Stacking Chords Topic

Hi everyone,

Now is this true that all chords are always just stacks of some kind of 3rds or is their others ways?

in key of C D E F G A B C

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

[br]

1,3,5,7,9,11,13 M3rd + min3rd + M3rd + min3rd + min3rd + M3rd

or two chords together like

C Major 7 + D minor = a C Maj13

C E G B. + D F A =

C E G B D F A

1,3,5,7, 9,11,13

[br]

but are all Chords only stack of 3rds or is there more or are other ways ?

like mabye all stacks of just 5th etc...

Most of the chords are stack of thirds. [br][br]In modal jazz (at least) also stack of fourths is used.[br]And then there are sus (sus2, sus4) chords, but those typically used in voice leading context.

Originally Posted by: bcraig4J

Now is this true that all chords are always just stacks of some kind of 3rds or is their others ways?[/quote]

Most triadic chords are yes. Hence the name! But as jarkko points out you can also build chords as fourths. Or even fifths. But that gets pretty esoteric & is rarely used outside of avant garde classical & jazz.

[quote=bcraig4J]

1,3,5,7,9,11,13 M3rd + min3rd + M3rd + min3rd + min3rd + M3rd

or two chords together like

C Major 7 + D minor = a C Maj13

C E G B. + D F A =

C E G B D F A

1,3,5,7, 9,11,13

I have a series of tutorials on extended harmony chords. The term extended refers to stacking 3rds beyond 1-3-5. The thing is that once you get to 13, the next interval is 15 & you back to the root 2 octaves higher!

So you run out of options using that approach, but you can always add a 2, 4, 6 in addition to the standard tones.

I would be careful of saying things like Cmaj 13 is "two chords put together". First, it's not an exactly correct way to think of the chord. The notes d-f-a are extentions of the C major harmony. They do happen to be the D minor triad, but the root is the C.

Unless, you are literally using all those notes like that. And that is a feature of some esoteric classical & jazz. But it's notated like a slash chord: Dminor/Cmajor7. Chord on top first, slash, chord (or note) on bottom second.

And those are not really practical on the guitar. After all there are only 6 strings. And often it's hard to find a fingering to use all of them on those complex chords!

Extended Harmony Chords 1

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1166

Extended Harmony Chords 2

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1185

Extended Harmony Chords 3

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1195

Hope that helps!

Thanks jarkko.eklund for the add chord ideas and yes Voice Leading is what I have been learning with all of this

when I can I am going to create a thread just called Voice Leading

Thanks Christopher for those links and I also continue go over all the links plus the air on g string by Bach You have given to look for puzzles pices that lead to patterns and ideas 🤔

Was meant for Keyboard

Oh I should added I was using the keyboard to figure out these chords my bad 😲

yes those upper structures would be very hard to play on the guitar since I only have 6 strings thanks for that tip much appreciated 😀

About further study later was just very Curious

That is quite interesting about stacking chords of 4ths and 5ths

I leave that study to much later until I get a strong grasp on all of this very useful information

This is what I meant to Say

When I meant the two chords

maybe I explain it wrong so My bad😲

What I meant to say was

I would see the whole C Major 13 Chord in two parts

Like to have C Major 7 in the left hand

and to have D minor in the right hand

and when play together in this order it creates a C Major 13

So visually for me this make sense

Is that wrong sorry ?

still learning

Originally Posted by: bcraig4J

Oh I should added I was using the keyboard to figure out these chords my bad 😲

yes those upper structures would be very hard to play on the guitar since I only have 6 strings thanks for that tip much appreciated 😀

[/quote]

Got it. Yes, the piano keyboard layout makes playing these chords easier than playing them on guitar! Also playing close voiced harmony.

[quote=bcraig4J]

What I meant to say was

I would see the whole C Major 13 Chord in two parts

Like to have C Major 7 in the left hand

and to have D minor in the right hand

and when play together in this order it creates a C Major 13

So visually for me this make sense

Is that wrong sorry ?

It's not necessarily wrong to think of it like that while you are learning to visualize it. But the thing is that it doesn't help conceptually in the long run.

For example, you could look at a C major 7 chord as the note C with an E minor triad on top: c-(e-g-b).

And that's true, but kind of misleading, because the whole point of calling it a C major 7 is that the note B is the 7th of the C major scale. The E minor triad happens to be in there, but it doesn't have anything to do with the chord from a conceptual, identifying perspective.

Now you could view it as an E minor chord with a C in the bass as a slash chord: Emin/C. But only if that was the original musical context. For example, a chord progression that started with a root position E minor chord and the chord stays stationary while the bass moves underneath.

E minor in the upper harmony

Bassline: e-d-c-b

So, you'd have: E minor - E minor/D, E minor/C, E minor/B

But the point here is that in this example you have a reason to call it an E minor triad with a C in the bass.

But that's a very specialized context. And the vast majority of the time you see a C major 7 chord, it's just a C major 7 chord. It doesn't help us label or think about the chord in any meaningful way to add the E minor triad. And it could potentially cause confusion. Why clutter up the elegance of "C major 7 is (1-3-5-7), (c-e-g-b) of a C major scale" with trying to squeeze in, "Oh, yeah, also there's an E minor triad in there, too"?

Make sense?

Same thing with the C major 13. It's a type of extended chord rooted on C (1-3-5-7-9-11-13), (c-e-g-b-d-f-a). That's more than enough to deal with without having to add more to it, that there's a D minor triad.

Hope that helps!