What determines the function of a chord?

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YoungCapone

New member
I’ve been trying to learn about functional harmony and I keep asking myself the above question. Each chord seems to have a general function (with exceptions) within scales, but why is that so? Were scales made with those functions in mind, or were those functions agreed upon or discovered after scales were already determined? Is it a result of having 7 notes in a scale? For example, if you were to choose 7 random notes within an octave...would the 5th chord always serve a dominant function?

DISCLAIMER: I know I’m asking a simple question that doesn’t have a simple answer and I don’t expect any response to be cut and dry. I also realize I’m making a lot of assumptions about the way music works that may or may not be true, however any insight at all would be helpful! Thanks!
 
I noticed that you had already asked quite a few musical theory questions before, and just left them hanging there.

What would be handy to now is why you are asking these questions. Is it for an assignment? A thesis?

The questions relate heavily to musical theory, and while many HR members here are well-versed in musical theory, it doesn't strike me as the logical place to ask this type of question.

Additionally, there are plenty of sites that deal specifically with musical theory and where you can learn to your heart's content

Here, for example: Music Theory Forum

This is what I sadi in a reply to an earier question of yours. It is relevant here:

"Music has a number of similarities to language, and just as language has its grammar, so does music.

"The most significant thing though, is that they are both oral expressions of oral traditions with oral origins, where, in the case of music, 'oral' includes voice, but also the sound of things being hit, scraped or blown.

"Grammar is the way in which we attempt to impose a framework over these traditions so that we can understand how and why they work. Humans seem to have an innate ability to string vocal sounds together (i.e. words) in a way that others will understand and can respond to, even though in different regions the words will be different and strung together in different ways.

"Similarly, humans can consistently favour a set of musical pitches where these pitches have a particular relationship with each other. Like language, the pitches and their relationships will vary according to region and culture. These do not need to be explicitly taught, but are often passed on through oral traditions."

Scales weren't "made" with any specific function in mind. They are simply a set of notes whose relationship to each other is satisfying to humans (noting that 'satisfaction' varies with culture, and that different cultures will prefer scales with different relationships).

A chord is only two or more notes played together, and has no particular function other than that given to it by the composer. In western scales, some chords are used in particular ways because of the tonal characteristics of the notes of the chord (e.g. a suspended chord seems to want to resolve itself).
 
Hi YoungCapone! It seems to me that you do not know much about music theory, but captured here and there concepts that feel quite smoky to you. Believe me, it's impossible to clear your mind posting in forums, you have to study. If you produce modern popular music these books are amazing: Hooktheory Books: Learn How To Write Amazing Chords And Melody.. If you want a more standard music theory education there are plenty of books on the market (just one example: Music Theory for Computer Musicians by Michael Hewitt).
 
That's actually several questions in one so I'm gonna go for the history part of it "how did the scales come to be and who did it?" ............ 35 year piano tuner talking here

An awful lot of this stuff directly ties to J. S. Bach.
Prior to him they didn't even use even tempered tuning so if you used mathematically correct tuning then a harpsichord/clavichord ( pre-pianos ) could only play in 3 or 4 keys because the spacing of the notes would make it sound nasty in other keys.
Pianos were also around but had not yet supplanted the clavichord in popularity ..... but the same applied to them.
You would have to decide if you were going to use an 'A' temperament or an 'E' or 'C' and tune it to that.

Bach is the one who legitimized and spread even-tempered tuning (where the notes are all an equal space apart ) with "The Well Tempered Clavier".

This was the first time anyone had written a piece that was in all 12 major and all 12 minor keys.
No one had done that before.
It was a prelude and a ..... crap .... can't remember .... gotta go look it up brb .... and a fugue in each major and minor key and was written to spread the virtues of even tempered tuning.
So the existence of the very notes we use today can be traced directly to him.
He thought of making compromises in the tuning of different notes that allowed it to work in all keys when they could not before.
AND those compromises are one of the reason guitars have certain tuning issues.
At a piano tuners seminar we heard pianos tuned mathematically correct and it was interesting but didn't make me want to re-tune pianos every time the key changed.
In a way they sounded more in tune within the key they were tuned to but bad in others ......

As for the functions that chords take ..... when I was taking this as part of a composition major we were taught that in the late 1700's and early 1800's as classical music developed, that Bach's works were analyzed and everything counted up and the things that Bach did a lot were considered good and the things he never did considered bad and to a large extent would not be used.
Hell ..... you could actually get in trouble for using a tri-tone (the devils' chord ).
A lot of this stuff was almost written in stone and considered unbreakable rules for a long time.

And because music was largely controlled by the church it stayed that way until common folks developed their own styles and loosened things up.
Gospel was still church music but freer than classical and freer still for the blues that came out of that.
Then when jazz hit, rules largely went out the window and anything went.

But even though we've gotten away from being slaves to Bach, the underlying music structure and chord progressions of 12-tone western music are ingrained in our very beings as that's the music system we've heard since childhood.
So we just naturally interpret a 5 chord as dominant ..... but that's just because it's what we've always heard.
A classical middle east musician would hear things differently.
 
gecko zzed said:
I noticed that you had already asked quite a few musical theory questions before, and just left them hanging there.

What would be handy to now is why you are asking these questions.
Click to expand...

I tried that too, gecko...but YoungCapone is either ignoring requests for more info and discussion...or he is oblivious to our posts and is just peppering forums with questions, or as you suggested, gathering data for some reason, and has no intention of interacting.
 
He never seems to respond does he? What gets me is the odd construction of the question? What determines the function of a chord? That sounds like a phrase used by somebody as part of something more complex. On it's own, you have to consider what it even means. The function of a chord could be to build a musical framework around a melody, but then you need to consider chord progressions, and it starts to get complicated.

I'd love it if just once, he told us what he thinks - so we can work out the context that the question is framed in?
 
Interestingly, Capone did reply in one of the other threads and said they'd get more involved. We await with baited breath........
 
I don't think I have by any means the whole answer to your question, but perhaps I can set forth a point that would serve as a guide for future comments. I think that much of the function of a chord is rooted in the harmonic series. Taking a C-Major chord as an example (C, E, and G all on the white keys of a piano), we get a pleasant sound when they are played together. If we take the C on a piano, one octave above the lowest C (the lowest C on many MIDI keyboards), it has a frequency of about 65 Hz. The second partial of that note is C an octave higher, or about 132 Hz. The third partial is the G a fifth interval above the C we just considered, around 196 Hz. Then the fourth partial is two octaves above the low C from which we started, or about 262 Hz. Continuing on for two more partials, we get an E just above Middle C, and a G a fifth interval above Middle C. We there have G, C, and E - the third, fourth, and fifth partials of the low C of 65 Hz from which we started. One interesting experiment you can perform using a piano in reasonably good tune will also give you some enlightenment on this matter of harmonics. Hold that "low C" one octave above the lowest C on the piano, but don't actually play it. That action will hold the damper off the strings for that key. now sharply tap the notes C, E, and G just above Middle C. If you listen carefully, you will hear that chord ringing softly on the undamped strings of the acoustic piano. The strings of that note you are holding, then, are continuing to produce the sound of the C-chord you struck. It is part of the "natural world" which has been examined for centuries starting from such mathematicians as Pythagoras, who studied relationships of strings as best he could in that time. I believe that our ears are accustomed to hearing relationships between the "tonic" of any key and the "dominant" of that key so that our ears and minds would not respond as pleasantly to a random series of chords as we will to a structured progression of a group of chosen chords. While a computer could be programmed to generate any number of random chords rooted on the seven white keys of a piano, that "piece" would probably not hold our interest nearly so much as a carefully selected string of chords picked by a person with at least some understanding of music and chords. While the Billboard charts have many pieces composed by persons with varied musical background, I don't think you'll find any piece on the Billboard written by a computer programmed with the hypothetical random number generator mentioned above. There is something missing from the computer which exists in a person creating a piece.
 
hautbois16 said:
I don't think I have by any means the whole answer to your question, but perhaps I can set forth a point that would serve as a guide for future comments. I think that much of the function of a chord is rooted in the harmonic series. Taking a C-Major chord as an example (C, E, and G all on the white keys of a piano), we get a pleasant sound when they are played together. If we take the C on a piano, one octave above the lowest C (the lowest C on many MIDI keyboards), it has a frequency of about 65 Hz. The second partial of that note is C an octave higher, or about 132 Hz. The third partial is the G a fifth interval above the C we just considered, around 196 Hz. Then the fourth partial is two octaves above the low C from which we started, or about 262 Hz. Continuing on for two more partials, we get an E just above Middle C, and a G a fifth interval above Middle C. We there have G, C, and E - the third, fourth, and fifth partials of the low C of 65 Hz from which we started. One interesting experiment you can perform using a piano in reasonably good tune will also give you some enlightenment on this matter of harmonics. Hold that "low C" one octave above the lowest C on the piano, but don't actually play it. That action will hold the damper off the strings for that key. now sharply tap the notes C, E, and G just above Middle C. If you listen carefully, you will hear that chord ringing softly on the undamped strings of the acoustic piano. The strings of that note you are holding, then, are continuing to produce the sound of the C-chord you struck. It is part of the "natural world" which has been examined for centuries starting from such mathematicians as Pythagoras, who studied relationships of strings as best he could in that time. I believe that our ears are accustomed to hearing relationships between the "tonic" of any key and the "dominant" of that key so that our ears and minds would not respond as pleasantly to a random series of chords as we will to a structured progression of a group of chosen chords. While a computer could be programmed to generate any number of random chords rooted on the seven white keys of a piano, that "piece" would probably not hold our interest nearly so much as a carefully selected string of chords picked by a person with at least some understanding of music and chords. While the Billboard charts have many pieces composed by persons with varied musical background, I don't think you'll find any piece on the Billboard written by a computer programmed with the hypothetical random number generator mentioned above. There is something missing from the computer which exists in a person creating a piece.
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