VLVL2 (12): Minor Chords

[joeallonby]

This thread greeted me as I got in tonight from Haverhill MA where it was
minus five degrees F.  My alt-country band played on a double bill with a
Zappaesque, Oingo-Boingo influenced funk band. Their big cover was the theme
from Inspector Gadget.  It was a local radio station's weekly "Latina
Night". I'm not kidding. I can't make this shit up.

That aside. Dominant seventh chords can sound quite pretty in context
despite the embedded "Devil's interval" tritone. Major sevenths contain the
equally dissonant embedded minor second. They can be really gorgeous. George
Benson made a career on them. The diminished seventh contains STACKED
tritones. The effect can be sweetly unresolved (really jazzy) or jarringly
evil. The intro to "Purple Haze" is a diminished seventh played as
alternating partials. Major sixth- also dissonant- think "Star Trek". Very
spacey. Stacked tritones- the aliens are unfriendly and in your face with
their bad attitude. Personally, I suspend everything.

Nice thread guys.

Peace, from the third stone from the sun.
Joe

on 1/24/04 4:09 PM, Tim Strzechowski at dedalus204 at comcast.net wrote:



Almost all classical work features some minor as well as major (or "happier"
chords), but what sets the somber, pensative tone is the domination of the
minor.  Personally, I think the "creepiest" chord is certainly the
diminished chord.  Listen to a horror film soundtrack, and I guarantee you
diminished chords galore!  I have a book, somewhere on my shelves, which
discusses the supposed chord that summons the devil when played.  I seem to
remember it was "D diminished."  One simple way of explaining the structure
of dimished chords is that it's a sort of "double minor," that is, two minor
intervals stacked together and played at once.

"Two notable exceptions to this major/minor rule are some new age music, and
some contemporary jazz. Both of these styles use major and minor chords as
well as chords that might not be easily categorized as either major or
minor. Yet, a listener may have a distinct sense of whether the music sounds
happy or sad. Furthermore, one person's impression may differ from another
person's impression."
http://www.abc.net.au/newengland/countrymusic/stories/s1029660.htm


"All dominant 7th chords have an interval structure within them which is
called a tritone. A tritone is the distance between the 3rd and the b7 of a
dom7 chord, and it spans the interval of a b5. You will notice that even if
you invert it, it remains a b5. This is because it splits the octave exactly
in half. It gets it's name from the fact that it is comprised of three
steps, or whole tones...hence the name, "tritone". Because of it's omnimous
sound and mysterious properties, this interval was banned from music during
medival times and was commonly referred to as "The Devil's Interval". It
found it's way into many hard rock and heavy metal tunes (bands like Black
Sabbath), probably for the same reasons. They also have a very recognizable,
"diagonal" shape on the fretboard."








-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20040125/94370da5/attachment.html>