Often in stories, the character’s journey home is much faster than their journey away from home - and this is often reflected in music with the movement of Dominant - Tonic areas or V - I chords. In a story, this is could be considered the moment when the character is farthest along and feels the strongest urge to return home. The V chord and dominant area have a lot of tension because the 7 and 2 are have a pull to the root and want to resolve. The DOMINANT AREA is the section of the music that is built off the major chord consisting of 5 - 7 - 2 and is referred to in music as the V CHORD (“V” being the Roman Numeral for “five”). We will not study dominant seventh chords this quarter, but we will look at the area. The word “dominant” is used in music to label both chords and areas. To identify a major triad, write the root letter with a superscript capital M next to it: Bbᴹ. Major triads can also be built off the 4th and 5th scale degrees. Since the chord is stacked by thirds, it ends up sounding the scale degrees of 1 - 3 - 5. The MAJOR TRIAD is a triad stacked starting on the root of the major scale. Because thirds occur in major and minor qualities, a combination of major and minor thirds stacked on top of one another create four distinct triad qualities as explained below … TRIADS MAJOR TRIAD The most basic chord is called the TRIAD a 3-note chord where each note is the interval of a 3rd above the previous note. Many chords are four notes or more - especially in jazz harmony (which we will not study at length in Music Theory I). Anything less than three notes would be only an interval - the third note is what makes it a chord. WHAT IS A CHORD?Ī CHORD is three notes or more sounded harmonically all at once ( BLOCK CHORD) or spread out consecutively ( ARPEGGIO).

Almost all Western Classical Music harmony is based on chords. Once you add a third note to an interval, you have created a chord. When we dig deeper into harmony, the next step would be to add a third note to the mix which will interact with two that we already have in an interval. We also know how notes interact in a set of two vertically or horizontally through aural and visual identification of specific intervals. Now that we have tackled scales and scale degrees, we have a grasp at how a note interacts with the next consecutive note over time.

B flat major triad