Seven Systems: Omitting Notes

Root C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B Chord Major Minor Diminished Augmented Major 7th Dominant 7th Minor 7th Half Diminished 7th Diminished 7th Suspended 2 Suspended 4 Major 6th Minor 6th

Formula

Spatial Degrees

C Major 7th

Spatial

Major triad with M7

Degrees

1 3 5 7

Symbols

CM7, Cmaj7

Active Formula

1 3 5 7

C Major 7th selected

Omitting Notes

lot of reasons why you’d want to remove notes from your chord the first reason is an instrument’s limitation I’m teaching You on piano I have 10 fingers so my limit is being able to play 10 notes at a time however on an instrument like guitar you’re limited to six notes a guitar only has six strings so only six notes can sound at the same time well what if I want to play a C13 chord a C7 chord with all the extensions that’s seven notes so on guitar I would have to Omit one of these notes but which one do I get rid of we need to get rid of a note that will cause the least amount of confusion well we can’t get rid of the one the root imagine how much confusion that would cause if I got rid of the C in a c chord the 13 is also important because we’re playing a 13th chord it wouldn’t be a 13th chord without the 13. [Music] the three and the Seven are important because they tell us what type of seventh chord we’re playing in the three most common seventh chords the three and the Seven are different in our Major Seventh chord we have a three and a seven in our dominant seventh chord we have a three and a flat seven and in our minor seventh chord we have a flat three and a flat seven the three and seven really Define what type of seventh chord it is notice besides the root what note is the same in every chord the five every one of those chords has a five the five does nothing to tell your ear what type of chord is being played so if we’re forced to get rid of one of these notes it would be the five foreign who can only play six notes can omit the five from the chord and play a C13 omit five without confusing anyone [Music] foreign because we still have that three and flat 7. the 9 and 11 are also not as important this leads us to the second reason why you would omit a note from a chord it’s to make the chord less tense if you wanted to make a less tense version of this chord you might remove the 11 as well [Music] the reason this sounds less tense is because the 11 was clashing with a three [Music] the reason the 11 and the three Clash is because the interval they create is very tense sounding certain intervals are tense sounding like this minor second [Music] call this tenth sound dissonant other intervals are the opposite of tense sounding pleasing and stable like this perfect fifth we call this consonant sounding the intervals a chord is made up of will determine its sound as far as dissonance and consonants goes chords are made up of many intervolic relationships for example our seventh chord is made up of six intervals so we play a seventh chord one three five seven we have this interval here we have this interval here we have this interval here we have this interval happening we have this interval happening and we have this interval happening so you’re hearing all of those interval relationships when you hear a seventh chord when you add the 9 11 and 13. you’re hearing 21 interbolic relationships at the same time so here’s all our intervals again the dissonant intervals are minor second major second tritone minor seventh and Major Seventh note that there are degrees of dissonance this minor second feels more dissonant than this major second [Music] the intervals are everything else so back to our C13 omit 5. what is this mysterious dissonant interval between the three and the 11. this is a minor knife interval the notes are E and F the 3 is an e one e to the next D is an octave a perfect eighth after perfect eighth we have a minor ninth our dissonant sounding minor ninth is an e and an f and our dissonant sounding minor second is also an e and an F the minor second and minor ninth are counterpart intervals counterpart intervals sound the same as far as dissonance and consonants goes [Music] can omit the 11 to get rid of the dissonant minor knife interval and make the chord sound less tense and dense [Music] in the chord symbols besides the word omit you’ll also see the word no so C13 No 5 no 11. the last reason you’d want to Omit a note from a chord is to create what are called power chords so here’s our C major chord if we omit the three we create what’s called a power chord is commonly used in rock music it’s a very consonant chord so rock musicians can add a lot of distortion and overdrive effects to it you’ll hear this chord in songs like Iron Man by Black Sabbath and Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana notice that by omitting the three we omit the note that determines whether the chord is major or minor now I know you’re looking at this and saying isn’t that just a perfect fifth interval it’s only two notes typically when playing a power chord you’ll also double the root like this side C Note 3 people also write the power chord as C5 okay so that’s replacing adding and omitting and you can actually do all three at the same time so here’s the C7 a standard basic chord now let’s add the nine now it’s C9 chord let’s replace the three for the four and let’s omit the five we can call this a C9 suspended four no five chord the next system of thinking is using alternate bass notes in our chords so