Our Chord Melodic Words broken
down to their basic Intervals
When we first started this course, I outlined
for you that each chord has 6 variations and that they are
all basically a major chord with its notes re-arranged. Well,
I'm going to present our chord in it's 3 inversions and break
down each interval that makes up that chord. Since these are
all triads, were going to get 2 intervals per 3 note chord.
In a melody, the chord tones are the strongest
notes. However, a melody doesn't consist of just chord tones,
there are scale tones and color tones ornamenting the melody.
By breaking the chord up as I'll show you shortly, you can
see where to best put a scale, or add a color note, which
we'll cover in our next section. This is why our chords in
their inversions and their 6 variations are so important,
cause they're like basic building blocks waiting to be broken
down or embroidered into a more interesting musical statement.
Here are the 6 variations for a major chord
in root position. You'll first hear the variation and then
broken down into 2 intervals. Since these are triads, you
can only get 2 intervals per chord. Let's listen to the first
6:
Variations
1 _____ Variation
2 _____ Variation
3
Variation
4 ______ Variation
5 ____
Variation 6
In first position, the main intervals you're
going to get is thirds and fifths.
Next we have our 6 variations in 1st inversion
Variations
1 _____ Variation
2 _____ Variation
3
Variation
4 ______ Variation
5 ____
Variation 6
In this group, were going to get mostly 3rds,
minor 6ths and 4ths
Lastly our 6 variations in 2nd inversion
Variations
1 _____ Variation
2 _____ Variation
3
Variation
4 ______ Variation
5 ____
Variation 6
In this group, we get mostly major thirds,
major 6ths and 4ths
The importance of this is, you can use any
of the 2 intervals making up any chord in any inversion, and
that's enough to define the chord. Also, in our next section
in scale segments, you can select the interval you want to
fill up with scale movement. It's like making one statement
with an interval, and then by filling the notes in between
you get a new statement. This will be clearer in the scale
segments section.
