No matter whether you are playing your favorite songs or writing your own, understanding chords and notes is key to being an accomplished musician. Notes refer to individual pitches while chords include multiple notes which form melodies.
To be able to play chords, one must first learn music theory – this means becoming familiar with scales, chords and musical notation.
Definition
Notes are sounds played at random or continually to create harmonic sounds in music; also known as pitches. A chord consists of multiple notes played simultaneously to provide harmony.
Knowing the difference between notes and chords when playing guitar is vital if you want to ensure you don’t waste your practice time on scales that never lead to real music creation.
A chord can be defined as any harmonic set of pitches that sound simultaneously or nearly so. It may comprise any number of notes; three is typically considered the minimum. Guitar chord notes typically use numbers to represent them; sharps and flats may also be employed – a sharp signifies tones raised half a step while flats indicate tones lowered half step.
Functions
Music theory views chords as a means of stacking notes together into triads. Triads serve many different functions and must be understood because they form the basis of most chord progressions. A basic major triad is composed of the first, third and fifth notes from your chosen key scale (or root).
As you ascend the scale, more notes become available for building chords; these additional notes are known as extensions and are used by triads that feature them.
The flat 9 is the easiest extension, adding one whole tone to any chord you play on guitar. This can open up many new shapes on the instrument but needs to be used carefully as playing one against a regular C major may sound strange due to differing intervals between these notes.
Variations
Chords are the building blocks of music, and come in all sorts of sizes and forms. Their size depends on how many notes it contains and can have various voicings (sounds).
Example of a minor chord would include D, F and A notes as an alternate way to create one (A minor chords can also be created this way).
There are also variations, like C and G form chords based on the same interval pattern but starting on different strings.
Sus4 chords offer another variation, replacing one of the lower notes with the fourth note in a scale (for an A minor or D major chord) to create tension and movement between parallel major and minor chords. They work best when played immediately before or after another major or minor chord for added effect.
Examples
Notes are individual pitches within music compositions; chords on the other hand consist of multiple pitches grouped together to produce a particular sound that gives each chord its name.
Most chords consist of three to four notes. However, certain styles of music-particularly jazz-often utilize chords with five or six pitches or more.
Sharps or flats (known as accidentals ) can alter the notes in a chord by adding sharps or flats; sharps represent one half-step above their natural notes (for instance A is sharp while C is flat).
First step to creating chords: identify its root. Next step: identify its third and fifth by looking at patterns on the fretboard – for instance G form chord has its root repeated an octave higher followed by third and fifth tones – making this pattern widely visible on fretboard and many guitarists use memory devices to remember it.