What Are The Color Chord Tones In Piano

Due eastvery chord tone has its own unique audio, its ain unique colour. Learning to hear these colors brings these sounds to life.

This crucial ear training is often disregarded or even talked about. Take your fourth dimension and written report it advisedly…

Match pianoforte pitches accurately

The showtime footstep toward hearing these colors is to hear a sound, repeat information technology in your minds ear, and accurately reproduce it with your vox on your first endeavor.

Go to the piano. Play a annotation near centre C, or wherever you can sing comfortably within your range. Conspicuously hear the note resonate in your heed.

Think about singing that pitch and gear up your song chords. Get them precisely where they need to exist to sing the notation. Your goal is to sing the notation perfectly the first fourth dimension. You don't want to exist abrupt or flat. Y'all desire to be absolutely dead heart on your outset attempt.

Sing the note, paying close attention that you're truly right on with the pitch.

Spend 15 minutes a 24-hour interval for a few weeks at this exercise and no matter how poor your singing, y'all'll notice dramatic improvement at hit the centre of a note on your first endeavor.

Sympathize chord tone colors

The 2d pace in hearing these chord tone colors is to clearly understand what they are. Information technology's a hard thing to describe. Information technology's similar trying to describe the colour green. I could say things like lush or nature, but how closely does that depict the color green? There's no real tangible mode that I could mayhap describe to someone what light-green really looks like.

With sound, it's the same way. In a major seventh chord, there'due south definitely a singled-out difference between how the major 3rd of the chord sounds and how the major 7th sounds. Anyone tin can acquire to discern these differences. Information technology's like knowing the difference between cherry and bluish. Yous just meet that they they are different. That's the kind of ear nosotros want to develop, where nosotros just automatically hear the differences.

To go an thought of these distinct chord tone colors that we wish to hear, go to the pianoforte. In your left hand, play a C major seventh chord (C-E-G-B). In your right paw, play an F# (the #11).

Notice the distinctive sound of the #11? This characteristic that is very apparent when playing the #eleven over a major chord pertains to every chord tone, in every context. In other words, every chord tone within a given chord sounds a detail way. They each have their ain color that you tin can learn to hear.

With the #eleven over a major sound it'south piece of cake to hear considering the sound is then distinctive. Endeavour playing a C major seventh chord in your left mitt (C-E-G-B) and an E (the major 3rd) in your right paw. For many, this color is more difficult to hear considering the sound of a major third chord tone is non nearly as unique every bit a #11. You'll most likely need to spend more time on the lower chord tones (i-3-5-7) than the upper (9-11-13).

Start with triads

The best place to start hearing these colors is on a major triad.

Play a major triad (C-E-G). Hear the chord in your mind. Play the triad over and over. Discover how you lot can consciously shift your attention to the various chord tones in the chord? If you don't discover this, keep playing the triad until you do.

Once you lot observe that you lot can command where you identify your attention in the triad, hone in your focus on the root of the triad. Continue to hear the residue of the chord, merely isolate the root in your mind. A visual of this would be: C Due east G

Once yous can hone in on the root and hear it clearly, sing it, paying close attending to your pitch only every bit yous did when you matched pitches in the earlier section.

All the notes are at that place and y'all're enlightened of them, but the one you're focused on jumps out at you. After y'all've accomplished this isolation with the root, movement to the tertiary. Focus intently on it, repeating the triad over and over until the 3rd just jumps out at you and you can sing information technology. Then, practise the same do with the 5th.

If you lot're having trouble hearing or singing any of the chord tones in the triad or if you're having difficulty in the future, utilise this trick: play the chord for a moment, then immediatley play the chord tone y'all desire to focus on, and then immediatly play the chord again. For example, if I wanted to focus on the major 3rd chord tone of a triad, I might play the triad for a quarter note, then the major third chord tone for a quarter notation, followed past playing the chord again for a one-half-notation as illustrated the following case.

In one case you lot've spent some time doing this on the root, the 3rd, and the 5th, echo the triad again and each time, shift your attending to the next chord tone and sing it.

And then, you'll play the triad, focus your attention on the root, hear information technology, and then sing it. Then play the triad, focus on the 3rd, hear it and sing it. Play the triad, focus on the 5th, hear it, sing it. Then start over at the root and keep doing information technology over and over.

By constantly shifting your attention this way y'all'll before long realize how different each ane of these chord tones sounds and that each really has its own color. By hearing these colors, you can instantly pick out any chord tone you lot wish.

The opposite of this would be hearing the root of the chord and then hearing the interval to the chord tone you want to sing. For instance, if I want to hear the major third chord tone in a major 7th chord and I first hear the root and then sing a major tertiary in a higher place it to detect the major third, sure I'yard singing the major third of the chord, but I'm non hearing the unique audio of the chord tone.

This is so important I'm going to repeat it. If yous're hearing the chord tones by first hearing the root and measuring the intervallic distance to a given chord tone, you're doing these exercises incorrect.

The goal of these exercises is to instantly hear the color of the the chord tone y'all wish to hone in, not to hear an interval between the root and the chord tone. This idea may seem confusing at first, merely keep practicing. Each chord tone does accept its own color and the more than you piece of work on them, the more each uniqueness volition reveal itself.

Explore chord tone colors

In one case you're comfortable with major triads, add the major 7th to the chord (1-3-5-7, in the key of C it would be C-Eastward-G-B) and work on hearing the color of major seventh chord tone, followed past singing it. If you're having trouble, use the play tricks of repeating the chord and chord-tone as I illustrated earlier.

Afterward the major seventh, y'all can keep along up the chord to the nine, the #11, and the 13th. And you needn't play them on the piano to hear and sing them. For example, peradventure I'1000 learning to hear the sound of the #xi on a major seventh chord. I could play the notes C-Due east-G-B (a C major seventh chord) and so hear & sing the #11 without including information technology in my piano voicing.

When you lot practice become this far, rather than moving to other chords, review all the major chord tones for a while, perhaps several weeks. I actually retrieve that once y'all reach this point, things become easier because now y'all have quite a few chord tones to compare to one another. Some other illustration to seeing color will convey this abstract idea.

Imagine that the just colour that existed was cherry, so you never spent much time learning to run into color. Everything's cherry. What'southward there to encounter? It all looks the same. Only and then somebody tells you that other colors exist if you lot learn to focus your attention on them. Because y'all've never focused your attention on colour in our imaginary earth, that's going to exist quite a feat.

Suppose y'all showtime to see green. Then you can go back to cherry and say…ohhhh…it's different than green. And so as you learn more colors, more differences between each of them become apparent, creating a definitive idea of what each color is. That'south essentially what we're aiming to do with chord tones.

There'southward many chord tones to practice over many chords, and then here's a suggestion to approaching all these chord tones. Kickoff with hearing the unique colors of each of the lower chord tones (ane-3-5-7) in each of these chords

Major 7th
Minor 7th
Dominant 7th
Half Macerated 7th

And then piece of work on the upper chord tones of each of the above chords (9-11-13. Recall, in a major and dominant chord to raise the 11th)

So work on these various alterations for each category:

Major 7th alterations – #five
Minor 7th alterations – #vii
Ascendant 7th alterations – #v, b9, #nine

Working through all these chords is quite a task. Start simply and build a stiff foundation. Don't be in a hurry to work on all these chords. If you spend a lot of time developing the ability to hear the unique colors of each chord tone on a major seventh chord, yous'll pave your way to hearing the unique color of any chord tone in whatever chord.

Source: https://www.jazzadvice.com/lessons/hearing-in-color-chord-tones-in-context/

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