asdj123...
I play guitar, piano and flute by ear, so I'm quite used to
using and depending on chord symbology to learn and convey
music.
It may help to understand that chord symbols were never meant
to take the place of scored music, so they were never meant to
convey the kind of detail you can only really get in a fully
annotated music score.
Chords symbols such as we're discussing are typically used in
simple representations of songs in which the chord changes are
noted by being written above the lyrics of a song. A musician
who knows chords will then use these only as a guideline for
playing along on guitar or piano. If the musician is playing
guitar, all they need to do is strum the basic chords and sing.
A piano player will do essentially the same, perhaps adding a
base note for the chord, or even a base line, but he won't
depend on the chord symbols to guide this process. Even a
guitar player may eventually personalize the chord structure
by choosing different ways to play it, and, again, this process
is independent of the original chord symbols.
In order to effectively convey a bass line or the transposition
of standard chords, music is usually written down in the form of
a score. You are correct, however that transpositions can be
represented with the / symbol. The note following the / is just
the bass note however, not the root.
Given that, let's look at your chords:
F#, B, D# - You note: "If B was the root this would be a B
major". Well, it *is* a B major. A chord is defined by the
notes it includes, period. The fact that it's transposed
so that the F# is at the bottom doesn't make F# the "root".
The root of a B major will always be B, just as the 3rd for
that chord will always be D#, and the fifth, F#. So, if I
wanted to convey more than the symbol of the B chord is
meant to convey, I could call this a transposed B chord
with an F# bass - and yes, you could notate it as B/F#.
C#, A - Again, going by the primary contents of the chord,
this is an A chord missing the fifth (E), and tranposed so
that the 3rd is the bass note. Of course, given that it's
only two notes, the potential exists that it might be a
different chord in a different key, missing a different
component, but you'd have to know the key of the song
being played to determine this for certain. Standing on
it's own, the dominant interpretation would be an A,
and it could be written A/C#, but this would imply the
presence of the fifth. You could try to convey the lack
of the fifth by using the added symbol ( ) with a minus
sign - A/C#(-5) - but this is not accepted practice, so
you'd need to explain this creative approach to your
readers.
As you noted, any two notes also comprise what's known
as an interval, and they can be described in relationship
with each other by the interval. If you knew that the song
was written in the key of C#, the A would represent an
interval of a minor 6th, but lacking the knowledge that
the key in which this interval appears is C#, and given
the lack of a 3rd or a 5th note in that key for reference,
the notes must stand on their own, and their primary
relationship is that C# is a 3rd to an A chord. This one
is missing the 5th note, and is transposed with a C# bass.
A, C#, D, F - You correctly identified this as an A+,
or A augmented. Added notes are typically referred to
by their interval, so in this case, the D represents
an added 4th, which can be written A+(4). A+(11) would
be the same chord, but with the D played above the F.
You say you've already seen a lot of elaborate chord
sites, so I won't flood you with those, but here's a
good one at Toborama.com :
http://www.taborama.com/display_lesson.php?lesson_id=18
"Is there a specified chord name for EVERY 3, 4, 5,
or 6 note combinations?"
I'm absolutely sure that EVERY 3 and 4 note combination
has a name (some have more than one - due to the nature
of their note intervals, there are really only 3 dim7
chords, each with 4 names, depending on the key they're
used in).
I've never come across a 5-note chord that didn't have
a name, usually containing the added ( ) symbol for the
extra note.
As for 6-note chords, there's no limit to the use of the
added symbol, and the ability to use the b and # symbols
in conjunction with the interval, as in (b6) or (#9) make
it seem unlikely that you couldn't name any 6-note chord,
or even higher, effectively. This, of course, is limited
by the definition I gave you earlier, in which a chord is
only defined by the notes it contains, and not necessarily
the position in which they are played on the keyboard.
At their best, chord symbols simply don't have the capacity
to specify all the possibilities of potential note position.
Please do not rate this answer until you are satisfied that
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sublime1-ga |
