Basics of Realizing/Analyzing Chords

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Contents

1. Realizing Chords

So far we’ve laid the groundwork for basic concepts such as harmonies, chord tones and chord names.

If you’re a guitarist, you can realize these chords by pressing strings as formulated.

But in keyboards you have to decide in which octaves tones should be placed.

In music theory, the placements of chord tones are called Voicings. In this article I’m gonna explain chord voicings.

In Which Octaves?

In principle, you can freely place tones in any octaves—For example, Changing the order of tones like “C-G-E” has little effect on its sound.

The chord name stays “C” as well. Tones can be placed either closely or openly.

Close voicings sound dense and solid, while open voicings sound wide and airy. As to instruments, It is also possible that multiple instruments cooperate to construct a single chord.

How Many Notes?

You can also double chord tones in different octaves, to thicken the sound.

No matter how many notes are stacked, the chord name stays “C” and this is a triad, as long as it is composed of only 3 tones; C–E–G. However, stacking too much notes will do more harm than good because it’ll kill the space for other parts such as melodies or drums.

Timings?

Basically a chord is a stack of notes played “at a time”, but in fact a chord can still be regarded as a chord even if chord tones are played with some lag.

Your brain collects these separated notes and recognize them as a chord. A chord broken into a sequence of notes is called an Arpeggio, or a Broken Chord.

2. Voice Leading

When realizing chord progressions, just placing chords in primitive “BBQ” style does not sound much musically.

This is too much machine-like. Voicings come up on the agenda. You should use several variations to diversify sonority.

One basic guideline is to smoothen the entire line. If you play keyboards, moving your fingers to the nearest chord tones will make elegant connections.

The latter is much smoother

It doesn’t mean that you should always place notes in this way. But it works as a simple guideline for the time being.

Vertical placements and horizontal connections of notes are directly linked with each other. A part of harmony is called a “voice”, vertical placement of voices is called “voicing”, and the linear progression of voices is termed Voice Leading.

They’re two sides of the same coin—Voicings determine voice leading, and vice versa. Voice leading especially matters when multiple instruments get together to construct a single chord.