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Bass Chords?

#61
Mike Dimin said:
Herbie Flowers found that out a long time ago on Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side"
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Yea, no doubt!!! I guess I always fell to some type of a convention (i.e. must have 3 notes). That's where I say a big +1 to experimenting and listening to your inner artistic voice or whatever you want to call it.

Convention is great, but you can't break any ground that way, but I do believe it is needed in order to help that inner voice learn how to sing.
 
#62
Although chords have 3 notes, often time there is the psycho-acoustic effect of your brain filling in missing notes. It is one reason that you can play, for example, just the 3rd and b7 of a dominant chord and resolve it to the root and third of the tonic chord and absolutely know the function with only playing double stops. Try this

Play a B and an F together, then resolve them inwards to a C and an E
 
#65
cnltb said:
Triads are chords but they are incomplete, that's why I make this distinction.
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No, I'm afraid you're wrong. The distinction is incorrect. I'm not sure where you got that piece of misinformation, but triads are not incomplete at all, they are complete. All of the Western harmonic functions can be, and usually are, explicated by means of triads. Look at any decent harmony book.
 
#68
cnltb said:
I have done.

But it really doesn't make any difference at all to anyone, if you consider triads complete chords and I don't,does it? :)
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It depends. If you want to have an intellectual discussion on music theory than everyone has to have a common language. In western harmony, from the days of the reformation until today, 3 or more notes played at the same time is considered a chord

Mike Dimin
 
#69
cnltb said:
I have done.

But it really doesn't make any difference at all to anyone, if you consider triads complete chords and I don't,does it? :)
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In the privacy of your own mind, no. But yes, it does make a difference in a public setting, if someone comes for help and you are actually giving him or her wrong information, as you are in this thread.

I'm really not trying to bust on you, but when someone comes here to learn something, we owe it to them to try to give them the correct answers, right?
 
#70
Richard Lindsey said:
In the privacy of your own mind, no. But yes, it does make a difference in a public setting, if someone comes for help and you are actually giving him or her wrong information, as you are in this thread.

I'm really not trying to bust on you, but when someone comes here to learn something, we owe it to them to try to give them the correct answers, right?
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Let me clarify again - yes triads are chords but I simply view them as incomplete and call them triads rather than chords

A four note chord does give one a bigger(or more complete) picture of a harmonic context, than the triad does.
Hence my view of the triad as incomplete when viewed as chords.
That's all. :)
 
#71
cnltb said:
The info I gave will not hurt anyone and does work.

The important bit tho...
A four note chord does give one a bigger picture of a harmonic context than the triad does.

Hence my view of the triad as incomplete. :)
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Well, the OP won't die from it, true, but it's still wrong, no matter what your "view" is.

Can you find a single decent harmony reference that describes triads as incomplete chords?

The real problem is that you're presenting your, let's say, idiosyncratic opinion about chords as if it were a factual answer to a question that reflected the common understanding. That does hurt the OP, because it gives him a misunderstanding that could impair communication with other musicians. It would be as if you told him that in your view, the French word "chapeau" meant "cat."

EDIT: Let me clarify in turn. I'm not saying don't offer opinions. I'd have no right to, and I'm as opinionated as the next person anyway. I'm saying, identify your idiosyncratic views as just that and don't present them as fact, especially when they go against just about the whole body of accepted usage.
 
#72
cnltb said:
The important bit tho...
A four note chord does give one a bigger picture of a harmonic context than the triad does.

Hence my view of the triad as incomplete. :)
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IMO, it depends on whether that fourth note added is adding to the song or crowding that particular chord. Sometimes a chord doesn't need a fourth note added in order to fulfill the needs of the song. That's why, IMO, a 3 note chord is relevant.
 
#73
capnsandwich said:
IMO, it depends on whether that fourth note added is adding to the song or crowding that particular chord. Sometimes a chord doesn't need a fourth note added in order to fulfill the needs of the song. That's why, IMO, a 3 note chord is relevant.
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I am talking about I,III,V,VII
Sorry, perhaps I should have made this clearer.
 
#74
joshmat said:
I often take the third and play it as a 10 when my root resides on the E string. I feel it allows me to have the "girth" of the root on the bottom while adding some pretty color on the top as well!
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That would probably highlight the color of the third/tenth, which is a groovy thing to do. I generally seem to feel that the highest pitched note is the one that will stick out the most and the third is a good color note for the chord.
 
#77
cnltb said:
Let me clarify again - yes triads are chords but I simply view them as incomplete and call them triads rather than chords

A four note chord does give one a bigger(or more complete) picture of a harmonic context, than the triad does.
Hence my view of the triad as incomplete when viewed as chords.
That's all. :)
Click to expand...

+1

I do agree that triads are chords but they are incompletes regarding their functions in a harmonic context.
If we have 3 triads like C-G and D it is impossible to know which one is the I without knowing which has the b7 in it. So, the I could be any of them. Same with a set of minor chords, we need to know which has the minor 7 to know if they function as 1 or something else.

Triads are great chords but alone they don't establish key centers or functions.

Sly
 
#78
Look. I know, theory is useful. I know a lot of theory myself. But really. Who the hell cares whether or not a "power chord" is a chord or not. We all know what it SOUNDS like. THAT IS WHAT MATTERS! What you call it does NOT matter. At all. If you think it matters, you have put theory before music and therefore are no longer a musician. There is absolutely no reason to draw the distinctions you are drawing. Besides, none of this applies outside of western music and western theory. Music is music, theory is only there to describe it.

How I hate Western music.
 
#79
slybass3000 said:
+1

I do agree that triads are chords but they are incompletes regarding their functions in a harmonic context.
If we have 3 triads like C-G and D it is impossible to know which one is the I without knowing which has the b7 in it. So, the I could be any of them. Same with a set of minor chords, we need to know which has the minor 7 to know if they function as 1 or something else.

Triads are great chords but alone they don't establish key centers or functions.

Sly
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Sorry, Sly, have to disagree. This is quite mistaken. Why do you think harmonic functions are taught with triads? For instance, this entire discussion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatonic_function

The reason is that they are sufficient in themselves, and there is nothing "incomplete" about them.. The idea that there have to be 7ths in everything is--forgive me--a jazz guy's hangup, and not the way things work at a fundamental level. There are literally THOUSANDS of songs and pieces based on triads where harmonic function is easily apparent without needing sevenths to make it work. Sevenths are great, but they're like adding a deck to a house: the deck might make it better and give it extra value, but it doesn't make the house more complete as a house, because you already had a complete house before you started.

The way you know the functions of triads is by watching how they act. It's not at all impossible to look at a piece containing C, G, and D and figure out which one is the I. You just look at where the action is and what's happening.
 

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