Major, minor and extended chords on the keyboard and piano:

Music Theory Practice part 2 – Extended chords:

Just some more music theory rules. You will need to have some music theory knowledge or you could always book workshop 4 of my Logic 9 Music Production course. These notes are for recap purposes.

7 chords have the 7^th note in the scale FLATTENED

9 chords have the 7^th note in the scale FLATTENED and the 9th ADDED

11 chords have the 7^th note in the scale FLATTENED, the 9th ADDED and the 11 ADDED

13 chords have the 7^th note in the scale FLATTENED, the 9, 11 and 13 ADDED

Major 7 chords have the 7^th note in the scale ADDED

Major 9 chords have the 7^th note in the scale and 9^t note in the scale ^h ADDED

Major 11 chords have the 7^th, note in the scale 9^th note in the scale and 11^th note in the scale ADDED

Major 13 chords have the 7^th, note in the scale 9^th note in the scale,11^th, note in the scale and 13^th note in the scale ADDED

Suspended 2 = add the 2^nd note in the scale and suspend (lose) the 3^rd (mediant)

Suspended 4 = add the 4^th note in the scale and suspend (lose) the 3^rd (mediant)

Always count the root.

You can add notes to chords:

C add 11 you would add the 11^th NOTE only

C add 13 you would add the 13^th NOTE only.

Augmented is when you sharpen the 5^th (dominant)

Diminished is when you flatten the 3^rd (mediant) and the 5^th (dominant)

Root is always the tonic. If it’s the first note it is called the major root. We will mainly be working like this in this course. Don’t worry about “tonic”, “mediant” and “dominant” now. The chances are that you will never need to know and most hit song writers haven’t heard of them either! I just mentioned them in case some of you were interested and wanted to look them up one day.

http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano/

A ‘+’ sign means sharpen and ‘-‘ means flatten the note.

Using the piano chord URL to see your major scales, work out the following chords:

Am, Gb7, E11, F sharp M-9, BbM9-5, CM maj7

To work out your major scales you can use the following rule starting on the root and working your way up in these steps:

Tone, Tone, Semitone, Tone, Tone, Tone, and semitone.

Now, work out the following chords WITHOUT using the piano chord URL.

Cm b9, Eb7, Fsharp M11, Db major7 add13, EbM7-13

Some of you may want to talk about voicing and inversions and we can later in the course. For now, here’s a brief summery below:

The terms “voicing” and “inversions” are often used interchangeably. However, the term inversions refers to the lowest note sounding in the chord (whether it’s the root or not). A chord with the root as the lowest note is said to be in root position; with the 3^rd as the lowest note it’s called first inversion; with the 5^th as the lowest note it’s called the second inversion; and with the 7^th as the lowest note it’s called the third inversion.

To play in a different key the easy way on the keyboard, you have a transpose button. So, to play your chord you’ve written in C and you want it to be played in D, you press your transpose button UP twice to go UP two semitones. To play your chord sequence you’ve written in C and you want it to be played in A flat, you press you transpose DOWN button four times so you go DOWN four semitones and so on.

Chords in  the key of:

http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/chords/chordchart.htm

Relative minor is the minor chord which uses most of the same notes as the major scale. It has a lot in common with it’s relative. The same rule applies in reverse so C major is the relative major of the Am and Am is the relative minor of the C major. The reason it sounds ‘minor’ is because of the starting position (or root note) is different and is in a different place so in perspective it sounds ‘minor’

Look at the chords chorus of hotel California while I play it:

Chorus :

G                        D

Welcome to the Hotel California.

Em                   Bm7

Such a lovely place, such a lovely face

G                               D

Plenty of room at the Hotel California

Em                                      F#

Any time of year (any time of year) you can find it here

Listen to how the G and Em ‘relate’ to each other and the D and Bm7 ‘relate’ to each other too.

To work out a chord sequence by ear, I firstly figure out what the root note is for each chord and write it down. You can usually tell which note is the root note because the root note sounds the most like the whole chord! Then you have to figure out if it is a major or minor chord by listening and experimenting. Most of you should be able to do this with some practice and a bit of patience!

Music theory practice, chord progressions, keys and scales:

A music production college I worked at in London a while back asked me to teach a Music Theory and Music Composition course with chord progressions, keys & scales. I know my way around a fretboard of a guitar and used to play in jazz bands before I discovered turntables, so I thought I give it a whirl!

I looked on the internet for ages for good simple rules for chords, scales and extended chords but couldn’t find anything that I thought would be easy for the students to understand, so I wrote my own. These are recap notes written so students can refer to them after my lecture so you probably need to have some knowledge to begin with or you could always book workshop 4 of my Logic 9 Music Production course.

Working out basic chords quickly using semitones:

Major:             Root + 4 (3^rd) + 3 ( 5^th)

Minor:             Root + 3 (3^rd) + 4 (5^th)

Dim:                Root + 3 (3^rd) + 3 (5^th)

Augmented            Root + 4 (3^rd) + 4 (5^th)

To flatten a note you go down one semitone and to sharpen you go up a semitone.

Important:-

-                  Semitones are always the next key up or down on the keyboard; black notes AND white notes included. COUNT THEM ALL! We use semitones in the example above.

-                  Tones are two semitones (really?!) or two steps on the keys so a tone up from the note of C is D. A tone up from an E is an F sharp.

-                  When I say notes, I am referring to notes in a scale so you only count those. You will need to skip notes that are not in the scale. You will probably need to refer to a major scale chart or the first url in this work sheet to figure out which notes to count while working out more complex (extended) chords explained in the example below.

-                  Start off working out extended chords which are C. ie C11 or Cmaj7 etc.

A brief rule which you can use without the need for a chart is:

Root, +tone, +tone, +semitone, +tone, +tone, +tone (and +semitone to resolve back to the root up one octave)

For ‘Sound of Music’ fans, the notes should sound like:

Doh, ray, me, far, so, la, ti, doh!

Note that the “Doh” and the “doh” are the same note but one octave apart.

Okay, that’s enough of Music Theory for now. I will do extended chords next time…

Logic pro 9 Environment Chord Memorizer: Musical tips:

One object I have in my music production environment click and ports layer is the Chord Memorizer, which can be a great music trick for DJ’s with limited musical skills.

The Chord Memorizer can be a useful music production music theory fix for DJ’s if you just want to quickly put some chords together which will have a good chance of going well with each other. I usually set it up so C plays chord one, D plays chord two, E plays chord three right up to B which will play chord seven. See this if you are unfamiliar with the chord number system. The Roman numerals are along the top.

In a nutshell, you can trigger all the chords in the key of C by using one finger on any white key on the keyboard from C to B which correspond to chord 1 (C) to Chord seven (B dim). All the chords in the same key have a great chance of sounding right with each other.

Chord Memorizer: Musical tips and tricks for DJs

So, first you crack open Chord Memorizer (windows – environment – click and ports – new – chord memorizer) Double click on it to bring up the double keyboard, Choose the note C on the upper keyboard. On the lower keyboard choose the triad of C major by selecting C, E and G like the pic on the left. Double click on the picture to make it bigger.

Next choose D on the upper keyboard and then select notes D, F and A. This will make a D minor triad. Next, choose E on the top and the notes E, G and B on the bottom, this makes an E minor triad. Notice that all the notes are white notes and equal distance in width apart. This applies right up to the B which will be a B dim so repeat until you get there. Now set the key limit on the left to the full range from C-2 to G8. This just tells the environment to use the entire keyboard.

Okay, now you can play all the chords in the key of C. If you up one in the transposition box (under the Key Limit), you’re now playing all the chords in the key of C sharp! If you go up ANOTHER 2 then you’re playing all the chords in the key of Eb. Eb is a hard key to play in – you’re a musical genius!

Here is a handy chart for commonly used chords in the relevant key. And here is a very useful tool you can use to see what notes go into chords and scales in all keys on the keyboard. I used both when I taught Song Writing and Music Theory.

Don’t forget to turn it off by bypassing it using a cable switcher when you have finished; you don’t want to be triggering a kick drum, open hat and snare when you’re trying to find a shaker in your drum kit! See here for more on that. Please don’t think now you know this trick, there’s no need to bother learning an instrument; Chord Memorizer is just a trick for people who quickly need to string a few chords together.

Before I get letters, I am aware that some Dj’s (like myself before I wound down) can play an instrument or two, but if I took a percentage of the DJ’s who have come to me for help, there’s no way we’d be reaching double figures. I would’ve thought we’d get similar stats for musicians who can DJ!