Month: September 2022

Importance of Chords

Last week I had hopefully established the simplicity of a scale. I acknowledge that I have studied music for over half of my life, so I apologize if I breeze too easily over any topics within this blog, such as last week’s introduction to scales.

For every note on the scale, a chord can be made, which in its simplest form is 3 notes played at the same time. The chosen notes that make up a chord is typically every other value in a repeating cycle. For example, a 1st scale degree would include the first, third, and fifth note (skips two and four, or every other note). A chord on the fourth degree, on the other hand, would have the fourth, sixth, and second note of the scale. Hopefully you get the pattern.

In the above example, the fourth chord would have the second note in the octave above the 2nd note listed on the scale. To illustrate an octave, check out the image below.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/

The image above illustrates the octave. The note shown, is a C, which in the previous week was given the scale degree of one. On the music staff, octaves will be 3 lines and one space apart, as shown above. Both notes when played would be the same note, but one would be higher in pitch than the other. If you have trouble visualizing this, try singing to yourself “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. The first two notes (Some…Where) are an example of the octave. This is how music can be divided into only 7 notes and scales made up of only 8 notes.

Octaves also allow for chords of a much higher scale degree to occur, such as a seven chord which would include the seventh note, the first note, and the third note.

When you play multiple chords in a row, it becomes very easy to write a melody if one understands the relationship between the chords played. Chords are the basis on how many songs sound nearly the same and how for example, you can sing Don’t Stop Believing and Can You Feel the Love Tonight at the same time.

An Introduction to Scales

You know that song that is trapped in your head?

Yeah, the one you can’t forget and are resenting my existence for bringing up that very tune?

For most successful music, there is truly a logical reason why that music gets stuck in your head. Although not apparent at first until you hear and recognize the patterns, most music has a simplistic structure that will keep you hooked so that the massive music writing corporations can keep you buying their music.

But for me to illustrate some of the simple ways hit songs keep your attention, I need to update you on some basic music theory jargon and explanations as to how music works in a way that some of you may understand it (I acknowledge some readers may have greater musical backgrounds than others).

To start off in a simple way, I think it is best if I introduce the musical scale. Without going into the importance of keys in music, every scale in music can be defined as eight ascending notes labeled in a way called a scale degree. For the sake of simplicity, the scale will be a major scale since the analysis of major scales is more simplistic.

Source: meggrace.com

As you can see, there are 8 notes in the scale, each note getting higher up on the 5 lines (known as a music staff). The top note on the scale, which is the same note as the bottom, is truly just a higher pitch of the first note which is why each is labeled with a one. This may not make sense now, but hopefully, at some point throughout this blog it will.

For each instance of a note on the scale, there is a number to represent the scale degree. The first note is lower than the second, which is lower than the third, you get the gist. Through the structure of this seemingly simplistic scale, we will find in the upcoming weeks just how popular songs stay with you after you hear them.