What do you call power chords with chord symbols?

[Christian Miller]

Christian Miller?

Paging Christian miller.

Christian Miller, please report to the thread for an unsolicited lecture on modern use cases for figured bass notation.

Figures are for n00bs


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[Christian Miller]

In seriousness, I do actually support the writing of charts in a format that the musicians you’re working with can actually read.

The two staff lead sheet thing Sco talks about learning from Steve Swallow (IIRC) is functionally the same thing…

(If I were Steve Coleman I’d demand my musicians learn to read a completely new notation.)


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[Christian Miller]

Wouldn't most people assume that that's a superfluous notation for playing a regular triad, i.e. wouldn't you want to make it clear that the third is not to be played?

No

Chord symbol use is normative. This is the normative use of the ‘5’.

Although maybe you suffer a cognitive break every time someone asks you to play a m6 chord. ;-)

That said I have also seen eg D (no 3rd) in charts too. The 5 notation is more modern. it’s also concise.

It’s not a subject for the pedantic, as I have found.


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[Bop Head]

[...] The two staff lead sheet thing Sco talks about learning from Steve Swallow (IIRC) is functionally the same thing… [...]

What is that? Like the original real book?

[Christian Miller]

So, is there a chord symbol for a 4th "chord"? - C4 (C-F) rather than C5 (C-G), I'm thinking of Debussy's chord = C-C(8va)-F

Maybe C4/C ? - although that would require a footnote on the lead sheet to explain that the /C is an octave lower.

I don’t see that notation as standard but I would get used to it quickly I think

It’s wild to me that quartal harmony is basically a cliche in jazz these days and yet there’s afaik no standardised symbols for it


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[Christian Miller]

What is that? Like the original real book?

Yeah for some charts that’s right. Piano staff, symbols in the middle. Afaik those are the ones that are from the composers lead sheets, many of those composers were Berklee faculty at the time.


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[Mick-7]

I presume Christian means charts like those on Steve Swallow's website - Arise, Her Eyes - etc.

Steve Swallow Lead Sheets

Carla Bley Lead Sheets

[Christian Miller]

There’s tons of stuff like that in the OG Real Book. Don’t know how much of that survived the cut to sixth edition. How many cats have ever tried to busk Peaches en Regalia on a jam, I wonder?


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[RJVB]

Chord symbol use is normative. This is the normative use of the ‘5’.

If you say so! I had to ask, as this was probably not the case for figured bass (which we were also talking about). I could ask my friend though...

Although maybe you suffer a cognitive break every time someone asks you to play a m6 chord. ;-)

Fortunately no one ever asks me to play a whatever chord, but having been a member of a laboratory group called MSIS I can think of 1 or 2 ways to play that kind of chord (and dischord). But you couldn't know that and were probably thinking of this

It’s not a subject for the pedantic, as I have found.

We still talking about jazz here?

[henryrobinett]

Wow. I got my answer, which I knew but had forgotten - 5. I didn’t know this turned into such a thread. Maybe I’ll let you know how it goes at our next rehearsal. I think it’s a cross between King Crimson meets McCoy Tyner! Lol. I’ll let you know what my more educated pianist and saxophonist say about these chords.


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[Christian Miller]

If you say so! I had to ask, as this was probably not the case for figured bass (which we were also talking about). I could ask my friend though...:

As I understand it, 5 is not a standard figure (the 5 3 chord is implicit when there are no figures.) However you do see it in partimenti. Usually it’s identifying a melody note.

Bare 5ths are played as a cadential resolution esp in Monteverdi etc I think, but figuring is rare on thorough bass parts of that era generally.

But the friend in question might be able to expand on that


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[henryrobinett]

This isn’t figured bass. Thats an antiquated system I avoided in first year music school. And power chords are not chords. I always taught them as a guitar player bastardization. But 1-5 is a powerful sound.


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[RJVB]

power chords are not chords

Oh?

[henryrobinett]

Oh?

Chords have to have three notes. Power chords don’t. Root and 5th. Dyad.


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[RJVB]

No they don't, check the definition I linked to (or the one given by the WP).

But you're welcoming to change the title of this thread if you wish to stick to another definition...

Besides, we actually hear 3 notes when these are played correctly: the difference tone of a pure 5th is the octave below the fundamental, but maybe you don't consider 1-5-8 a chord either...

[pamosmusic]

No they don't, check the definition I linked to (or the one given by the WP).

But you're welcoming to change the title of this thread if you wish to stick to another definition...

I go in for the broad definition like you, but there are lots of definitions that say they have to be three notes or more.

Doesn’t particularly matter, but it’s useful to have that three-note thing as a distinction because we need all three to distinguish one tonal area from another. I don’t know. One of those hills not worth dying on if you ask me.

[RJVB]

One of those hills not worth dying on if you ask me.

If you look at the definitions in the OD it would seem that requiring more than 2 notes is a more modern development. I see no reason to make this distinction; there are specific names for the different species of chords already.

I'm not planning to die on this hill either (if only it were that simple ) but will stick to my own terminology (and statements like "power chords are not chords" just sound like what a GNU script kiddie might say ).

[pamosmusic]

I'm not planning to die on this hill either (if only it were that simple )

Ah yes, well this is a thorny issue that cuts to the heart of the what it means to be human.

[henryrobinett]

My understanding has ALWAYS BEEN the smallest unit of chord is the triad. It doesn’t have to be root-3-5. It can be 1-4-5, 123, but it has to be three. Now if things have changed in the last 40 years, my bad. But a dyad is not a chord, necessarily. An interval is part of a chord. Guitar players came up with “power chords” at the time of The Kinks, “You Really Got Me.” I don’t think they were the first, but almost. Whether you can hear another harmonic is not the issue. There are harmonics all over the place in intervals that aren’t written and aren’t played.

Edit - wait. You’re applying a source definition from 1578 1655 or something. Any modern dictionary I look up has my definition of three or more notes. Last a saw I wasn’t playing lute for the court at Hampton Court for Henry VIII.

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[henryrobinett]

chord1
noun
a group of (typically three or more) notes sounded together, as a basis of harmony.
"the triumphal opening chords"

Oxford.


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[Christian Miller]

I tend to think of three parts as being necessary for chords, which I think is the usual standard definition. But that’s also based on a very traditional European common practice notion of what harmony is with all the baggage that entails.

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[henryrobinett]

I tend to think of three parts as being necessary for chords, which I think is the usual standard definition. But that’s also based on a very traditional European common practice notion of what harmony is with all the baggage that entails.

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I don’t how traditional European it is. As far as I know it’s still taught like that in music schools, American, jazz. That’s where I taught. Colleges. No one ever came to correct me.


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[Christian Miller]

I don’t how traditional European it is. As far as I know it’s still taught like that in music schools, American, jazz. That’s where I taught. Colleges. No one ever came to correct me.


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western harmony is built around the triad, but of course not all harmonic systems are. But afaik this is a concept from European music theory. Which makes sense. Two notes make an interval, three or more a chord, which goes back to counterpoint. Fine.

That said, I think I’d question the notion of their being ‘correct terminology.’ There is only terminology in use by certain groups of people and the only issue that I can see is not to be understood.

Power chord is a widely understood vernacular term in practical popular music making. If you want to call it ‘organum’ or ‘parallel doubling at the fifth’ or something, or a power chord a dyad, that’s all fine, but these are all more academic terms for the same thing understood by every teenage guitar strangler.

Anyway every article I’ve ever read on power chords starts with a note about how they are not really chords haha… so I think it’s a known thing. And quite mainstream I’d say. So, sure.

Anyway as usual not quite sure what RJVB is getting at.

[Christian Miller]

For Barry Harris btw a chord was four notes. Three notes was a triad.

An arpeggio otoh was specifically a broken triad doubled at the octave.

So yer all wrong haha ;-)


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[Christian Miller]

I go in for the broad definition like you, but there are lots of definitions that say they have to be three notes or more.

Doesn’t particularly matter, but it’s useful to have that three-note thing as a distinction because we need all three to distinguish one tonal area from another. I don’t know. One of those hills not worth dying on if you ask me.

Nonsense. There is a clear and obvious solution.

T H U N D E R D O M E


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