Lesson EP339 (and Others)

[Don V]

Trying to relate chord names listed above a measure and note(s) played. For instance: how does measures 1,3,and 5 with the note(s) played equal any part of a D7? A D7 consist of the notes DF#AC. I cannot figure this out.
I see this in other parts of this lesson and other lessons as well.
Any help is appreciated.

Topic

[Martin W]

Hi Don the notes you are referring to are part of the D major scale so they will fit , The B note is the 6th degree the relative minor and the E note is the 2nd degree also a minor .
Hope this helps .

Martin

[Jean-Michel G]

Hi Don,
That’s an excellent question… but we’re about to open the pandora box here 😉 So for the sake of simplicity I will over-simplify the answer.

First of all, we need to distinguish, in each bar, between essential notes (melody notes) and non-essential notes.
Generally speaking, essential notes tend to fall on the strong beats of the bar and tend to be chord tones of the underlying chord. Non-essential notes can be passing notes, escape notes, or anticipation notes and they don’t have to be chord tones at all but they usually fall on the weak(er) beats.
Please note: it is entirely up to you to decide how you treat the notes in a bar! The statement above is only a guideline. When you don’t respect the guideline you create tension and dissonance. That’s perfectly OK as long as you resolve that tension (eventually).

So, in the first bar, the chord is a D7; the only note played in that bar is a B note. It is an anticipation note of the coming G chord and it falls on the weak part of a weak beat so it is perfectly OK.
In the third bar, we have a quick F (E bended a half step) note going to an E note and finally resolving down to a D note in the next bar. The F note is a strong dissonance against the F# note of the D7 chord, but it quickly resolves to the more “acceptable” E note which turns the D7 chord into a D9 chord. Also, these two notes fall on a weak beat so again all is well.

You can continue to analyse the song this way.

Bottom line: not all notes in a bar need to be chord tones!
What you don’t want is play only tension notes: that would not be considered very musical.

[charjo]

Without worrying too much about chord tones and intervals (which is entirely unlike me!), for the most part, Brian is playing over the BB box for D over the D7 section and then over the BB box for G in the G section.
John

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