 Cm(M7) | Cminmaj7 Cmin/maj7 Cmin(maj7) | M7 | ||
| Diminished triad | C | Cdim | |||
| Diminished seventh chord | C7 | Cdim7 | |||
| Half-diminished seventh chord | C C7 |
Interpretation of chord symbols depends on the genre of music being played. In jazz from the bebop era or later, major and minor chords are typically realized as seventh chords even if only "C" or "Cm" appear in the chart. In jazz charts, seventh chords are often realized with upper Extended chord, such as the ninth, sharp eleventh, and thirteenth, even if the chart only indicates "A7". In jazz, the root and fifth are often omitted from chord voicings, except when there is a diminished fifth or an augmented fifth.
In a pop or rock context, however, "C" and "Cm" would almost always be played as triads, with no sevenths. In pop and rock, in the relatively less common cases where songwriters wish a dominant seventh, major seventh, or minor seventh chord, they indicate this explicitly with the indications "C7", "Cmaj7" or "Cm7".
| Monochord |
| Dichord |
| Trichord |
| Tetrachord |
| Pentachord |
| Hexachord |
| Heptachord |
| Octachord |
| Nonachord |
| Decachord |
Two-note combinations, whether referred to as chords or intervals, are called dyads. In the context of a specific section in a piece of music, dyads can be heard as chords if they contain the most important notes of a certain chord. For example, in a piece in C Major, after a section of tonic C Major chords, a dyad containing the notes B and D sounds to most listeners as a first inversion G Major chord. Other dyads are more ambiguous, an aspect that composers can use creatively. For example, a dyad with a perfect fifth has no third, so it does not sound major or minor; a composer who ends a section on a perfect fifth could subsequently add the missing third. Another example is a dyad outlining the tritone, such as the notes C and F# in C Major. This dyad could be heard as implying a D7 chord (resolving to G Major) or as implying a C diminished chord (resolving to Db Major). In unaccompanied duos for two instruments, such as flute duos, the only combinations of notes that are possible are dyads, which means that all of the chord progressions must be implied through dyads, as well as with arpeggios.
Chords constructed of three notes of some underlying musical scale are described as triads. Chords of four notes are known as tetrads, those containing five are called pentads and those using six are hexads. Sometimes the terms trichord, tetrachord, pentachord, and hexachord are used—though these more usually refer to the pitch classes of any scale, not generally played simultaneously. Chords that may contain more than three notes include pedal point chords, dominant seventh chords, extended chords, added tone chords, tone cluster, and polychords.
are formed by two or more chords superimposed. Often these may be analysed as extended chords; examples include tertian, altered chord, secundal, quartal and quintal harmony and Tristan chord. Another example is when G7(119) (G–B–D–F–A–C) is formed from G major (G–B–D) and D major (D–F–A). A nonchord tone is a dissonant or unstable tone that lies outside the chord currently heard, though often resolving to a chord tone.
| +Roman Numerals and Scale Degrees for Major Keys |
| Tonic note |
| supertonic |
| mediant |
| subdominant |
| dominant |
| submediant |
| leading tone / subtonic |
In the key of C major, the first degree of the scale, called the tonic, is the note C itself. A C major chord, the major triad built on the note C (C–E–G), is referred to as the one chord of that key and notated in Roman numerals as I. The same C major chord can be found in other scales: it forms chord III in the key of A minor (A→B→C) and chord IV in the key of G major (G→A→B→C). This numbering indicates the chords's function.
Many analysts use lower-case Roman numerals to indicate minor triads and upper-case numerals for major triads, and degree and plus signs ( and ) to indicate diminished triad and respectively. Otherwise, all the numerals may be upper-case and the qualities of the chords inferred from the scale degree. Chords outside the scale can be indicated by placing a flat/sharp sign before the chord—for example, the chord E major in the key of C major is represented by III. The tonic of the scale may be indicated to the left (e.g., "F:") or may be understood from a key signature or other contextual clues. Indications of Inverted chord or added tones may be omitted if they are not relevant to the analysis. Roman numeral analysis indicates the root of the chord as a scale degree within a particular major key as follows.
| C | as G is a fifth above C and E is a third above C |
| E | as C is a sixth above E and G is a third above E |
| G | as E is a sixth above G and C is a fourth above G |
Further, a four-note chord can be inverted to four different positions by the same method as triadic inversion. For example, a G7 chord can be in root position (G as bass note); first inversion (B as bass note); second inversion (D as bass note); or third inversion (F as bass note).
Where are concerned, the term "inversion" is used slightly differently; to refer to stock fingering "shapes".
| Seconds: major second, minor second |
| Thirds: major third, minor third |
| Fourth: perfect fourth, augmented fourth |
| Fifths: diminished fifth, perfect fifth |
Many chords are a sequence of notes separated by intervals of roughly the same size. Chords can be classified into different categories by this size:
These terms can become ambiguous when dealing with non-, such as the Pentatonic scale or . The use of accidentals can also complicate the terminology. For example, the chord B–E–A appears to be quartal, as a series of diminished fourths (B–E and E–A), but it is enharmonically equivalent to (and sonically indistinguishable from) the tertian chord C–E–G, which is a series of major thirds (C–E and E–G).
A chord containing is called tritonic; one without tritones is atritonic. Harmonic tritones are an important part of dominant seventh chords, giving their sound a characteristic tension, and making the tritone interval likely to move in certain stereotypical ways to the following chord. Tritones are also present in diminished seventh and half-diminished chords.
A chord containing , whether appearing as or , is called hemitonic; one without semitones is anhemitonic. Harmonic semitones are an important part of major seventh chords, giving their sound a characteristic high tension, and making the harmonic semitone likely to move in certain stereotypical ways to the following chord. A chord containing major sevenths but no minor seconds is much less harsh in sound than one containing minor seconds as well.
Other chords of interest might include the
| Major triad | |
| Minor triad | |
| Augmented triad | |
| Diminished triad |
There are various types of seventh chords depending on the quality of both the chord and the seventh added. In chord notation the chord type is sometimes superscripted and sometimes not (e.g., Dm7, Dm7, and Dm7 are all identical).
| Diminished seventh | |
| Half-diminished seventh | |
| Minor seventh | |
| Minor major seventh | |
| Dominant seventh | |
| Major seventh | |
| Augmented seventh | |
| Augmented major seventh |
The upper structure or extensions, i.e., notes beyond the seventh, are shown here in red. This chord is just a theoretical illustration of this chord. In practice, a jazz pianist or jazz guitarist would not normally play the chord all in thirds as illustrated. Jazz voicings typically use the third, seventh, and then the extensions such as the ninth and thirteenth, and in some cases the eleventh. The root is often omitted from chord voicings, as the bass player will play the root. The fifth is often omitted if it is a perfect fifth. Augmented and diminished fifths are normally included in voicings. After the thirteenth, any notes added in thirds duplicate notes elsewhere in the chord; all seven notes of the scale are present in the chord, so adding more notes does not add new pitch classes. Such chords may be constructed only by using notes that lie outside the diatonic seven-note scale.
| Dominant ninth | |
| Eleventh chord | |
| Dominant thirteenth |
Other extended chords follow similar rules, so that for example maj9, maj11, and maj13 contain major seventh chords rather than dominant seventh chords, while m9, m11, and m13 contain minor seventh chords.
These are noted alongside the altered element. Accidentals are most often used with dominant seventh chords. Altered dominant seventh chords (C7alt) may have a minor ninth, a sharp ninth, a diminished fifth, or an augmented fifth. Some write this as C7+9, which assumes also the minor ninth, diminished fifth and augmented fifth. The augmented ninth is often referred to in blues and jazz as a blue note, being enharmonically equivalent to the minor third or tenth. When superscripted numerals are used the different numbers may be listed horizontally or vertically.
| Seventh augmented fifth | C E G B | |
| Altered chord | C E G B D | |
| Seventh sharp ninth | C E G B D | |
| Seventh augmented eleventh | C E G B D F | |
| Seventh diminished thirteenth | C E G B D F A | |
| Half-diminished seventh | C E G B |
can belong to either of two groups. One is first inversion chords and added sixth chords that contain a sixth from the root. The other group is inverted chords in which the interval of a sixth appears above a bass note that is not the root.
The major sixth chord (also called, sixth or added sixth with the chord notation 6, e.g., C6) is by far the most common type of sixth chord of the first group. It comprises a major triad with the added major sixth above the root, common in popular music. For example, the chord C6 contains the notes C–E–G–A. The minor sixth chord (min6 or m6, e.g., Cm6) is a minor triad, still with a major 6. For example, the chord Cm6 contains the notes C–E–G–A.
The augmented sixth chord usually appears in chord notation as its enharmonic equivalent, the seventh chord. This chord contains two notes separated by the interval of an augmented sixth (or, by inversion, a diminished third, though this inversion is rare). The augmented sixth is generally used as a dissonant interval most commonly used in motion towards a dominant chord in root position (with the root doubled to create the octave the augmented sixth chord resolves to) or to a tonic chord in second inversion (a tonic triad with the fifth doubled for the same purpose). In this case, the tonic note of the key is included in the chord, sometimes along with an optional fourth note, to create one of the following (illustrated here in the key of C major):
The augmented sixth family of chords exhibits certain peculiarities. Since they are not based on triads, as are seventh chords and other sixth chords, they are not generally regarded as having roots (nor, therefore, inversions), although one chord voicing of the notes is common (with the namesake interval inverted to create a diminished third).
The second group of sixth chords includes Inverted chord major and minor chords, which may be called sixth chords in that the six-three () and six-four () chords contain intervals of a sixth with the bass note, though this is not the root. Nowadays, this is mostly for academic study or analysis (see figured bass) but the Neapolitan sixth is an important example; a major triad with a flat supertonic scale degree as its root that is called a "sixth" because it is almost always found in first inversion. Though a technically accurate Roman numeral analysis would be II, it is generally labelled N6. In C major, the chord is notated (from root position) D, F, A. Because it uses chromatically , this chord is often grouped with the but the chord is not borrowed from the relative major or minor and it may appear in both major and minor keys.
| Add nine | |
| Add fourth | |
| Sixth chord | |
| Six-nine | — |
| Seven-six | — |
| Mixed-third |
The name suspended derives from an early polyphonic technique developed during the common practice period, in which a Stepwise motion melodic progress to a harmonically stable note in any particular part was often momentarily delayed, or suspended, by extending the duration of the previous note. The resulting unexpected dissonance could then be all the more satisfyingly resolved by the eventual appearance of the displaced note. In traditional music theory, the inclusion of the third in either chord would negate the suspension, so such chords would be called added ninth and added eleventh chords instead.
In modern lay usage, the term is restricted to the displacement of the third only, and the dissonant second or fourth no longer must be held over (prepared) from the previous chord. Neither is it now obligatory for the displaced note to make an appearance at all, though in the majority of cases the conventional stepwise resolution to the third is still observed. In post-bop and modal jazz compositions and improvisations, suspended seventh chords are often used in nontraditional ways: these often do not function as V chords and do not resolve from the fourth to the third. The lack of resolution gives the chord an ambiguous, static quality. Indeed, the third is often played on top of a sus4 chord. A good example is the jazz standard, "Maiden Voyage".
Extended versions are also possible, such as the seventh suspended fourth, which, with root C, contains the notes C–F–G–B and is notated as C7sus4. Csus4 is sometimes written Csus since the sus4 is more common than the sus2.
| Suspended chord | |
| Suspended chord | |
| Jazz sus |
When a chord is analysed as "borrowed" from another key it may be shown by the Roman numeral corresponding with that key after a slash. For example, V/V (pronounced "five of five") indicates the dominant chord of the dominant key of the present home-key. The dominant key of C major is G major so this secondary dominant is the chord of the fifth degree of the G major scale, which is D major (which can also be described as II relative to the key of C major, not to be confused with the supertonic ii namely D minor.). If used for a significant duration, the use of the D major chord may cause a modulation to a new key (in this case to G major).
Borrowed chords are widely used in Western popular music and rock music. For example, there are a number of songs in E major which use the III chord (e.g., a G major chord used in an E major song), the VII chord (e.g., a D major chord used in an E major song) and the VI chord (e.g., a C major chord used in an E major song). All of these chords are "borrowed" from the key of E minor.
The technique originated with jazz big bands and is a staple of trad jazz. A good example can be heard in the introduction to "The Charleston" by The Temperance Seven. "Bohemian Rhapsody" by the Rock music band Queen contains two occurrences of this "bell effect" in the middle section, as does the solo in Killer Queen starting at 1:48.
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