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We can describe chords as being open or closed. A closed chord is one where the notes are compact, usually all compressed within one octave. An open chord is one that has space between the notes, so that notes in the chord are doubled, or could be doubled in different octaves.
Close harmony is most commonly associated with Barbershop Quartets:
The presence of a Bass, Baritone and Two Tenors makes it best to arrange the chord voicing closely, and provides for a very rich sound.
Open harmony is much more common, and it tends to provide a more open, and airy sound:
On the guitar, we can play both types of harmony. For example, you can play a closed E triad on the 432 strings by playing 4th string, 2nd fret; 3rd string, 1st fret, and 2nd string, open. This is EG#B, a root position triad, in close harmony.
Now, drop the E an octave to the open 6th string, and raise the G# an octave to the first string fourth fret. So you are playing 6th open; 2nd open; 1st, fourth fret. This is also an E triad, but fairly open voicing. You could go further by playing the G# another octave higher at the 16th fret.
Deciding which strings to play when you are playing a chord can make a huge difference in the kind of sound you want to have. There will be more on this in later posts. For now, though, we will be dealing only with close chords.
INVERSIONS
If you remember, if we move the lower note of an interval up an octave, that is called inverting the interval. Thus, with the interval C to E, which is a major third, if we move the C up an octave, the inversion is a minor 6th.
Chords can also be inverted. This happens by taking the lowest note of the chord and raising it an octave. Thus if you have a major triad, CEG, the first inversion of this triad is EGC. The first inversion has the third in the bass. If we repeat the process, the second inversion is GCE. The second inversion has the fifth in the bass. If we repeat the process a third time, we are back to the root triad.
The same applies equally well for a minor triad. Take G minor, which is G Bb D. First inversion: Bb D G. Second inversion D G Bb. And for a diminished triad: take Edim – E G Bb. 1st inversion: G Bb E, 2nd inversion Bb E G.
The same idea does not apply well to augmented triads for a very simple reason. Take a C augmented triad: C E G#. If we invert this, we have E G# C. C is the same as a B#, and E G# B# is simply an E augmented triad. So, when we invert an augmented triad, we simply get another augmented triad. I suppose its possible to consider this an inversion, but I am not aware of any situation where people actually do this. So, for practical purposes, there is no such thing as an inverted augmented triad.
As with the root triads, there are a very limited number of ways to play the inverted triads on the guitar, and again they vary by string set. 654 and 543 triads will always have the same shapes. 432 and 321 triads will have their own shapes. This means that you will need to learn three shapes for each of the different triads.
The good news is that you already know them all; you just don’t know that you do. Take, for example a G barre chord on the third fret. The 543 strings are a second inversion triad, the 432 strings are a root position triad, and the 321 strings are a first inversion triad. You can try this with any barre chord that you know. If you don’t have a repeated octave in a three string set, then you have one of the triads. If the third is in the bass, then its first inversion. Fifth, then its second inversion.
I have attached a pdf of the shapes of each of the inverted triads. First line is Major 1st inversion, Second line is Minor 1st inversion, Third line is Major 2nd inversion, 4 fourth is minor 2nd inversion, fifth is diminished 1st inversion, and 2nd is diminished second inversion.
To give you a sense that all of this might be worthwhile, take a look at this video of Donald Fagen talking about and playing a bit of Chain Lightning, from the Can’t Buy a Thrill album. In his right hand, he is basically playing nothing but triads (mostly first inversion major triads to start). But they become interesting when moved against a bass note. Also, interesting to note that he translates at one point what he’s doing into “music nomenclature”, but its clearly not how he’s thinking about it. Lot’s of Steely Dan music works on this idea of moving triads over a bass that wouldn’t typically be considered “right.”
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Nice read, I was watching few recent tutorials about Triads,, lot of country players use them triads with hybrid picking..question though.. all these terms closed /open chords.strum a full chord ..it is closed ..play individually the notes of a chord is the arpeggio of a closed chord?.. so wouldn’t a triad/three notes of a chord be the same thing as an appegio ? only dif a triad can be played as a closed chord? Understand the octaves to make sense for drop chords right? I didn’t really thoroughly understand drop 2 and drop 3 chords but believe it is about 7th chords with four intervals 1357 dropping the root using the octaves? Anyway, I’m learning from your reads thanks Duffy
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An arpeggio is just a chord whose notes are played in melodic sequence as opposed to at the same time. You can arpeggiate both closed and open voicing. A triad is simply a third stacked on top of another third (in root position).
I didn’t go into either figured bass or dropped voicings. In Baroque music, composers often used a notation called figured bass. They would write out the bass line, and indicate the harmony by using numbers to say what intervals should be played above the bass, if the bass was something other than the root. Thus, a first inversion C triad would be written as E36. (The three and six would be in superscript). This says that the C is in the bass, and that you play the third and the sixth above it – thus, E G C.
Drop voicings come from jazz, and they are sort of backwards from figured bass. You count the voices down from the top, and you drop the numbered voice down an octave. Thus if you had a Cdrop2, in close harmony the C chord is CEG. The second voice from the top is the E, so you drop it an octave and you end up with ECG. This is an open first inversion triad.
As I understand it, drop voicings were originally a way for jazz pianists to make sense of how to play underneath horn charts. You also typically want to drop a voice near the melody voice (at the top), so the melody will be allowed to shine. Guitarists also talk about drop voicings all the time, but its not the way that I learned chords, so I constantly have to translate what they are saying into what makes sense to me. And yes, drop voicings make a lot more sense when you are talking about 7th chords or chords with more extensions.
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Don, at least you know what your asking lol.. wiki linked “Baroque music” thought it was classical terminology . I suspect classical guitar symbolically a bit different from jazz but to be sure I guessed correctly, i too want to understand the answer to your question. .. Just finished watching Brian’s throwback Thursday EP 164 ..Anyway I can understand the language/math on the fret board is fine as I practice.. recognize all the notes on every string up the neck and it works well enough. intervals minor major 7th chords etc.
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Don, in any music you see for playing, you will be unlikely to see figured bass. It was a notation used in the 16 and 1700s for keyboard players, who were expected to improvise on a structure that appeared over a bass line.
Here’s a video on beginning figured bass, which shows the sort of thing that you might expect to have to do in a first semester class in classical theory. I never did this.I learned a little bit about this way of notation when I was learning about voice leading. Later, I tried working my way through John Mehegan’s brilliant books on jazz, and for reasons I never fully understood, he used figured bass a lot. Take a look for example at page 28, which is the beginning of the chapter on the harmonic vocabulary. (For those of you who think that what I’m doing here is dense and incomprehensible, you should take a close look at Mohegan’s book to see how dense this sort of thing really can be. )
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~gross/Mehegan/John%20Mehegan%20-%20Improvising,%20Jazz%20Piano.pdf
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Duffy thank you for your extremely intresting post. I am just starting down the road of music theory. I purchased the guitar wheel which we mentioned a while back and one of its abilities is to give you the 1st 2cn and 3rd inversion triads. So this is a timely post for me.
We are very lucky to have you as a member and your great kindness in taking time to diseminate some of ypur very considerable musical learning freely to us all. Again thank you. JohnStrat -
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Thanks, Duffy, another reason I’m glad I was born in the 20th century.
They either really had no idea about concision or they did it that way to maintain a small, elite crew of musicians who could afford the education.
Don D.
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Thanks, Duffy, another reason I’m glad I was born in the 20th century.
They either really had no idea about concision or they did it that way to maintain a small, elite crew of musicians who could afford the education.
This kind of notation looks strange to us, but its not significantly more difficult than reading a chord chart. Amin11/E Ab13#5b9 Gmaj9. Do those really make a lot more sense. Nor are they much more concise.
Also, remember that tonal harmony as such did not exist when this notation was invented. Musicians thought in terms of individual lines and polyphony, and not so much in terms of chords. Thus, it makes sense that a composer would write a bass line and give some guidance to improvisors about what sort of intervals he expected to hear above that line.
To me the drop voicing idea is at least as opaque. Take a Cmaj9 drop 2. The notes in this chord are C E G B and D. You might double the C in the octave. Now which is the note that will be dropped an octave. The most compact way of writing this chord is CDEGB – thus the G would be dropped. But in that case, the D is a second and not a ninth (and I don’t know if that matters). Reading it as a ninth, you would drop the B. Unless of course you doubled the octave, then you would drop the C, which ends up making no difference.
I’m sure there is a convention for this, but to understand the dropped notation, you have to instantly know the notes in a chord, know their most compact form, know which note is the second or nth from the top note in that voicing, and then lower it an octave. I’m sure people get good at this, but it doesn’t strike me as being any easier than figured bass.
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A figured bass notation is about the amount of info that can be given with the least symbols
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Another system more common these days is the “Nashville Number System”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_number_system
CM9 C E G B D drop 2 voicing would be B C E G D maybe a better name would be Cadd9/B (that semitone in the bass is still BAD) If I saw this I would play the CM7 as a drop 2 putting the G in the bass and assume they intended the 9 to be added.
Ab13#5b9 ??? you keep naming chords like this I’m calling the Chord Police 😉 Luckily this chord is impossible to play on my guitar.
Gordo
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Thanks, Duffy! Much of that just puts me off because it’s too time-consuming to pick up now, but I suppose if I were trained from a young age it would be as easy as the fly crap notation. So it did serve to keep that particular knowledge among those who were trained to use it.
That Ab13#5b9 isn’t so bad Ab, C, E natural, Gb, Bbb, F. Haven’t tried it on the guitar but it does look daunting for that purpose.
My main question about the E36 is with E in the bass and G and C above, why would I call that a C chord? Did they regularly put thirds in the bass? Of course, I see CEG, but that inversion sounds more like part of something else than a C. If the chord police show up, they should look there.
Don D.
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Don, if the notes you are playing are CE and G, you are playing a C triad. That will always be true, no matter how those three notes are voiced. If the notes are in the order E G C, its a C triad, 1st inversion. Put an A beneath it, and its an Amin7 (which is simply a C triad with an A in the bass.) Put something else in the bass and you have a different chord. First inversion chords get played all the time. Not every bassist spends his life thumping the root and fifth.
Gordo, you are right. One of the reasons for writing the figured bass is was that it was much faster to write and to copy by hand than full notation. It also allowed a degree of freedom that full notation did not.
The semitone in the bass sounds bad in isolation on that voicing. Listen to some George Shearing solos, and you will see that sort of badness can sound sublime in context. He was a master at doing full solos with chords all voiced within an octave, which is called locked hands technique because the bass and the top voice double the melody.
As for that Ab chord, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it, but guitarists have to play things like that all the time, and of course it can’t be done. That’s one of the difficulties of the guitar. For that one, if you had enough time, you could retune the guitar. Or slap on a single string capo…
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I sat down to see if it could be done on guitar, and its simple Sixth string 4th fret (Ab) root; Fifth string open (A) b9; fourth string fourth fret (Gb) b7; third string fifth fret (C) 3rd; second string sixth fret (F) 13th; Sixth string open (E) #11.
The b9 is cheating here, because its actually a second. It’s also really weird to have a chord with two half steps in it. But it can be done 🙂
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thing is when watching blues players ..i mean the bending is always there in blues..so how does classic theory work for those emphasizing on playing the blues ? I think bending notes into notes is difficult to script/notate be it tab or whatever,, blues is really all feel from what i gather.Glad for Brian’s videos and slow explanations for sure!
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Don
The problem with an Ab13#5b9 is that there is three semitones clustered together, the E F Gb. Hard to resolve this tension. Add the possible semitone between the third and the eleventh and the root and the flat nine makes this a voicing problem even on keyboards. A search yielded very little for this chord, most list it with no use or voicing suggested. It appears to be a tritone sub, making this a ii V I progression.
The top three strings of a E shape block chord make a triad with the third as lowest voice. Included is an attachment of a common chord cycle that uses the third in the bass. It creates a moving bass line.
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Hey Duffy and Gordo, thanks for taking the time to explain.
Having waited this long to find out about those other methods, I’m kind of resistant. It just seems strange to me to measure intervals to the lowest note, not the tonic. But either makes equal sense, if that’s what you’re accustomed to. Fortunately, for me it’s curiosity, I doubt I’ll see it written like that except in discussions about music.
Don D.
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Duffy
Your fingering has the b5 or #11 not the #5. If a Chord has a third in it the 9 is considered a 9th no matter where it is in the voicing.
Chord clusters are indeed a possibility but they seem to always allow for a proper resolution. Its the three half steps this creates that is the problem. the #5, 6, 7. The sixth seems to be unnecessary, it has no harmonic or resolving value. A Ab#5b9 would be fine I think.
John, notating bends or slides even in Classical music is common. The Violin family has no frets and Trombones have no pitch restrictions either The are usually marked as a giss (glissando)
Gordo
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I agree with you that jazz players would likely consider it a ninth, so long as the third is there. Not so sure that the same idea applies universally. What a chord is depends so much on its context, and out of necessity, jazz players need to simplify things to make them useful for people who play together on the fly. Classical theorists can be much more fussy, and so they tend to make up much more elaborate names for the same kinds of ideas.
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Duffy
had fun with your fingering solution but it has a b5 not a #5, its the #5, 6, 7 intervals. All a half step apart, very dissonant. Not sure where you got the progression but I enjoy a good puzzle. Maybe you just came up with it to torment me, lol.
here’s my thinking on it so far
Its really a 2 5 1 progression, the Ab is a tritone sub for the five chord.
The slash cord usually means the writer wanted a particular note in the bass to create a root motion. Since he has no change to the Ab of G I assume the inversions will have the root in the bass. This gives a E Ab G root motion and I can live with that.
The Ab is a good sub here as a D7 would give little harmonic movement. The 11 in the Am11 is the D already.
The G has a 9, so all chords have an A note in common and it works well.
The 6/13 interval in the Ab, an F, so it voice leads to the F# (major 7 of G)
The 7 resolves to the root G
The 3rd resolves to third of G
its the #5, has no where to go and no way to get there.BUT EUREKA I found this, and there is an inversion of these notes that sound not bad but totaly unplayable on guitar with all voices and they have a different naming solution. The close inversion on piano is even livable.
http://www.scales-chords.com/guitar-chord-chart/G%2313%235%2Badd(m2)
Gordo
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Duffy
had fun with your fingering solution but it has a b5 not a #5, its the #5, 6, 7 intervals. All a half step apart, very dissonant. Not sure where you got the progression but I enjoy a good puzzle. Maybe you just came up with it to torment me, lol.
here’s my thinking on it so far
Its really a 2 5 1 progression, the Ab is a tritone sub for the five chord.
The slash cord usually means the writer wanted a particular note in the bass to create a root motion. Since he has no change to the Ab of G I assume the inversions will have the root in the bass. This gives a E Ab G root motion and I can live with that.
The Ab is a good sub here as a D7 would give little harmonic movement. The 11 in the Am11 is the D already.
The G has a 9, so all chords have an A note in common and it works well.
The 6/13 interval in the Ab, an F, so it voice leads to the F# (major 7 of G)
The 7 resolves to the root G
The 3rd resolves to third of G
its the #5, has no where to go and no way to get there. b5 would have worked.BUT EUREKA I found this, and there is an inversion of these notes that sound not bad but totaly unplayable on guitar with all voices and they have a different naming solution. The close inversion on piano is even livable.
http://www.scales-chords.com/guitar-chord-chart/G%2313%235%2Badd(m2)
Gordo
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Duffy
had fun with your fingering solution but it has a b5 not a #5. Not sure where you got the progression but I enjoy a good puzzle. Maybe you just came up with it to torment me, lol.
here’s my thinking on it so far
Its really a 2 5 1 progression, the Ab is a tritone sub for the five chord.
The slash cord usually means the writer wanted a particular note in the bass to create a root motion. Since he has no change to the Ab of G I assume the inversions will have the root in the bass. This gives a E Ab G root motion and I can live with that.
The Ab is a good sub here as a D7 would give little harmonic movement. The 11 in the Am11 is the D already.
The G has a 9, so all chords have an A note in common and it works well.
The 6/13 interval in the Ab, an F, so it voice leads to the F# (major 7 of G)
The 7 resolves to the root G
The 3rd resolves to third of G
its the #5, has no where to go and no way to get there.BUT EUREKA I found this, and there is an inversion of these notes that sound not bad but totaly unplayable on guitar with all voices and they have a different naming solution. The close inversion on piano is even livable.
http://www.scales-chords.com/guitar-chord-chart/G%2313%235%2Badd(m2)
Gordo
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