A Signature Gospel Sound | Triads over Pedal Point

With so many different styles of music, some sounds are apparent when you hear them. One such sound is the gospel style of music. Even though there are so many styles of Gospel music, I want to focus more on the traditional gospel sound.

Among the most common gospel sound are triads over a pedal point. If you're not familiar with triads and/or pedal point, I'll take the time to explain them.

A triad is simply a 3 note chord. Triad meaning 3 and it refers to Major and minor chords as well as other chords.

C Major

C minor

F Major

F minor

G Major

G minor

One thing to take note of, is that triads are often played in different inversions. This is just another way to say that notes can be arranged in any one of 3 different positions.

Root position

1st Inversion

2nd Inversion

If I had to point out one absolute key aspect to become successful at playing popular piano, it's learning all 12 Major and minor chords. Over the years, it has shocked me to find out that not all aspiring piano players know all 12 Major and minor triads, so take the time to learn them. You'll be rewarded greatly for it.

Now, pedal point isn't always referred to in popular music. But it's a simple concept. A pedal point is a sustained tone in the bass which can exist as the root of a chord or non root chord tone as the harmony progresses. For example, it can begin as a consonant chord tone and become a dissonant chord tone until it resolves back to consonance again.  It may or may not be in fourth intervals.

F as a pedal pointNow that we've covered the elements that this triads over pedal point concept consist of, there's the gospel aspect of it also.

Traditional Gospel music is often accented with IV to I harmonic movement. In other words, take any given chord and from a gospel perspective, it wants to move the interval of a fourth.

Another way to describe this fourth movement is a plagal cadence. A cadence is a harmonic progression that creates a sense of resolution. The plagal cadence is known as the Amen cadence because of its frequent setting to the text "Amen" in hymns.

This leads us into the concept of triads over pedal point in this article. If we have one or more bars of music that has a simple I to IV chord vamp, it would look something like this. (A vamp is a static chord or chord progression that repeats itself throughout one or more bars of music)Of course, you can move beyond just two chords and play a IV chord beyond the original IV chord.A longer phrase playing the triad over pedal point exemplifies a more gospel sounding chord progression.