sabato 16 novembre 2024

"Yeah, just as well he (Richard) is not God or none of us would be here." said Robert of the Holy Rosary.

 Well, certainly not these two.

They'd be better off on Pen Island.

Okay, back to music theory.

Let's go back to C major, C D E F G A B (I've left the octave C out). The chord of C major is made up from the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes - C E G. If you added the 7th note (B) you'd get a C major 7th chord (Cmaj7). Chords can have extra notes added. C6 (C E G A), Cmaj9 (C E G B D) Cmaj9#11 (C E G B D F#). 

There are FIVE main types of chords - major, minor, dominant 7, augmented and diminished.

Here are basic forms of these chords, including the 7th - 

C major 7th: C E G B

C minor 7th: C Eb G Bb

C dominant 7th: C E G Bb

C augmented 7th: C E G# Bb

C diminished 7th: C Eb Gb A

A few notes (no pun intended): In the key of C the minor chord would generally start on the 6th note of the C major scale (A) and the dominant 7th chord would start on the 5th note - Am7 = A C E G, G7 = G B D F.  m=minor and G7 = G dominant 7th.

If you start a major scale on another one of its notes (eg. D E F G A B C D or G A B C D E F) you get a mode. There are seven of these and they all have a name. You can pull a 7th chord off each mode - notes used are 1 3 5 7.

1) C D E F G A B C - Ionian mode / Cmaj7 chord

2) D E F G A B C D - Dorian mode / Dm7 chord

3) E F G A B C D E - Phrygian mode / Em7 chord

4) F G A B C D E F - Lydian mode / Fmaj7#4 chord

5) G A B C D E F G - Mixolydian mode / G7 chord

6) A B C D E F G A - Aeolian mode / Am7 chord

7) B C D E F G A B - Locrian mode / Bm7b5 chord

There are a few scales that are a bit outside of the modal system. There are the chromatic scale, that we've looked at, the melodic minor scale, the harmonic minor scale, the augmented scale, the diminished scale and the diminished/whole tone scale. There are a few little tricks for using these diminished and augmented scales, but I'm simply going to show all these scales starting on C - the two minors are closely related to the Aeolian mode.

  • Melodic minor - up A B C D E F# G# A down A G F E D C B A
  • Harmonic minor - A B C D E F G# A
  • Augmented (whole tone) scale - C D E F# G# Bb C
  • Diminished scale (starting on a tone) - C D Eb F Gb Ab A B C
  • Diminished scale (starting on a semitone) - C Db Eb E F# G A Bb C
  • Diminished/whole tone scale - C Db Eb E F# G# Bb C
Have fun working through these.

If you have any questions, you could try The Curmudgeon (aka Peter) he HAS played the bagpipes.

2 commenti:

THE CURMUDGEON ha detto...

"The Lord giveth and he taketh away."

Well, if it was comments being talked about I guess it's true.

Rob ha detto...

these two posts inspired me to get out my fiddle and play some classics before improvising on 'all of me'. Playing without accompaniment I was able to wander from the charts but it was exhilarating.
I must start working on the chords you outline...