Day 12 of the Challenge

It’s day 12 of my Musical Composition Challenge, and I’m still going strong. Well, as far as quantity of music goes. The quality of the musical pieces, as well as my enthusiasm, are going down, but I’ve composed 11 pieces already, only missing one day. So, I’ve almost finished the challenge.

I’ve come to a conclusion, though: composing one musical piece every two days for a month (that was my original goal) may have its challenges, but it’s not the best way to compose music in the long run. Composing 15 pieces of music in a month isn’t like NaNoWriMo’s idea of writing a novel in a month. Most people know how to read text in their own language very well, but if you’re a composer, you might not be able to sight read your own music perfectly and quickly. That’s working with the theory that most musicians fall into two categories: those who can sightread and play very well without knowing a lot aobut ear training and improvisation, or those who know how to improvise and play very well by ear but can’t sight read very quickly. I think that most composers like myself fall into the latter category.

Although perhaps filling one page of sheet music per day isn’t the best way to compose music, perhaps working for a certain amount of time each day is good. For example, one hour per day is perfect. It gives you a chance to allow yourself to get focused on the music, and if you get bored of working on one piece, you can always move onto the next. Working for a certain amount of time rather than aiming for a certain quantity of music would be less rushed than feeling like you have to compose a certain amount each day, but oddly enough, it might actually be more productive.

Trying Out Different Practicing Methods

Franz Liszt claimed that, for many years, he was sure he had never practiced the piano for less than 10 hours every day. As superhuman as that sounds, it does make sense that Liszt would spend most of his waking life playing the piano. After all, his “Transcendental Etudes” were so difficult when he first composed them that he realized that he was the only one who could possibly play them. He wrote simpler versions of them, and the simpler versions are still among the most difficult piano pieces ever composed.

Most of us aren’t Franz Liszt. Most of us couldn’t compose a set of some of the most difficult etudes of all time at the age of 15 (being 14 years old now, I suddenly feel as if all my time on Earth so far has been wasted). And most of us don’t have ten free hours during the day to practice the piano. In fact, I’m probably lucky that I have the opportunity to practice several times a week, for (I think) a little over an hour each time. But then, I enjoy playing the piano. I don’t procrastinate playing the piano and choose to do something fun: for me, playing the piano IS something fun.

I think that’s the main reason that I’m so relatively good at playing the piano: it’s because I have fun doing it. Of course, my skills are not completely unsurpassed. In fact, I might be in the top ten percent of the piano-playing population as far as practical playing goes, which may sound good, but there are a LOT of people in the world who play the piano. I always get a bit jealous when I hear about child prodigies who were able to, like, memorize entire concertos by Rachmaninoff at the age of six. How is it even physically possible for a six-year-old child to play a concerto by Rachmaninoff? Rachmaninoff’s hands were huge, he composed music with chords that were about 9 whole steps wide (that’s about from a C to the next E on a piano). There’s no way a six-year-old could have fingers long enough to play that.

But enough of my immature complaining about people who are better than be at something. My practice methods, to put it simply, are wrong, but I’m trying to make them better, one step at a time. For one, they say it’s not a good idea to practice every single day. Like weight training, you should take a day to let your mind rest. My current schedule is practicing Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. I have my piano lessons on Tuesday, but we basically just cover musical theory during those classes, since they’re only about half an hour long and the total time duration of the pieces I’m learning totals to over an hour.

Although a lot of people don’t like having to practice the piano all the time (I didn’t always like it either) I’m now at a skill level at which it’s easy, and I can progress fairly quickly. It took me years to get to this skill level, and I still have a lot to learn, but now that I enjoy learning new pieces and composing music, the rest of the journey (if there’s even an end to it, which I know there isn’t) should be much easier and much more fun.

My typical practice session consists of playing the few songs I’m trying to learn all the way through from beginning to end. They say, though, that one shouldn’t just practice a piano piece all the way through, and that they should learn the most difficult parts first. I haven’t actually tried this method: I usually just play a piano piece from beginning to end over and over again until I memorize it at the right speed with the right notes and the right dynamics. But hey, this new system of learning the difficult parts first might be worth a shot.

Another thing to try out is piano exercises. One could just do scale and arpeggio exercises, or one could by a book of piano exercises on sheet music. Me, I think most of those books are too cutesie, so I’m trying to learn Chopin’s Etudes (second in difficulty only to Liszt’s). How am I doing so far, you ask? Not great, but I am trying to get into the habit of reading and following the fingering mentioned in the book. Chopin knows best, I say.

So, that’s what I’m trying out. I’m not saying anything is right or wrong, but you should try out different practicing methods and see what works best for you. I will make a mental note to write about practicing methods in more detail in the future.

Musical Composition Challenge Update (Beginning of Day 5)

Well, my personal musical composition challenge seems to be going well. I’ve been using my spare block at school to write music as I went along. The writing is somewhat improvised, so this isn’t the way I plan to composemusic for the rest of my life. Still, my goal for this month is quantity, not quality, and I’ve already composed four musical pieces in the four days I’ve given myself so far. We’ll see if I keep this up, though, sine I have 11 pieces left to do.

This isn’t to say that composing without an instrument is a COMPLETE waste of time. I suppose it’s a good way to train my mental ear to create and hear more precise tones. Hearing more than one tone at a time and remembering the chords of an entire piece, as you might imagine, trains my concentration and memory. Still, if I had access to a piano all the time, I would use it to help me compose music.

However, another important part of music is planning. I have very little time to do that this month, because as I explained, I’m writing this music as I go along. This is great for simple ideas, but unless you’re Mozart or something, composing an entire fugue or canon inside your head is next to impossible. If I wanted to compose difficult pieces like fugues or canons, though, I’d change my goal from “Compose 15 pieces of music in 30 days” to “Compose one fugue in 30 days”. I don’t think I could even do THAT.

One thing I am trying to do to improve my mental ear is to pick a chord, memorize it, and make sure to fit it in to my next piano piece somehow. Other than the standard major/minor chords, I’ve tried a seventh chord and a few “add” chords, although “add” chords are pretty basic.

For those of you who want to compose music but don’t have the correct blank sheet music to do it, I remind you that the official “Piano Tips and Musical Composition” sheet music can be found in my first post.

Musical Composition Challenge (AKA: No, I didn't steal this idea from "February Album Writing Month")

Alright, I have a confession to make. In my first post, if I remember correctly, I advised any composers like yourself to fill one page of sheet music each day. However, I haven’t been doing that recently, what with school starting again and other various projects.

So, for the next 30 days, I intend to compose fifteen complete piano pieces. This means, basically, one complete piece every two days. The thirty days will be from September 15th to October 14th. Normally I would make it an even month, but November is NaNoWriMo, so I’d like to have a chance to relax after this challenge before trying another one.

Since, like NaNoWriMo, this is really a sort of spur-of-the-moment sort of thing that only morons like me would even attempt, I invite any other plucky, naïve composers like myself to join me in this attempt. At the end of the thirty days, I’ll make MIDI files of the best pieces and post them here. If anyonw else is insane enough to try this with me, they can post links to MIDI files or sheet music scores of their compositions

And, I will start… now. If I ever do this again, though, I will give you all a bit of warning incase you’re late to read this post and still want to do it.

How to Play "Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum from Children's Corner" by Claude Debussy

Months ago, when I was posting on my journal blog about how I learned to play “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum from Children’s Corner” by Claude Debussy, a lot of people came to the blog through Google searches just to see if I had any tips on how to play it. Well, I do now. Only it’s not on my journal blog. Whatever.

First of all, you need a copy of the sheet music. I printed mine out after downloading it from the Sheet Music Archive (look up Debussy and "Children's Corner" to find "Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum") and I was able to memorize it after a few months. It’s in the form of a PDF file, so you’ll need Acrobat Reader to view it, but you can easily download Acrobat Reader off the internet for free.

However, as you may or may not have realized already, I’m a big fan of playing by ear, so to use my method of playing the piece, you’ll want to find a recording, or at least a MIDI file, of the piece. I used the MP3 from The Sims (it's at the bottom of the page) but that’s played a bit too fast, so consider doing a Google search for Debussy MIDI or Debussy recordings. The reason the Google search might not work is that, if you look up Debussy MIDI, you may just end up finding a link to some information about his “Prelude a L’apres Midi d’un Faune” without an actual MIDI sound file.

Now, you’ll also need to know how to read sheet music. “Doctor Gradus,” for the most part, happens to be in a good, easy key signature that doesn’t require a lot of memorization of accidentals. In order to play this piece, you’ll probably want to have played the piano for a while. Who knows, though, you might be an indiscovered piano genius like Debussy himself.

Note: My way of learning pieces is by no means the right way. In fact, it’s probably the wrong way. I don’t use the “correct” fingering, and it takes a long time to learn a piece using my method, but at least I had fun learning it. If you want to know how to play it “right”, go somewhere else. If you enjoy playing piano music, this is the place to be.

The first thing I do when learning a piece is learn to play the notes in the right order. I worry about the duration of the notes second, and dynamics third. However, in this post, I will mention all three aspects at once and leave it up to you to arrange my thoughts. To make it easier for you, though, I will break the piece down by bars. Have the sheet music handy to refer to reading this post. For this purpose, you might want to take a pencil to number the bars/measures. I assume that you know that a measure contains the notes between one vertical line (bar line) and the next.

Bars 1 – 2 : On the left hand, you have a C note octave, the first note in the octave being a grace note. This means that you only play it briefly before quickly switching to the higher note in the octave. After this octave is played, hold the C note down in the left hand while, on the right hand, you play a barrage of sixteenth notes. If this is your first time trying to play this piece, or any piece like it, then just worry about getting the notes right, don’t try to play them too quickly just yet. Eventually, you’ll memorize each individual finger movement in the entire piece, and be able to play the whole thing in 75 seconds like me.

Although there are a lot of sixteenth notes in this piece, notice when listening to a recording/MIDI of it that you mainly just hear the first note in each set of four sixteenth notes. The notes you hear make up the melody line. Notice the melody line is gradually rising, and yet there are many notes in the background that you don’t hear as loudly as the rest. This is an interesting method to experiment when composing music for the piano. Make sure, though, that you play each of the sixteenth note individually throughout the piece.

As far as dynamics go, just notice that it says “P”at the beginning of the piece, meaning “pianissimo”, which means that you should play quietly. The curved horizontal lines going across the top and bottom of the staves mean that you should use your piano pedals to make those notes blend into each other. The damper padal does this, and it’s on the far right of most pianos and keyboards. Use this pedal lightly and lift it between bars, though, because you don’t want the notes to blend into a horrible mess. Use this pedal technique throughout the piece.

Bars 3 – 6 : Now both the left and right hands get a bit harder, but if you managed to get past the first two bars, this will only be a small stretch. In the left hand, you now have a middle C playing on top for bars 3 and 4 while you also play quarter notes on the same hand. Hold the whole note down while playing these quarter notes.

In the right hand, you still have a bunch of sixteenth notes, but in bar 3, notice that each group of sixteenth notes has an eighth note at the beginning. Eighth notes, as I’m sure you all know, sound as long as two sixteenth notes. In bar 5 and 6, each group of sixteenth notes has a quarter note at the beginning. Logically, a quarter note sounds as long as four sixteenth notes, so that’s how long you should hold it when you start to work on the duration of the note in the piece.

Bars 7 – 10 : Now we still have constant sixteenth notes, but they’re a bit easier to play than before because they’re now being played in a big sweeping motion. Although the sheet music says you should play the top note of each sweeping set of notes with your left hand, I prefer to play the first four and last three notes in each of the bars 7 – 10 with my left hand, and leave the rest to my right. This makes for an easier, faster sweeping motion.

Notice now that at the beginning of each of the bars, it says “PP”. This means play very quietly, even quieter than with “P”. Notice also, however, that at the bottom of bars 7 and 9, there are sets of musical symbols that look like elongated “less than” and “greater than” signs. Actually, these signs are “crescendo” and “decrescendo” respectively, meaning to gradually get louder (in this case until you reach the top note in the bar) and to then get gradually quieter.

Also, notice that each of the bars starts with a whole note at the bottom, meaning to keep that note held down for the whole bar while you continue to play the rest of the notes.

In bars 9 and 10, you have your first accidentals in the piece. These accidentals, however, are just an Ab in bar 9 and an Ab and Bb in bar 10 (the b represents a flat symbol).

Bars 11 – 12 – In bar 11, you see some more accidentals. Just notice that the G in this bar is always sharp (#). I play the bottom two notes in each arpeggio with my left hand, and the top two with my right hand. Notice that the melody line is gradually rising in pitch until you get to bar 12, when it suddenly stops at an E natural right above middle C. Since this E is a whole note, you’re supposed to hold it for the whole bar (four beats).

Bars 13 – 21 : The E natural whole note you held down in bar 12 leads into the first E natural eighth note in bar 13. Notice that you’re supposed to hold down eighth notes with your left hand, not quarter notes, so you will have an eighth rest in the left hand after each note.

On the right hand, you still have sixteenth notes, but now there are only groups of three sixteenth notes, since the groups start with eighth notes In bar pairs 13 -14 and 15-16, notice that it says to gradually make the notes louder near the end of bars 13 and 15, and quieter again through bars 14 and 16. Also, in bars 17 and 19, there are the same “decrescendo” signs at the end of every second group of one eighth note and three sixteenth notes.

Throughout this section of the piece, see the P signs. Think of them as a reminder to keep the notes quiet.

Bars 22 – 23 – This part starts out similar to the first two bars of the piece, but takes an interesting turn in bar 23. Because of this, just try to remember what I told you to do in bars 1 – 2, and apply the same wisdom here.

Bars 24 – 30 – This part can be difficult if you don’t use the sort of fingering that feels right for you. Some say you should learn different sorts of fingering to exercise the muscles in your hands, but I say that no matter how you play this piece, you’ll get a good work out from it.

In this section of the piece, you continue the pattern of almost constant sixteenth notes in the right hand. However, at the highest note in each arpeggio, there is an eighth note instead of a sixteenth note. So, hold down the eighth note while playing the rest of the notes.

In bars 28 - 29, it’s kind of up to you which treble clef notes you want to play with your right hand, and which you want to play with your left hand. Try to figure this out on your own, finding a relatively easy way to make sure all the notes eventually get played in the correct order for the correct amount of time and at the right volume (remember to keep looking for the crescendo and decrescendo signs and play accordingly).

Bars 31 – 32 – Bar 30 leads into this descending F major scale, and you eventually will want to try to get one bar to lead into the next seamlessly. In this descending F major scale, I like to play the first two runs of sixteenth notes with my right hand, and the rest with my left hand. I also play the three quarter notes in the lower bass clef with my left hand, and the top quarter note + sixteenth note arpeggios with my right hand. Notice that, for most of bar 32, there is a decrescendo (“gradually getting quieter”) sign. If you want my advice, you might also want to play bar 32 while gradually getting slower, to lead to the next part of the piece.

Bars 33 – 36 – This is a very slow part of this piece. It’s certainly slow COMPARED to the rest of the piece. Also notice that the key signature has changed. If you don’t know how key signatues work, you’re probably not at hight enough a skill level to play this piece yet, but if you still want to, try looking up “Key Signatures” on Wikipedia.

Anyway, while you hold down the double whole note, you will also play eighth notes and quarter notes on the right hand. Remember, however, that while you hold the quarter note down, you’re still supposed to keep laying the eighth notes. I play all the eighth notes, as well as the chord in bars 35 – 36, with my right hand, and play the other notes in the lower bass clef with my left hand, including the perfect fourth interval notes in bars 35 – 36.

Bars 37 – 44 – Much in the same sort of hand movements as before, except there’s an even trickier key signature to read (just force yourself to read it) and you have some tricky cross-hand positions in bars 38 – 40. Just keep playing the eighth notes on your right hand while crossing your left hand over to play the major and minor third intervals. This may require a bit of practice, so consider starting out by practicing this section hands separately.

Notice that, in bars 38 and 40, the word “expressif” is printed. Just like it sounds, the word means “expressive,” so try to put a bit of emotion into the piece to make it sound more interesting. In bars 41 – 44, notice the crescendo and decrescendo signs, and play the notes accordingly.

As for the high whole note in bar 43, I play it with my left hand and then continue to play the eighth notes while going into bar 44, which is pretty straight forward. In bar 44, you just continue to play the eighth notes with your right hand as well as the two half notes with your left hand.

45 – 54 – This part is exactly the same as bars 1 – 11, except in bars 45 - 47, there is a low G octave instead of a C octave, and in bar 47, you suddenly have a perfect fifth interval in the left hand (with a low C instead of a low G) but this only matters for one beat (the length of one quarter note, since this piece is in 4/4 time). The rest is the same as the first part of the piece, so refer there for advice.

Bar 55 - 56 – This is must like an elongated version of bar 11 that goes even higher on the piano, except instead of an E major arpeggio series, it has a series of C augmented chord arpeggios, which leads into the dramatic climax of the piece.

Bars 57 – 64 – This is my favourite part of the piece. Once again, we have constant sixteenth notes, although we also have quarter notes at the bottom of each arpeggio. As usual, hold down the quarter note while playing the rest of the sixteenth notes in each group of four notes. Notice that now the melody line seems to be going down in pitch. I suggest adding to this effect by playing bars 61 – 64 a bit quieter than bars 57 – 60. In fact, the piece tells you to play a bit quieter (remember: “descrescendo”) in bars 60 and 64.

Bars 65 – 66 – Although you might not be able to tell by looking at the sheet music, this part sounds a bit like bars 57 and 61, which you just played. However, instead of using your left hand for the two bottom notes and your right hand for the two top notes in each group of four notes, you now use your left hand to play the quarter and half notes on the bottom staff while playing all of the sixteenth notes with your right hand. Basically, bars 65 and 66 are the same, except bar 66 is played one octave higher than bar 65.

Bars 67 – 70 – Bars 67 – 68 and 69 – 70 are exactly the same. Notice that it says to play “Tres Anime”, or “Very animated”. Play the perfect fifths with your left hand, as well as the eighth notes in the lower clef. Notice that the lower note in the perfect fifth is a half note. Play the sixteenth notes with your right hand.

Note the crescendos (two in bars 67 and 67, one in bar 68 and 70).

Bars 71 – 72 – This part is pretty straight forward. Play the descending perfect fifths with your left hand, remembering to note the half notes in bar 71. Continue to play the sixteenth notes in your right hand. Also note the crescendo in bar 72.

Bars 73 – 76 – Finally, you actually have a chance to slow down before the end. Play the lower perfect third interval with your left hand, and the higher one with your right hand in bar 73. In bar 74, simply move two fingers on your right hand in a way that plays the two half notes in the correct positions, and In bar 75, play the original perfect third interval on your right hand for one beat, while playing the mentiond perfect fifth interval with your left hand, also for one beat. To close the piece, play a low C interval. The sheet music says to play it with your right hand playing the top note and your left hand playing the bottom note. However, I like to just use my left hand to play the octave. And that’s the end.

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Practice this piece at least once each day. Make a mental note of places that you have a bit of difficulty with, and practice those parts more than the rest. In my opinion, this is a difficult, but rewarding piece to learn. If you keep at it, it will become easier and easier for you to play the many sixteenth notes in this piece, until eventually you’ll be able to play the whole thing blindfolded.

Adding Chords to a Piece

Now what you know how to compose a melody, you can learn how to back up that melody with a bass line.

For this example, though I won’t be using my own melody. I’m too lazy to do that. Instead, I will choose a melody from a musical piece that’s in the public domain. How about Ode to Joy? What’s Beethoven going to do about it, haunt me in my dreams?

Click here to hear the melody line to Ode to Joy



Alright. The melody line is done (I know there was more to Beethoven‘s ninth symphony, but as far as we care, the melody is done). However, it’s not very interesting. What we need to do now is figure out which chords go best with the melody.

Some say that, in order to find chords to go with a piece, you should know the key of the piece (for convenience, the key of this piece, the way I’ve arranged it, is C major / A minor, so there are not sharps or flats). This is somewhat true. The best chords which will take up most of the piece are those you will find that use the same notes as the key signature of your piece contains. I think, though, that while it is usually necessary to use some sort of key structure whan thinking about chords, if is also necessary to remember that a piece usually sounds most interesting in the parts that deviate from the original chosen key.

I’ve added a few chords to this piece. They may not be the correct chords, and you may not like them, but I think they’re fine. If you want to add your own chords to Ode to Joy, feel free to do so and e-mail the sheet music and/or sound file to me. I’m really lonely. I knew I should have started this blog in the year 1998 so that I would’ve had some readers.

Click here to hear Ode to Joy with chords



Notice that I wrote down the names of the chords at certain parts of the piece. These are all major chords. As I’ve mentioned before, major chords usually sound happy, hence the name of this piece, “Ode to Joy”. Also notice that all these chords share the same notes as the C major key signature.

The reason I added the names of the chords was because 1) This allows people reading the nusical piece to use different inversions of the chords, playing arpeggios if they wish, and still allowing the piece to sound somewhat the same, and 2) Melody Assistant isn’t that great at writing the actual musical scores, so I had to write in the chords to make them clearer. Anyway, now that we have some chords, we can add the chords into the piece in any way we want.

Click here to hear the complete version of Ode to Joy



As you can see, I’ve added come arpeggios in the bass cleff. I’ve also made the treble cleff a bit bolder by putting in chords instread of just individual notes. For something I composed (or arranged) in about an hour on one Sunday morning, I think this is actually pretty good.

Notice that all the notes I added (except for some of the original melody line) are parts of the chords mentioned above the bars. The melody line is okay, though, because the key sinature of the chords and the melody stays the same throughout the piece.

The way I used the chords, though, is actually very simple. The piece basically contains constant arpeggios on the left hand, and chords on the right. You can do a lot more with chords, but this is a start. Keep composing music and you will eventually come up with more creative ideas for the harmony of a musical piece.

Hearing Music inside your Head

As I believe I’ve mentioned before, one of the most important things a good composer must be able to is to be able to hear music in their mind’s ear. Of course, in order to listen to music in your head, you must listen to a lot of music in real life. I listen to a lot of music by Liszt, Beethoven and Nobuo Uematsu. This is a strange combination, but if you want to combine several different genres, that’s you’re right as a composer.

Anyway, as I was saying, you must listen to a lot of music in your preferred genre(s). I happen to be lucky in that I like classical piano music, most of which was composed more than a hundred years ago, so some recordings and MIDI files of such pieces are available to the public for free. You might not be so lucky, but that’s your problem if you don’t like classical music. I listen to this classical music most of the time, and whenever I have a spare moment in the day, if I’m not listening to or playing music, I’m thinking about it. This isn’t a conscious choice: I almost always have a tune stuck in my head. I don’t mind this, unless I’m trying to get to sleep. Usually, I do a lot of reading before going to bed, to focus my attention away from music. But that’s another topic entirely.

Composers are luckier than writers in this way, because if you look at books and articles on writing, they all say that, in order to be a writer, you must also be a reader. Luckily for us, it’s possible to just relax and listen to music passively: you don’t have to put fourth a lot of energy to hear music. On the other hand, reading does take a bit of mental energy and concentration (if you’ve ever read the gibberish I write in this blog before, you know what I mean.)

When listening to a piece of music, enjoy it. Don’t try to analyze the music, at least not yet. Listen the the piece over and over again until it’s stuck in your head.

However, don’t memorize every single individual note in the music. That would just be monotonous and probably not worth it in the end. Memorizing the melody of a musical piece you like is relatively easy, so that with that. Think of the emotions you associate with certain points in the melody. Think about the speed and general feel of the piece. The rest of the notes and chords should come to you when taking the time to play a musical piece in your head. If not, listen to it a few more times out lout before trying to play it in your head again.

If you want to play that musical piece by ear, no matter what instrument(s) the piece is meant for, refer back to the tune and the emotions you associated with it. With some focus, you may be able to take the tune and build on it with chords inside your head. Learn to mentally separate pieces in your head into the basic notes when playing them by ear. For example, if a song contains a C major chord, but you don’t know that, you can mentally slow down the musical piece and play each note in the chord separately, hearing in your head C, E and G.

This exercise may be difficult at first, but with practice, you will get better at it. When doing something that doesn`t require a lot of mental work, like doing chores around the house, play a tune in your head, even if you can only remember the melody line. If we want to compare this to weight training: playing a few notes in your head is like lifting a five pound weight. If you`re fairly weak, lifting this weight will give you a bit of a workout. However, once that`s easy for you, you can move on to lifting a ten pound weight (say, playing the complete melody line of a song in your head). At that point, you will still have the ability to lift a five pound weight. It’s just that lifting a five pound weight won`t give you as much of a work out any more. However, because lifting a five pound weight is easy, you can do it over and over again without getting tired. This built up strength will serve you on your way to lifting a three hundred pound weight (composing a perfected four-part fugue inside your head without having to write it down to remember it).

Obviously, learning to remember music and play it in your head is a helpful skill for any musician who wants to compose, improvise or transcribe music.

Ear Training: Basic Chords

Alright, I’ve taught you about musical intervals. To review, musical intervals are sets of two notes that can be played either in succession or at the same time for musical effect. Now I think you’re all old enough to learn about a musical concept even cooler than intervals: chords.

Chords are basically three or more notes played at the same time or in succession, meant to add a sort of emotional effect to the music. For example, a major chord usually sounds happy, and a minor chord usually sounds sad or angry. A large part of a musical piece, however, depends on the order the chords are played in. I can’t really help you with that just yet: chord progressions are really up to the individual to experiment with (aka: I have no idea what chord progressions are). Also, I don’t entirely know how to use scale degrees, so I’ll be describing the chords by the intervals they use. Most musicians need this sort of ear training anyway

I’ll start with some basic chords. The tonic note of all the following chords is C, but I will tell you the invervals of each chord so that you can play them in any key. The intervals will all be from the tonic note.

If you’re a visual learner, refer to this keyboard to what each chord would look like on a piano. If you’re an aural learner (which most musicians are) then you can click on the name of each chord to hear it played on your computer speakers.



Major Chord

Tonic Note – Major Third – Perfect Fifth
E.g.: C – E – G

The major chord, as I mentioned, usually sounds happy, or at least creates a positive emotion in the listener. This is one of the first chords people learn.

Minor Chord

Tonic Note – Minor Third – Perfect Fifth
E.g.: C – Eb – G

This has a one note difference from the major chord, but sounds much sadder or angrier, depending on how it’s played.

Augmented

Tonic Note – Major Third – Minor Sixth
E.g.: C – E – G#

This chord has a harsh, scary sound to it.

Seventh

Tonic Note – Major Third – Perfect Fifth – Minor Seventh
E.g.: C – E – G – Bb

This is like a major chord with an extra note added on top.

Minor Seventh (Chord)

Tonic Note – Minor Third – Perfect Fifth – Minor Seventh
E.g.: C – Eb – G – Bb

This is a bit like the Seventh, but sadder. Try not to get the minor seventh chord confused with the minor seventh interval. Remember, a chord is made up of three or more notes, but an interval is made up of two notes.

Diminished

Tonic Note – Minor Third – Diminished Fifth – Major Sixth
E.g.: C – Eb – Gb – A

This chord sounds kind of scary, like the kind of piano chord you’d expect to see in those old black-and-white movies when the leading lady is tied to the railroad tracks and the train is coming.


Well, this has been an introduction to chords. I will add more chords in the future, but you’ll actually be using the chords listed above most often.

If you want to see what these chords look like on a piano keyboard and find out more information about them, you can use this chord finder.