Is there a quick way to find out what note appears in which chords?

guitarjack66 · March 2023

viz said:

hollywoodrox said:

guitarjack66 said:

Melody note? Excuse my ignorance but some terminology is still a bit confusing to me.

Like the notes you would whistle, sing or. Hum

Melody means tune. Harmony means chords.

Sometimes the harmony can contain the melody. Like in Giant Steps. Other times the Harmony is a backdrop over which the melody is sung / played. Like the verses in Hotel California.

I get that,I think. I know melodies can be played on one or two strings,so I guess the other stuff is the embellishments or padding?

allen · March 2023

Not sure if this adds anything, but I've lately been messing about doing melodies with hendrix style embellishments/double stops/chords.

Once I've found the melody I tend to experiment with the standard pattern Hendrix/SRV embellishments to add harmony. It's not massively sophisticated, but I get quite a bit of pleasure when it works.

I've most recently been fiddling about with 'he ain't heavy, he's my brother' using this approach.

I don't have a musical ear of any note (mixed metaphor alert) and I can hear straight away if a harmony works against what I hear in my head. My long term goal would be to be able to do this on the fly for any melody in my head, but at my current rate of progress I'll be 140 years old before I'm any good at it.

hollywoodrox · March 2023

allen said:

Not sure if this adds anything, but I've lately been messing about doing melodies with hendrix style embellishments/double stops/chords.

Once I've found the melody I tend to experiment with the standard pattern Hendrix/SRV embellishments to add harmony. It's not massively sophisticated, but I get quite a bit of pleasure when it works.

I've most recently been fiddling about with 'he ain't heavy, he's my brother' using this approach.

I don't have a musical ear of any note (mixed metaphor alert) and I can hear straight away if a harmony works against what I hear in my head. My long term goal would be to be able to do this on the fly for any melody in my head, but at my current rate of progress I'll be 140 years old before I'm any good at it.

That’s great Allen , I’m sure the more you do it it will accumulate like compound interest if that’s a good analogy lol , it’s great to apply different styles to songs you know & very rewarding when it works like you say. Good luck with it

Tannin · March 2023

viz said:

Just a little rule of thumb here if anyone’s ever wondering whether to call something by its sharp or flat name:

Most major keys default to their flat version. B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭. Not A#, D#, G#, C#. The only exception is F# / G♭, where both will do.

Similarly, most minor keys default to the sharp version. So F#m, C#m, G#m. Not G♭m, D♭m, A♭m. The only exceptions are B♭m, which is better than A#m, and D#m / E♭m where both will do.

(snip)

A useful post.

I tend to make an exception for Db major (5 flats), preferring C# major (7 sharps) because it is simpler. I don't have to think "err ... is this one of the 5 flat tones?" because everything is sharp, even B and E.Or I can think of it as being like playing in C major with a capo on the 1st fret. I have to use little tricks like that to stop my brain overheating.:)

viz · March 2023

I think that’s a fair point, especially for a guitarist. Us guitarists, we often think in terms of raising notes. Maybe because putting our fingers on tFB raises the note, never lowers it, and like you say, the capo also only acts to raise the notes. Interesting.

As I grew up on the piano, I guess one of the reasons I’d prefer D♭ would be that it would avoid the two non-black-note sharps - B# and E# - they’d be C and F. Pianists, especially jazzers, seem to prefer playing in flat keys. I guess that’s because they’re easier to noodle on.

Same with B major on the other end of the scale; I’d be very disinclined to call that C♭ major. That’s probably true for everyone though, for obvious reasons.

The other slight downside to C# major is that its relative minor is the dreaded A# minor, which is just about OK in Aeolian, but as soon as you raise the 7th of Harmonic minor and the 6th of Melodic minor, you get G## and F## instead of the A♮ and G♮ of B♭ minor.

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Is there a quick way to find out what note appears in which chords?

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