Notes vs Chords | What’s the difference?

I've recently received this question about playing notes vs playing chords:

Hi Greg, I wondered if you could tell me what the difference is playing notes vs playing chords. I had piano lessons when I was a kid and I don't recall ever being taught how to specifically play chords. I was taught how to read and play notes on the staff. I learned that when you play a bunch of notes together, they form chords. What's the real difference?

I get this question more often than you would think. Even though chords are built from notes, it's really the context in which you view them that make the difference. If you play notes without recognizing them as a group that belong together, then those notes are just random. Randomness is not good when you need to memorize or learn something new.

In a key of music, you have 7 different notes. Take the key of F Major for example:Notes vs Chords | What’s the difference?The tonic chord of the key of F Major is the F Major chord.Notes vs Chords | What’s the difference?

But, if you know anything of chords, you know that an F chord can come in many flavors. What I'm really referring to is extended tones. These are tones aren't random. They're specific to the key of the tonic chord (in this case, F Major).

Western harmony is constructed of chords that are referred to as "tertian". This is defined as chords that are constructed from intervals of major and minor thirds.

The simplest tertian harmony is Major and minor triads. They consist of these Major and minor 3rd intervals.Notes vs Chords | What’s the difference?You can of course continue adding tertian harmony to extend these chords.

If you take the F Major triad and add all tertian harmony of the key, you'll include every tone that exists within the key.This also applies to F minor

So in theory, you can take every tone in the key to create an extended chord based on the tonic chord. Just keep in mind that extended chords are not played in this way. Stacking them up in thirds don't make for very good sounding chord voicings. They're constructed of voicings in which tones are rearranged or omitted to make them sound more pleasing.

Extended chords of F Major or F minor may look more like these:

F Major 7Notes vs Chords | What’s the difference?

F minor 9

F Major 13th

F/A

The preceding chords are just a few examples of how they can be voiced using the tones that are in the key. The point I wish to make is that the notes in any given chord are often viewed as notes only. How many YouTube tutorials have you watched in which the notes are called out individually.

There's nothing wrong with that in itself, but it makes playing chords far more easy if you identify the number of these tones. This way, you can understand the structure of chords and it essentially reduces the complexity of 12 possibilities down to 1. They're nothing more than patterns of notes. How is that for an easier experience playing professional sounding chords?

Until next time, Go Play?

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Greg Lee

Hi, my name is Greg Lee. I'm the creator of the Color Score Professional/Visual Chord Learning System. I love to share ideas and concepts about piano and keyboard playing in all styles of music. I believe the key to learning is having fun and making complicated things simple with visual tools and illustrations.

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