Every possible Chord Symbol EXPLAINED

This video is sponsored by tom play. There are all kinds of

symbol

s you can find when reading a

chord

chart. Sometimes the exact same

chord

can be labeled with a variety of different

symbol

s, so today I'll go over all the

possible

ones. chord symbol that you could find in a chord chart to make sure you know what to do when you find it, so starting with the simplest chord symbol that we can get, if the chord symbol is literally just the alphabetical letter, in this case c then we play a major triad based on that C major note very occasionally most of the triad will be specified with the word match but almost always it will simply be the alphabetical letter, if there is a lowercase m after the letter then it is required a minor triad. built from that C minor note, note that it should be a lowercase m, if it is a capital m this could actually refer to C major.

Also, if you've ever read a jazz chart like the one in the real book, you know that there's another way to write a minor chord is with a subtraction sign, a minus sign, so C minor could be labeled like this or like this, if They give us the word tenuous, it means we should play a c diminished triad chord and a diminished triad. You can also annotate with a small degree, mark a small circle. Likewise, if we are given the word org, then we must reproduce an augmented triad. c augmented, an augmented triad can also be labeled with an addition marker, plus sign, or occasionally you.

You'll literally just get five sharps written in parentheses after the chord name, indicating that whatever chord is here you need to sharpen its fifth degree, which is ultimately what an augmented chord is. If the chord symbol is followed by the word sus4, it means you are destined. to play a fourth suspended triad, if it says sus2 then you have to play a second suspended triad and interestingly if it just says sus it means sus4 sus4 is the most common suspended chord and default if there is a seven placed. after your lyrics then it asks you to play a dominant seventh chord c dominant seventh we don't have to write the word dom or dominant if it says seven it's supposed to be a dominant seventh the same applies to minor chords if it says c minor seven, so we need to play a C minor with the dominant seventh now if we want a major seventh instead, it will specify that it will say matching seven or sometimes it will actually have a triangle like this followed by the number seven in this triangle. particularly in jazz charts it means major and occasionally you will literally get the triangle and that will tell you the major seven, so a major seven chord could be notated like this or like this now if we want a minor triad but with the major. seventh then we'll usually end up with something that looks like this a small m followed by a big m followed by seven the lowercase m is minor the uppercase m is major a C minor chord with a major seven on top diminished chords get a It's a bit interesting when you get to the sevenths, if the chord symbol says c weak seven or c small degree mark seven, then we're going to play this chord in a diminished c seven chord, you'll notice that the seven of this chord is actually what sometimes You could consider the sixth degree of the scale, but don't get too confused with that, the best way to think of a diminished seven chord is that it's a stack of minor thirds.

Now we have another type of diminished seven chord which is the half diminished seven chord which will be notated with this strange symbol, the degree mark, but with a little line through it, this indicates that we do indeed want a C minor chord. seven but with its flattened fifth which is a half diminished seven C and sometimes, to avoid confusion with this strange symbol, this Instead, the chord is simply labeled C minor seven flat five, which literally explains what we should do a C minor seven, but now you flatten the fifth, that gets us to nines, elevens and thirteen, what you can call higher chord extensions and with these chords we get some pretty interesting rules if we get c9 for example, we don't just take a chord of c and we add the ninth degree of the scale which would actually be c, we add nine if it only says nine and does not say the word add, we have to accumulate up to that ninth, that is, we have to add the seventh degree as well, so maybe Maybe a more accurate name for this chord would be c seven add nine, but we don't write that, we only write c nine if it says c eleven. once again we stack this time including the 7th and 9th on our way up to the 11th degree, if we just wanted to add the 11th degree on top of a C chord we would write c adding 11 and the same goes applies to 13.

We stack up to the 7th, 9th and 11th on our way to 13. Now, as you can see, this has resulted in a very high and dense chord, so although in theory it is a of full c13, in practice not all of these notes will be played. Sometimes the fifth degree or third degree is omitted, which brings me to the omit chord symbol. If we saw this chord symbol, it tells us to voice this chord as usual, but sometimes drop the fifth degree instead of the word omit. I understand the word no, although sometimes it seems confusing to me because I think of no as a number, so sometimes when you want to remove a note from the chord voice, you can specify it by saying omit or not, but in practice, if you wrote a c13 chord in your chord chart many musicians will make notes anyway now with the higher chord extensions we can also have accidentals, we can have sharp and flattened ninths, elevenths and thirteenths and for this we have to remember once again the stacking rule If we wanted to label this chord, for example, which is an e13 chord but the 13th degree has been flattened, we can't actually call it E-flat 13. and this is because of the simple misunderstanding that could occur when someone thinks you're saying E-flat 13. instead of e. with a flat 13 chord, so we call it E 11 flat 13 because that's what it is, it's an E 11 chord with the flat 13 added on top and as you can see from what I've been writing, these accidentals They are usually put in parentheses to make it clear that they are separate from the main chord type.

Now, what do we do with this C major nine chord? Well, we do exactly the same thing we did with c9, but instead of building up a dominant 7th like we did last time. Every time we stack up a major seventh, the major here in our major nine chord doesn't actually refer to some kind of major ninth, it refers to the seventh within our chord, the seventh that we're going to stack up on regardless of whether it's c9 c. 9 major or even C minor 9 the note that we add the 9 is always the same and that also applies with 11 and 13. a C major 11, for example, which for fun we put as a triangle is like a c11 but the seventh degree it's a Major 7th it's not a dominant 7th Tom Play is an app that gives you access to over 40,000 pieces of sheet music.

However, Tom Play is much more than just the sheet music library. The Tom Play app can also create a custom backing track for you to play. plus meaning that, for example, if you wanted to learn the piano part for Bohemian Rhapsody, you could have the toms sing while you play to get a better idea of ​​where you are in the piece. Their library features a wide range of music including classic pop and rock, hits, classical music, movies, music and jazz standards, you can try tom play free for two weeks and they are also offering 30 off an annual subscription right now .

Use the links below to find out more if the chord symbol just says five after, like C5, then calls for what you can call a power chord, literally just C and then there's the fifth on top, there's no third in the chord. Now, this means, of course, that C5 is technically a two-note chord, so because we usually like our chords to have at least three notes, the root note will often be doubled an octave higher. If we are given this symbol, then we must play a C major chord with the sixth degree added on top. Basically, think of it as saying add six, but we don't have to write add, we just write six.

Now this is a common point of confusion if you say C minor six, we still add the sixth degree of the major scale, not the sixth degree. of the minor scale and confusion happens there because of the way that chord sounds when I say C minor six. I'm not saying a C chord with a minor six added above it, I'm saying a C minor chord with the sixth degree above it. If you wanted the minor sixth degree on top, then you would have to specify that by writing six flats and you could do this by simply bracketing six flats or, to make it clearer, you could write the word add a similar one as well. the type of chord you might see is a 6 9 chord a c6 9 chord would be a c6 chord with the ninth degree added on top so a full name for this would be c add six add nine a chord symbol that just occurs in jazz music is alt c alt asks us to create an altered chord c now the altered chord is not a specific type of chord it is a variety of different chords that we can create if we are asked to play an alt c chord then we need to play a c dominant chord a c7 for example, but the fifth degree of that chord needs to be flattened or sharpened and we can also add a flat or sharp nine on top of that now we could get a chord symbol that looks like this c slash e with chords So with barre chords, what you are expected to do is play the chord on the left side as usual, but then have the note on the right side as the lowest tone in that chord as the bass note in this example c over e This is actually an inversion because a C major triad already includes the note e within it, so by placing it at the bottom of the chord instead of in the middle where we would normally find it, we are reversing the chord, but not all slash chords are.

Barre chord inversions are ultimately just a way to communicate. I want this chord, but with this bass note, for example, we could have G over A like this, which technically is actually an A11 chord, but writing it as G over A is more intuitive and simpler. way to do it, the only other types of chords that I haven't mentioned yet are what I would call miscellaneous chords, combinations of notes that don't really have a standardized way of referring to them and what we do in those situations is we just find a logical way to do it. describe the chord, so, for example, if we wanted a C major chord but for the second degree included as well, we could refer to that as maybe a C two chord or a C added two chord if you wanted to be clearer. now let's put our knowledge to the test and see if we can label some of these chords, so let's start with this ce flat g flat f most experienced musicians will be able to recognize minor and major triads when they see them and for example here in In the part bottom of the chord we can see C E flat and G, which is a C minor triad, so that's a good starting point.

Now we just need to factor the B flat and the F, well, the B flat is the seventh degree, C E flat, G and B flat. It's a C minor seven chord, okay, so we have C minor seven, what's up with this? Well, F is the eleventh degree of the scale, so we can simply write C minor seven at eleven and now all the notes in this chord are accounted for. The thing is though, when it's not simply a major or minor triad, most chords will have more than one way to label them and it's your job to find the most sensible and logical name because ultimately the goal is To label the chord is to communicate information to the player, so we came up with C minor 7 add 11 for this chord, but alternatively you could describe it as E flat add 9 over C.

Both chord symbols result in the same set of notes in the same order. It all comes down to what you think will be the most logical thing in the context of the music. Some chords, in fact, will have such a strange selection of notes that there's actually no really simple way to describe the chord, so, for example, if we had this selection. of notes g a e f b and c so the way we started labeling the chord before was that we looked at the note selection and tried to see familiar chords in there, like major and minor chords, but this time there's no real starting point that stands out to me and this is ultimately because this chord is not really based on thirds.

Most chord types major minor augmented diminished 7 9 13 etc. They're based on stacking thirds, but once you build chords by stacking other intervals, our common naming system starts to break down and you have to do it. We come up with more inventive names to label the chords. So how do we label this chord well? What we can do is start by trying to find the notes of a triad in the chord, even if they are not in the chord.correct order. For example we have g and b which are a third, they are not next to each other in the chord but they are a third so they are kind of a starting point, of course we don't have the d which would complete a g. major chord, but sometimes, as I mentioned above, the fifth degree of the chord may be sounded, so let's assume for the moment that it is a G major chord so that you take into account G and B, then how We explain the other four notes well in the context of a G chord, the f would be the dominant seventh, which gives us G seven, the a would be the ninth, so in reality it gives us G nine, the c would be the 11 and the e would be the 13th.

So now we have a pretty logical looking chord g13 that takes all the notes into account. The only thing I mentioned above is that we don't have the fifth of the chord, so we can write skip five and that gives us g13 skip 5. of course, what? What will happen is that if I give this chord symbol to someone g13 emits 5, it is very unlikely that they will play with this exact voice in this exact order of notes because there is nothing in the chord symbol that actually specifies the order in the that the notes will be expressed.

If you really wanted it to be expressed exactly this way then my only option is to write it down in the score, so I think g13 skip 5 is the most logical name for this set of notes, but as I mentioned above, particularly once you start getting into In this strange selection of notes when they are not based on thirds, you can think of all kinds of names that are technically correct, for example, we could label this chord as minor 9 flat 13 over G, the C and E are minor, the G is the seventh, the B is the ninth and then the F is the flat 13 and because g is the lowest tone, we don't call it a slash or it could be C major 7 add 11 add 13 over G, you can create any chord name that You always want it to use one of the notes in the set as its supposed root note, so, for example, if I wanted to make e the root note, then this would now be an E minor chord with a flat 9 added, the 11 added and a flat 13 added and it would be about g.

All four names are legitimate ways to label this chord and it is up to you, the person writing the chord chart, to decide which option makes the most sense for you.