Chord (music)
This article describes pitch simultaneity
and harmony in traditional Western
styles. For information on non-Western
styles, consult the articles specific to
those styles.
Typical fingering for a second inversion C
major chord on a guitar.
In music and music theory a chord (from
Greek χορδή: string) is a set of three or more
different notes from a specific key that sound
simultaneously. Most often, in European-in-
fluenced music, chords are tertian sonorities
that can be constructed as stacks of thirds re-
lative to some underlying scale. Two-note
combinations are typically referred to as dy-
ads or intervals. A succession of chords is
called a chord progression.
Four ways of notating or representing
chords are often used: roman numerals,
figured bass, macro symbols, and popular
music symbols (Benward & Saker 2003,
p.77).
History
The word chord comes from cord which is a
Middle English shortening of accord. In the
Middle Ages, Western harmony featured the
perfect intervals of a fourth, a fifth, and an
octave. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the
major and minor triads (see below) became
increasingly common, and were soon estab-
lished as the default sonority for Western
music. Four-note "seventh chords" were then
widely adopted from the 17th century. The
harmony of many contemporary popular
Western genres continues to be founded in
the use of triads and seventh chords, though
far from universally. Notable exceptions in-
clude: modern jazz (especially circa 1960), in
which chords often include at least five
notes, with seven (and occasionally more) be-
ing quite common; and atonal or post-tonal
contemporary classical music (including the
music of some film scores), whose chords can
be far more complex, rooted in such dispar-
ate harmonic philosophies that traditional
terms such as triad are rarely useful.
Chords are so well-established in Western
music that sonorities of two pitches, or even
monophonic melodies, are often interpreted
by listeners (musicians and non-musicians
alike)
as
"implying" chords