C major

[Wally]

Originally Posted by Larry F

I'm a little confused about the 4th vs inverted 5th business. Are you saying that the interval formed by G above D is either a 4th or an inverted 5th? If you are saying that calling something a 4th or an inverted 5th is contingent on one note being the tonic, I have not come across that usage before. I have always understood the concept of interval having to do with size and not tonality.

To bring us back to inversion, I have also understood chord names as having to do with membership of notes, irrespective or order, register, or inversion.


Back to Smoke on the Water. There is nothing wrong with saying that the interval of G above D is a 4th, where G is the tonic. It is not common practice to assume that the bottom note of an interval is or is not the tonic. Those are two different concepts.

In practice, the concept of an inverted interval usually arises in connection with melodies that are inverted--that is, played upside down.

I see your point in wanting to say the a root position C chord is more common that its inversions. I also see your point in giving the note G pride of place. But you run the risk of confusing people in this forum who take things literally. If I didn't know much about theory and someone told that a C chord in 1st inversion wasn't a C chord, I would be confused. Similary, if I was starting to learn about intervals and someone told me that a 4th was different from an inverted 5th, I would be confused there, too.

Put another way, I don't see what is to be gained by saying that G above D is an interverted 5th rather than a 4th. I know that G is the tonic.

As I noted in my first post on this Smoke on the Water thing, I have been through this with a PhD who took your view. I found evidence from a publication by two other PhD's that took my point of view...that the key determines the better way of referencing these two notes...that is, in the key of Gminor(Smoke on the Water)....the G is is the first interval..tonic.. and the D is the fifth interval in that scale....so D below G is an inverted fifth. I noted also that I agreed wholeheartedly that when measuring the distance between the lower D and the G above it, then yes it is a perfect fourth. I find it easier to convey to someone who doesn't know the song that we are in G minor...we want to play a inverted power chord....the 5th interval placed below the 1st interval of the scale. When my rather uneducated mind deals with scales, I deal with the intervals of that scale....not the distance between the notes. This way, everyone learns that the D is the 5th interval in the Gminor scale...and G is the tonic. It builds knowledge instead of confusing by saying that we are in the key of Gminor but we are palying an interval of a fourth from the D up to the tonic G. This is how I view it. I find it simpler. I also am not alone in this piont of view. I should never have brought this up. I did so just to point out that even experts...PhD????...debate this crap endlessly. Remember my father-in-law's observation that academicians were full of it? He is a great old fellow..with an education an a keen eye for reality.
You say that YOU know that the key is G...actually Gminor in this case. That is a good thing. The problem is that some people without your in-depth musical education become more confused when presented with the fact that a fourth between the D and the G is a 5th from the scale of Gminor. They may know the scale and thereby know the D is the 5th from that scale. IT is simpler to say the key and invert the 5th in my world....and in the world of noted educated PhD's....who debate with other PhD's endlessly, right? Why am I bothering...this question will go on ad nauseum.(sp)
The word interval is confusing enough to anyone who has not studied music much...it can be a placement of a note in a scale or it can be the distance between notes that may or may not be in the same scale. When I am speaking of scales..and that includes chord forms...I find it simpler to talk about the note's placement in that scale as an interval. Ex: 1-3-5-8-5-3-1 You are correct that the musical measurement from D to the G above it is an interval of a fourth. I am not debating that. We are also correct in noting that an inverted 5th from this scale yields a measured musical distance of a fourth from the lower note to the higher note. What I and others with far more musical education than I have.....as you might have guessed...are positing is that it is proper to call these two notes an inverted 5th in the key of Gminor. Why would I not want to make as positive of reference as possible to the key in which we are playing? What I am saying is that the D in this instance is not the 4th interval in the key in which we are playing....it is the
5th. You and I both know that. Why can we not simply use the key and its intervals in our communications about the song? Thsi is the point that the referenced publication took....that the key yields the most common ground for the interval reference....not the musical distance from a low note to the high note. The key is the key....it solves the debate. IT is simple. IT makes sense out of the difference between musical distance and placement within the scale.....the two uses of the word interval in music.
C/G....if someone tells me to play C, I am going to play a Chord with C in the root position until such time as it is revealed that a different tonality is preferred. I am not going to play G or E or anything else in the lowest note until I or my fellow musicians decide that we want that certain tonality.
IF this goes on and if I care to continue, I will pull out the material and name the inversion for this chord...
--0--
--1--
--0--
--2--
--3--
--3--
Until then, I gladly and again agree that this is an inversion of a C major chord. It's use is wide. IT's tonality is different from this C chord...
--0--
--1--
--0--
--2--
--3--
--X-- unplayed. I was taught to kill the 6th string when I didn't want that inversion...5th or 4th...right?

LarryF wrote: "I think it can create confusion to fuse concepts such as interval and tonality or chord quality and inversion. This gives me more flexibility in analyzing or composing music."
It is the fact that inversions yield different qualities that makes them vital, don't you think? Writing these things down on a staff is just a way of communicating. Playing a chord in a certain inversion is done because of the voicing of the tones that are created when the intervals are placed in various positions relative to one another.
Ex: play this Smoke on the Water riff with the G below the D...however you want to call it I don't care. It is a power chord...the tonic plus the 5th from the scale. Then playit inverted...however you want to call it. There is a difference. Blackmore played it that way because of the relationshhip that the lower D had to thehigher tonic...the harmonics that fly are different. IT growls in a different manner. The other way around doesn't even sound the same...except we all recognize the rhythm, right?

Larry wrote: "Put another way, I don't see what is to be gained by saying that G above D is an interverted 5th rather than a 4th."
To sum up my view of the D and the G....
A perfect fourth is an inverted fifth if we are in the key of the higher pitch and forming a chord based on the 1st interval. Ex: Smoke..in Gminor
A perfect fourth is a suspended fourth if we are in the key of the lower pitch and forming a chord on the 1st interval....Ex: Dsus4.
There is the crux of my point of view. I never get confused this way...and yes, I know the musical distances between notes. I just like it simple. Some PhD's do also. Some Phd's don't. Who am I to try to stop them from debating this....
It has been fun...but I have done this before.....

[klasaine]

That is by far the most academic analysis of "Smoke on the Water" ever!
I'm not being facetious or sarcastic either. I love this stuff. It's a great tune and an awesome riff that has stood and will continue to stand the test of time (kind of like the opening of the 5th). It deserves to be dug into. Blackmore always talks about how he loves the sound of 4th's on the guitar - so that's how he arrived at it. Whether or not he's right or wrong, 4th's or inverse 5th's, I think it's the shape on guitar that most folks associate with 4th's. Hell, most people play SOTW "wrong" anyway. They always play the G below everything. Well, they don't have Jon Lord behind them so ...

[jhundt]

wow, fellas, we got 2 pages and almost 60 posts about the basic beginner open-position C-chord... who says we don't have important stuff to do with our time!

I never realized it could be so interesting.

[kp8]

</music theory instructor mode on>

Stop overthinking it.

It is a frekkin C major chord with the fifth in the bass... aka. 2nd inversion C chord. or I6/4 in Cmajor if you wanna get your powdered wigs on. And you ain't gonna clash with you bass player if he is playing the root ... it's an P5 for crying all night. That don't clash. Put down the crack pipe doods. <wink>

Originally Posted by Joe-Bob

Therefore, because I'm obviously wrong, just tell me this; since y'all are so determined to play all 6 strings in an "open" C major chord, why not just play the low E?

Because you try not to double the third if you can avoid it. It is like double dipping your corn chip in the salsa. You have the E in there already. Double the root or the fifth if you can, double the third only if you really have to. CCEG and CEGG is a better voicing than CEEG in most cases.

</music theory instructor mode off>

[kp8]

Originally Posted by Larry F

Stravinsky considered chords with thirds in the bass as separate entities of their own. A good example is the Em chord with G in bass in Symphony of Psalms.

More than being separate entities they were chords whose functions were ambiguous and were sonically flittering back and forth between roles. He was able to achieve this slight of hand due to the ambiguity of the chord voicing he used (Emin with a doubled G haha forget what i just said about not doubling the third!) and the way he RECONTEXTUALIZED those chords and changed their function. But he is flittering back and forth between various modes and octatonic collections on E. All movement long you think that you are prolly in E and E and G compete for centricty but good ol G wins out unexpectedly in the end.

Very cool magic trick but really due to the musical context. He we aint got no context.

It's just a C chord .....

[beep.click]

Originally Posted by jhundt

BTW, about those oboe players - aren't they mostly sitting quietly on the stage waiting to play lines that somebody else wrote ?

Gotta watch those oboe players; they're wily. They look all innocent, but they're up to something. I just pray we find out, before it's too late.

As for chords, we have a "rule" in my band that you can't tell anyone what the chords are (we write all our own songs). The idea is to force our brains out of ruts, and make us think with our ears. It actually works (mostly).

(FWIW, alone in bed, with the lights out, I'd probably think of the example chord as a C/G... or a second inversion C major chord, if I was having a college flashback.)

[klasaine]

Originally Posted by kp8

More than being separate entities they were chords whose functions were ambiguous and were sonically flittering back and forth between roles. He was able to achieve this slight of hand due to the ambiguity of the chord voicing he used (Emin with a doubled G haha forget what i just said about not doubling the third!) and the way he RECONTEXTUALIZED those chords and changed their function. But he is flittering back and forth between various modes and octatonic collections on E. All movement long you think that you are prolly in E and E and G compete for centricty but good ol G wins out unexpectedly in the end.

Very cool magic trick but really due to the musical context. He we aint got no context.

It's just a C chord .....

You're no fun.
We know it's a "C" chord, but we're sick to death of 3 footed vs. 6 footed tele saddles and the relative merits of a Bad Monkey or GFS pickups. Come on, "C" chords, Blackmore and Stravinsky? Where else I ask you?

[getbent]

okay, how come I like to use an additional D note in g7 on some songs...

low to high g b d g d f that is a swingin' chord!

[klasaine]

I'd call that the "maxi cowboy G7"! That's a big chord GB.

As an aside. Piano players, at least out here and in NY, refer to G B D F (our open G7) literally as a "cowboy G7". Then they wink at each other, look at the guitar player and laugh.

But if Ritchie Blackmore doesn't play it then I really can't get behind it. Sorry.

[getbent]

Originally Posted by klasaine

I'd call that the "maxi cowboy G7"! That's a big chord GB.

As an aside. Piano players, at least out here and in NY, refer to G B D F (our open G7) literally as a "cowboy G7". Then they wink at each other, look at the guitar player and laugh.

But if Ritchie Blackmore doesn't play it then I really can't get behind it. Sorry.

It has tons of absorption! I use it specifically when doing a very weepy sad version of jambalaya. after we do the maudlin part the whole band kicks in and I only play the g and b... I've gotten hooked on playing just two notes (I call them 'shoulder chords') of a chord on shuffly or rockin' country songs so G would be just GB, c is CE etc etc.. it keeps me out of the way if there is acoustic strumming, gives the fiddle or steel player the high up stuff and is out of the way of the bass while being chunky, swingy enough to be distinct without playing fifths.

I want someone to a thread on arranging for a 4 and 5 piece country band and talk about how sitting out and playing little tiny pieces sounds so much better than what I too frequently hear which is giganto 5 and 6 note chords (see above) and way too much playing. or maybe I'm wrong.. anyway, I'd love to read a thread about that.

[klasaine]

Kudos to you GB for having the courage to not play the whole guitar all the time.
The way I see it - or 'hear' it - is; in a country or rock outfit you've got probably two guitars and a bass, or, guitar, mando and bass, or, guitar, fiddle and bass,or whatever. That's at least 14 separate strings. Instead of sounding like a big mush of overlapping out of tune 3rds, why not utilize each instrument for part of the chord hence making one big G chord within the entire band. That's just one area where the genius of so many great country groups both old and new lies. They know how to arrange. Jimmy Page did it, the Byrds, Allison Krause, even Keith Urban does it (re:the modern Nashville thread in 'bad dog'). Sometimes all you need is two notes. If you play two notes and the mando player gets two, bass takes one and then there's a melody on top of all that, there's more than enough harmonic information to make some big chords. Angus and Malcolm young are a marvelous example of how you can play 6 or 7 notes between two guitar players and sound bigger than anybody.

[eddiewagner]

Originally Posted by getbent

okay, how come I like to use an additional D note in g7 on some songs...

low to high g b d g d f that is a swingin' chord!

just tried it: a good chord. never played it before, it´s huge at least!

[getbent]

Ken,
that would be an awesome thread. I frequently spend quite a bit of time asking the guys to play 'smaller'. it is hard though because as our fiddle player says, "it is hard to stand there sometimes doing nothing for a long time." I know that sounds kind of funny but it is true. We had to stop him from playing acoustic guitar because he just bashed away on giant chords that sound like 'mush'. Now I'm working on the rhythm guitar player who loves big barre chords...

it would be a cool thread that would actually help a lot of guys out!

[Mickey]

Originally Posted by getbent

I want someone to a thread on arranging for a 4 and 5 piece country band and talk about how sitting out and playing little tiny pieces sounds so much better than what I too frequently hear which is giganto 5 and 6 note chords (see above) and way too much playing. or maybe I'm wrong.. anyway, I'd love to read a thread about that.

Start it up! I have some questions concerning how to use Western Swing chords and low-walking-lines on the guitar with a modern bass player around -- if it can really be done at all, or whether this is basically now mostly in the realm of solo guitar.

[klasaine]

I too think an "arranging thread" would be great - Tim Bowen would be an excellent contributor for that. Let's ruminate on it for a bit.

I think the main problem with guys playing all the time and/or hitting on all 6 all the time is that they're guilty of only listening to themselves and not hearing the band and the song as a whole. Realize that, and understand it, and a lot of "arrangement" takes care of itself.

[davidge1]

Originally Posted by getbent

I want someone to a thread on arranging for a 4 and 5 piece country band and talk about how sitting out and playing little tiny pieces sounds so much better than what I too frequently hear which is giganto 5 and 6 note chords (see above) and way too much playing. or maybe I'm wrong.. anyway, I'd love to read a thread about that.

I used to play steel guitar (both pedal and non-pedal steel) in bands. With steel guitar, you learn about dynamics very quickly. Traditional country players all seem to understand it intuitively... one lead instrument plays behind the singer at a time, and everyone else gets out of the way. Rock players NEVER seem to understand it. You can explain it and some people will still blast away with loud rhythm guitar while you're trying to play.

But there's never any formal arrangement, and that's what makes it interesting. I read that even Nashville session players never arrange where and when they're going to play.

The very first time I posted here at tdpri, a guitar player was wondering why he couldnt hear the mandolin player, and wondered if he was getting in his way. I told him that if he wasn't turning his volume up and down, then he was. I said that if he was used to playing rock, he wouldn't be used to the dynamics of country music. I was then criticized by rock players who thought I was trying to say that rock music had no dynamics... which kinda proved my point about rock musicians not getting it.

[Dano]

It looks as though the topic has moved on to arranging. Let's let this C chord discussion go where it may and start a new thread up on top about arranging. I do like theory, but the ideas can get quickly lost in the terminology ... nomenclature has little deductive structure by itself. A thread on arrangements, though, why that'd be, um, kinda practical, and I don't really wanna wade through more C-chord semantic quibbling to get to this newer stuff that's emerging. See y'all up on top?

-Dano

[davidge1]

Well I was going to post something about the c chord stuff but got sidetracked...

Two points:
#1, I think music theory for most people is a means to an end (playing music) – and so for that reason, chords should be identified in the easiest, most PRACTICAL way: how they relate to the key of the song. Even a famous, accomplished jazz player like Joe Pass agreed with this. By that rule, the low notes in the Smoke On the Water chords (not really chords since they only contain 2 notes) are 5ths.

#2 Everyone's talking about chords as though they only mean full, open chords played down by the nut of the guitar that are strummed to create a full rhythm...like a folk or country singer would do. Chords can, of course, be played in the middle and upper registers, and have any note of the chord as the lowest note without necessarily clashing with other instruments. I frequently play major chords with a third on the bottom by playing the third with my third finger on the A string and barring the other notes with my first finger 2 frets back. This is common in country music and lets you add notes and play runs and other good stuff.

[Larry F]

Originally Posted by davidge1

By that rule, the low notes in the Smoke On the Water chords (not really chords since they only contain 2 notes) are 5ths.

Now you did it

[klasaine]

And besides, they're 4th's .