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Posted by Mike
on 4/14/2008, 3:37 pm, in reply to "The diminished chord, 4 notes or 3?"
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Music terminology can be confusing and seem arbitrary, and I don't want my confusion to make me lose confidence in my feeling for the sounds. Nor should you. If you pick any root note (r) and go up three half-tones twice, you get a triad that might be written as (r, 3, 3). This is called a diminished triad by many folks. OK, but it has that special sound, to me one of mystery or expectation, different from (r, 4, 3), the major triad, or (r, 3, 4), the minor triad.
If you add another note 3 half-tones higher, you get a four-note group or chord, (r, 3, 3, 3) that some call a fully diminished 7th chord. OK, but to me it is just a more complete expression of that mysterious sound -- different from, say, (r, 4, 3, 2), which some call a major 6th. They both cover nine half-tones, so you may get confused about 7th versus 6th terminology. But who cares! Listen to the difference in sound, mood, etc. between (r, 3, 3, 3) and (r, 4, 3, 2)!
I've come to prefer to think about note groupings or chords in terms of the number of half-tones between the notes in the grouping when I'm experimenting with sounds at the piano. If I happen to remember that (r,4,3,4) stands for a "Major, major 7th", good for me, but I would rather recognize its special sound, which is independent of the root.
Suspended chords become sort of strange-sounding (or lost) chords that find a "home" simply by having some of their notes shifted up or down one or two half-tones. Exact terminology has been applied to all of this, and there are countless cases and combinations, but the general concept remains. Example: (r, 5, 1,5) is a strange chord that resolves nicely (goes home) to (r, 3, 3, 3) -- to achieve this, the second and fourth notes each went down by two half-tones.
Best of luck to you, JJ!
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