Podcast #1 – Striking a Chord

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Striking a Chord

Mobile Studio Podcast #1

Introduction

Hi, I’m Mark from the Mobile Studio. Welcome to the first Mobile Studio Podcast. I’ve been interested in music and recording since I was very young. My parents have sung in choirs all their married life, so I was exposed to music and harmony even before I was born. They insisted that my brother, sister and I received a musical education so for many years we each attended weekly piano lessons and were very involved with the various choirs and orchestras at school. One day when I was about 8, my Dad made the mistake of showing me that if I plugged the headphones of our stereo system into the microphone socket, then I had my very own microphone and amplifier. This simple little discovery inspired me to branch out into a whole new direction, one that complimented my love of music: Recording. My poor parents haven’t had a moment’s peace from that day on.

Like so much of life, music and recording are 2 very wide subjects. After nearly 30 years of learning both formally and informally it doesn’t look like I’m going to run out of new things to discover any time soon. The internet is a great place for this, as, apart from the huge amount of information available, it allows communication with people like you who can come along with me on my journey of discovery and together we can help each other to learn more.

What I’d like to do in the course of these podcasts, together with the information on my website at www.themobilestudio.net, is to share with you the things that I am learning along the way by looking at many different aspects of music composing, recording and post production and talking to people who have done interesting things in the fields of music and recording. This way I hope to be able to help you improve your songs and recordings and give you new and interesting ideas.

In turn, if there are things that you have learned and would like to share with me, or if there is an area you’d be interested in learning about and would like me to research and make a podcast about it, then please leave me a comment on the podcasts page of my website www.themobilestudio.net/podcast or E-Mail me directly at [email protected]. Maybe you’ll end up in one of my podcasts.

In this first podcast, we’re going to look at an invaluable tool that will help you to arrange your own songs: Chords. We will look at how you can use them to color your arrangement and make it more interesting, how chords can influence emotion in your audience and how you can use them to create harmony lines. We’ll finish off by getting down into the guts of musical theory and provide you with an extremely useful roadmap so you can make the most out of the keys and chords available to you when arranging your song.

I have purposely structured this podcast in order of increasing technicality. Some of you listening may find the first part of the podcast too basic, if so, simply skip to one of the later sections. Alternatively, others may find some of the material a little complicated. If so, you may want to stop, and come back the podcast later on.

There is so much to say on the subject of chords that I couldn’t hope to cover all I wanted to in the time available. So for this first podcast and also occasionally in future ones, I will expand on some of the topics discussed and cover additional topics in a podcast extra which you can download for free by subscribing. Simply head over the podcast homepage at

www.themobilestudio.net/podcast and click on the subscribe button. You will then receive an E-Mail explaining how you can download the supplementary material.

So let’s get started.

What makes a chord a chord?

For the uninitiated, a chord is any set of three or more notes played together which have a harmonic interval between them. So for example the notes, C, E and G are the triad of notes which make up a chord, the chord of C major. A triad is simply the 3 notes that make up the basic chord.

There are many different types of chords in many different keys and it is the combination of these chords and the way we play them that can transform our song from a rather basic melody into a full blown arrangement.

Chords and harmonies can make a monotonic section of a song into something quite special. Because several chords can fit around one note, you can color that note with the different chords so that even if that note lasts for say 4 bars, you can use a different chord for each bar and make the note sound more interesting. Here is one example from the end of a Yiddish Lullaby called Roshinkes mit Mandlen – Raisins and Almonds by Abraham Goldfaden performed by the Kol Kinor Choir of Birmingham in England.

EXAMPLE PLAYS

The song finishes on the note A, but that note lasts for 5 bars. Around that note play 3 chords, F major, D minor, and finally resolving to A major.

From the moment of your first chord, you are adding interest to your music. You are adding an interpretation to the melody. Like coloring in between the lines of a black and white drawing. You don’t even need to restrict yourself to only one interpretation as demonstrated in the previous example, you can say many things about one note by varying the chords around that note.

Using Chords to Influence emotion

We can develop this idea of using chords to help interpret our music further and use the chords to trigger an emotional response in your audience. This is true not only for a melody. Music is often used to influence our emotional state when played over speech in films and plays, we call it incidental music. We may not always notice it, but the music is often there secretly influencing the way we feel at any given moment in the story. In order to be incidental, the music playing while the actors are speaking must be subtle, otherwise it may take away from the action being presented on the screen. Music is there to underline what is going on, not to drown it out. Therefore, rather than composing an actual melody, the composer of the incidental music may well make use of chords to set the emotional tone of what is being presented.

To demonstrate, you are about to hear a short paragraph about a guy called Tom who is walking through a forest. You are told nothing else about him, whether he is nearing the end of a pleasant day’s hike or whether he is there by mistake, lost and afraid, that job is left up to the incidental music.

[Read to a backing of pleasant chords]

Tom walked through the thick forest, the slowly setting sun casting strange, dancing shadows through the canopy of leaves up above. Shafts of light struck the ground at sharp angles, their path made visible by the dust in the air. Birds circled up above. All around him, he could hear the faint rustle of movement in the undergrowth. Night was falling and Tom found himself thinking of the hot steaming mug of tea, the fire and his nice comfortable armchair waiting for him at home. He had been walking most of the day and was beginning to tire.

The pleasant relaxing chords, majors, 6^ths and major 7^ths seem to suggest that this was indeed the end to a good day’s hiking. However, simply by changing the types of chords used, we can suggest quite the opposite.

[The above paragraph is reread to a backing of harsh  chords]

To engender fear in the audience, I’ve used dissonant chords, major 2^nds and minor 2^nds, in short, chords which grate on your ears.

We’re beginning to delve deeper into the structure of chords and I’ve begun to use terms you may or may not be familiar with. If you’re feeling a little lost with terms like “majors”, “minors”, “diminished 7^ths” and the like, then don’t worry. You may want to stop here, take a break and listen to the Podcast Extra which will help you to identify the different types of chords and how to play them.

Now that we’ve seen how you can vary the chords you use to make your song more interesting and how by choosing certain types of chords you can generate an emotional response in your audience, we need to look at how we actually go about working out what chords to use and when to apply them? Choosing the chords will also help you to add yet another layer of interest to your song, harmony lines. These harmony lines can then be sung or played by other instruments in your arrangement.

Fitting chords to your song

Chords will generally begin on the first beat of the bar and last sometimes a whole bar, although often only half a bar. Occasionally a chords will only last for one beat. Which chord you choose can be quite an artistic decision as several different chords may fit one note. However, the basic rule is that the melody note to which you are fitting the chords should usually exist within that chord. (I say usually as music is an art form and sometimes great art is made by breaking the rules).

Here is my song:

This song is actually in the key of E because of my vocal range, but let’s pretend for a second that it was in the key of C. The first line is made up of notes that could all be covered by the one chord, that of C major.

But that would be boring and prevent the song from going anywhere. Much better to vary the chords a little so that they lead into the second line. In my little song there are 4 beats in each bar so if we adhere to the rule of one or two chords per bar, we want to be changing chords every 2 beats or so. So we’re going to change the chord on beats one and three of each bar.

In the example you are about to hear, the piano will indicate where the chord will change.

EXAMPLE PLAYS

But what to I change the chords to? Well I’m going to use a favorite trick of mine called the descending bass. That is, the bass note of each chord descends by one note each time we change a chord. So if we start on C, the next chord will start on B then A and so on. But will this trick fit my song and if so, what chords should I be choosing. Well, just in the same way as 2 points can describe a straight line, often 2 notes can give you a pretty good clue as to the chord. We already have our first chord of C major. The next chord we want to start on the bass note of B. The melody note for this chord is G. OK so our chord has to fit B and G. There are in fact two chords we could choose, either G major (made up of G, B,  D) or Em (made up of E, G, B). I’m going to choose E minor for reasons that will become clear soon.

So now we have C, Em… What about our third chord? Using our descending bass rule, the bass note of that chord is A and our melody note is C, so we have C and A. Again 2 possible chords are available. F and Am. I’m going to choose Am.

Now the reason I’ve been choosing the minor chords is all to do with the first note of the second line of my melody which starts on D. Each key contains only certain chords. I want the D of my next line to be the tonic (the bass note) of the next chord. C –  the key I am in, therefore dictates that if I want D to be the tonic, the only chord available to me is Dm. In my song, I want to lead into this Dm minor chord which is why I have been choosing minor chords in the previous line.

EXAMPLE PLAYS

So what’s next? Going back to my 2 chords a bar rule, I need to find the first and third beats of each bar in the next line of the song.

EXAMPLE PLAYS

I already have the Dm in place and, because I like it, I’m going to keep on with the descending bass rule. Therefore the next chord will have a C in it, C being one note below D. The melody note for that chord is A so a nice chord that fits C and A is F. I’m no longer choosing minor chords, because I am heading for the end of the second line, which I want to finish on a chord that suggests there is more to follow. A good chord to use for this job is the dominant seventh chord. In the key of C, the dominant seventh is G7. But let’s keep everyone in suspense a little longer and not reach the G7 immediately. Therefore we can put in a G chord in before the G7 which keeps in nicely with our 2 chords per bar rule.

So the first two lines of my song sound like this…

Once you have worked out which chords fit your song, working out a vocal harmony is then child’s play as the harmony line, must be made up of notes that exist in the chord you assigned to that part of the song . If it is a vocal harmony, then it is a nice idea to try and make it a melody in itself so that a singer will find it easier to remember. Therefore I’m going to choose the notes of the chords so that they make a little tune of their own.

Well the bass line is easy as we already have our descending bass which makes a little tune of it’s own. Here is it:

The melody line has already given me the middle note of the chord so all that remains is for me to choose the highest note of the chord for the tenor line.

Now to put it all together.

Up till now we’ve discussed only one method of fitting chords to your song and this is all well and good if you are using the key of C, but restricting ourselves to one key limits what we can do with our song. The key of C may not be suitable for your singers or the specific instruments you are arranging the song for. You may even want to change to a different key in the middle of your song, allowing you to reuse a piece of melody, but present it in a different way or introduce a new movement in your song and make it sound very different to what came before it. In order to help you do this, we are now going to delve deep into musical theory and talk about a roadmap that can help you find your way around the different keys and the chords they contain.  This is the most technical section of the podcast, so again you may want to stop, take a break or listen to some of the complimentary material in the Podcast Extra and come back later. However, if you’re still holding in there, I’m going to show you something quite visual so you may want to head over to www.themobilestudio.net/podcast and click on Podcast #1 to see the accompanying video presentation I’ve made for this next part of the podcast.

The Circle of Fifths

Imagine if we could find a way to visually represent the all the different keys and how they are related to each other. We could find which keys were similar, which keys were further away from each other and find out which sharps and flats were in each key. We could even use this representation as a map to find our route between different keys.

Luckily for us, someone has already done just that. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras, in fact, he of the triangle fame. Maybe if Pythagoras was around today, rather than calling him a philosopher, we might call him a mathematician. You may ask what mathematics has got to do with music? Well the answer is: Quite a lot actually! Sound is a very mathematical phenomenon.

A violin string vibrates as it is bowed. As it vibrates, the string generates pressure changes in the air which our ears pick up and interpret as sound. If the violinist were to play the note A above middle C, the string would vibrate at 440 times per second. If he were to play the A an octave above that, the string vibrates 880 times per second, precisely twice the number of vibrations per second it did before. Another octave above that and the string vibrates at 1760 vibrations per second, again twice the number of vibrations per second as it did on the previous A and so on. Therefore it is not surprising that someone with a mathematical mind like Pythagoras might think of turning his hand to music as well.

Having had such success with triangles, when Pythagoras turned his hand to music, he decided that a circle might be the best shape to use. This circle became known as the circle of 5^ths.

If you count the number of semi-tones in an octave, you’ll find that there are 12 in all (semi-tones includes all the black notes on the piano too). What Pythagoras did was to lay these twelve notes around the circle like a clock in a special order. Pythagoras didn’t actually call them notes like the notes we know today. He worked with numbers. What we now call C he called 0 and divided his circle into 1,200 pieces or cents. Therefore, each of the 12 positions on his circle is 100 cents further round the circle from the previous. This division into semi-tones and the creation of the circle of 5^ths lies at the very foundation of western music theory.

Because the circle of 5^ths acts as a sort of roadmap for western music, it is incredibly useful to refer to when trying to work out things like, what key you are in. If you are in a major key it helps you find the relative minor key and visa versa. It tells you which chords are available in which key. It helps you to transpose your music into a different key and move between keys within a song.

The reason it is called the circle of 5^ths is because of the way it is laid out. As you move around the circle in a clockwise direction, the next note you encounter will be a 5th above the note before it. So for example, starting at the 12 o’ clock position, we have C. Move around to the one o’ clock position and we find G. In the key of C, G is the 5^th note of the scale. Move round again to the 2 o’ clock position and we find D. Again D is the 5^th note of G major scale. A more in depth explanation of how the different scales work and how to find the different degrees of each scale, like the 5^th, can be found in the Podcast Extra.

If I play all 12 tones on the piano, you can hear the melodic progression. C, G, D, A, E, B, F#, Db, Ab, Eb, Bb, F and finally back to C.

So how does the circle of 5ths help us find out what key we are in?

Identifying the Key?

The key of C, has no sharps or flats in it. Notice how it is at the 12 o’ clock position or the zero position. The key of G has one sharp in it, notice how G is at the 1 o’ clock position. The key of D has 2 sharps in it, notice how the key of D is at the two o’ clock position and so on all the way around to the key of C# at the 7 o’ clock position with 7 sharps in the key signature. I’m going to stop there just for the moment and now have a look at the keys with flats in their key signatures.

If we go back to C at our 0 position and now instead of going clockwise round the circle, we go anticlockwise, the key of F has one flat in it’s key signature, moving another step anticlockwise, the key of Bb has 2 flats in it, another step and Eb has 3 flats in it and so on.

Just as when we were going clockwise round the circle assigning key signatures with sharps in them, we stopped at 7 o’ clock. If we do the mirror of this now with our flats continuing to move anticlockwise around the circle, we find that we will stop at the 5 o’ clock position. This means that the 3 keys at the bottom of the circle can be written with 2 different key signatures either made out of flats or sharps but still sound the same. It all depends on what we want to call our key. C# and Db are actually the same note. However, to keep things simple, if we say that we are in the key of C# then we will tend to put sharps in the key signature and if we say we are in the key of Db, we tend to put flats in our key signature.

So the first thing that the Circle of 5^ths enables you to do is tell you how many sharps or flats will be in the key you want your song to be in.

Identifying the sharpened or flattened notes

But that is only half the story. Say you wanted your song to be in the key of E major, we know from E’s position on the circle at 4 o’ clock that there will be 4 sharps in the key signature. But which 4 notes are sharpened? To find out we simply start at the 11 o’ clock position and count round the circle in a clockwise direction writing down each note we encounter until we have the number of notes we know are sharpened in the key signature. So the key of E major has 4 sharps and they are: F#, C#, G# and D#.

That’s all well and good for keys containing sharps in their key signatures, but what about flats. Well the circle is symmetrical so we just work backwards. Say you want to write your song in Ab major, if we start at C to get to Ab we have to move anticlockwise by 4 steps so we know that Ab has 4 flats. Which notes are flattened? Well this time we start not at the 11 o’ clock position but at the 5 o’ clock position with B. So counting round 4 flats from B, we have Bb, Eb, Ab, and Db.

However, for us as songwriters, the usefulness of the circle doesn’t stop there.

Which chords exist in which keys?

Remember, in this podcast, we’re talking about chords. This circle of 5^ths tells us which chord triads are available to us in each key. So if we are composing a song in the key of C, we can easily see which chords we can include in our song. Here’s how:

Looking at C on the circle, well we know that in the key of C major, the chord, C major will be one of the chords available. No we look at the 2 chords on either side of C on the circle, these are F and G so F C and G, will be the major chords available in the key of C. Carrying on round the circle in a clockwise direction, the next 3 chords, D, A and E will give us all the minor chords available in the key of C. The 7^th and final available chord in the key of C is the diminished chord of B. So if we now lay those out in pitch order rather than the order they appear on the circle of 5^ths, the chords available to us in the key of C are:

C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor and B diminished. The reason that these are the chords available to us is that they are all made up of notes which exist in the C major scale, you will notice there are no sharps or flats in these chords as there are no sharps or flats in the scale of C major.

If we look at another key, say the next key round circle, G major, we simply use the same method to find which chords are available to us in G major as well. Firstly the major chords which are found by taking the G major chord and the 2 chords surrounding it on the circle, C major and D major, then carrying on around the circle we get the 3 minor chords, A minor, E minor and B minor and finally the diminished chord of F#. Again all these chords are made up of notes which exist in the G major scale.

You can use the same method to find the chords available in whichever key you want to write your song in. So the circle of 5^ths helps you to work out the palette of chords you have to work with in your song.

But the circle’s usefulness doesn’t end there either. Remember, the circle of 5^ths is laid out in such a way that it shows us the relationship between different keys. This is especially useful if you want to transpose your song into another key.

Transposing

Say you’ve just finished writing your song in the key of C. Along come your vocal artists and you suddenly discover that C is too low for them. They would have preferred it if you had written you song in the key of E. You hold your head in frustration! All that careful chord work you did and now you have to throw the whole lot away and start again in a new key. Well, don’t worry, you’ll not be burning the midnight oil on this one after all as the circle of 5^ths gives you a time saving way of easily transposing the chords you have already written.

C is at the 12 o’ clock position on the circle and E is on the 4 o’ clock position. That means to go from C to E we have moved clockwise around the circle by 4 steps. Each chord in your transposed song therefore does exactly the same. An F chord, for example would become A as A is 4 steps clockwise around the circle from F. A G chord would become B and so on. Exactly the same is true if you move to a key that is anticlockwise around the circle from your original key. Simply count the distance between the keys and shift all the chords in the song by the same distance. Voila in 5 minutes you’ve transposed all the chords in your song.

Talking of transposition, what about changing key in the middle of your song to add interest and variety to your composition?

Modulation I – The Relative Minor

Well there are two ways in which the circle can help you modulate between different keys in your song. Different keys are said to be closely related if their respective scales share many of the same notes. The more notes shared by each scale, the closer they are related.

Each major key has what is known as a relative minor key associated with it. That is a minor key that shares all the same notes in its scale as the major key. Therefore the closest key to any major key is its relative minor. For example the key A minor shares all the same notes in its scale as C major. There are no sharps or flats in either key. Therefore A minor is C major’s relative minor. On the circle of 5^ths, each key’s relative minor is written with a small letter on the inside of the circle in the same position as the major key. So C major is written with a capital C at the 12 o’ clock position on the outside of the circle and A minor is written with a small A at the 12 o’ clock position on the inside of the circle.

So why is this important for us as songwriters? Because it means that modulating between C major A minor is very easy to do in a song as each key contains the same chords so we can flit back and forth between the 2 keys with ease.

I can play my tune in the C major:

And then repeat it easily in A minor:

…without having to do too much work to link the two parts of the melody together.

But what about something a little more complicated. Could you start off your song in C major and at some point modulate to some other major key such as G?

Modulation II – Pivot Chords

Well the answer is of course yes; with a little work. How much work it takes depends on how closely the two keys you are working in are related to each other and the circle of 5^ths tells us exactly that.

C and G are adjacent to each other on the circle, therefore they are said to be closely related. Their scales share many of the same notes. In fact because the key of G only has one sharp in it and C has no sharps in it, they share all the same notes, apart from one: F# which exists in the key of G but not in C.

In order to modulate cleanly and musically between keys in the middle of your song, at the moment of modulation you have to trick your audience’s ear into thinking it could be in either key. We do this by using a chord known as a pivot chord. A pivot chord is a chord that exists in both keys. By arriving at the pivot chord in your starting key and then using it as a pivot to take yourself off in a new direction in your new key, you can guide the audience’s ear through the modulation into the new key. I go into how exactly to do this in that in more detail in the podcast extra but for now, I’m going to show you how to use the circle of 5^ths to find these pivot chords.

This is done by using the circle to find which chords are available in your starting key as we described before, then finding which chords are available in your new key and seeing which chords are identical in both keys. It is easier to modulate between closely related keys as closely related keys will have more chords that exist in both keys i.e. more flexibility you have in choosing on which chord to pivot into your new key.

So as we discovered before, in the key of C, the chords available to us are: C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor and B diminished.

In the key of G the chords available to us are: G major, A minor, B minor, C major, D major, E minor and F# diminished.

Matching these chords together, we find that the following chords exist in both keys: C major, E minor, G major or A minor. Therefore any of these chords could be used as your pivot chord:

In the following example I’m going to use the A minor chords as my pivot chord. Again I go into this in more detail in the podcast extra, but just to give you a taster of the end result, here is my little tune with starts off in C major and modulates to G major.

Click Here to see Mark’s Modulation Song

Conclusion

Adding chords is the first step in transforming your song from a simple melody into a full blown arrangement. Chords are like the architect’s plans for your arrangement. Through chords you can color your melody, influence emotion in your audiences and build vocal and instrumental harmonies. The circle of 5^ths is an invaluable tool which helps you choose which chords to use in your song, can help you modulate naturally in the middle of a song and gives you a time saving way of transposing your song into another key.

In order to cover as much material as possible I have only touched very briefly on each of the topics mentioned in this podcast. If you are interested in hearing more then you can download the Mobile Studio Podcast Extra #1 by subscribing to the Mobile Studio Podcast. Simply head over to the podcast homepage at www.themobilestudio.net/podcast and click the subscribe button. Once subscribed you will receive an E-Mail explaining how you can access the Mobile Podcast Extra series.  If you are already subscribed, you will receive a notification by E-mail each time a new Podcast or Podcast Extra becomes available.

In the Mobile Studio Podcast Extra for this podcast we’ll explore the different types of chords like, majors minors 7^ths, diminished chords, augmented chords and different chord inversions and we’ll look in more detail at modulating between keys within a song. You’ll also receive my chords crib sheet.

A great book that has really helped me to deepen my understanding of musical theory is a book from the Dummies series: Music Theory for Dummies. It’s an easy read and is divided into nice, easy to digest sections, it comes with a CD so you can actually hear examples of things covered in the book. A link to the book can be found on this podcast’s homepage that’s at www.themobilestudio.net/podcast and click on Podcast #1

I hope you have enjoyed this first podcast and I hope that I have managed to deepen your knowledge about chords and harmony. It’s great having you along with me on this journey of discovery. Please leave a comment on this podcast’s homepage or E-Mail me directly at [email protected] to tell me what you would like to hear about in the Mobile Studio Podcast.

Thanks for listening.