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Yes. It solves the "stacked 3rds problem" because now the letters are right. For sound it makes no difference, as you know.

The only reason why this is so important is for understanding the concept of written intervals. D-Cb, the interval is a diminished 7th. D-B is a major 6th. So TECHNICALLY we referring to a chord written with a major 6th as a diminished 7th chord.

A curious adult will ask why a chord that has a M6 in it is labeled as dim7.

Again, D F Ab Cb has a dim7 in it, D-Cb. D F Ab B does not. So we silently agree to call D F Ab B a Dim7 in charts or lead sheets, but eventually we realize that this is a shortcut for what REALLY is B D F Ab (a real diminished chord) with a D in the bass.

For those who just grow up with lead sheets, this is a non-issue. At some point they either find out “the rest of the story”, which they need to do to WRITE music, or they just memorize the sound, feel and patterns and do not concern themselves with spelling.

I hope that helps. Again, I have a very step-by-step way of teaching this chord.

1) I teach people how to play the chords, no music.
2) I introduce the concept of naming the four-note diminished chords by their bass note, which is fully in sync with real-time practical usage in lead sheets and chord symbols in full standard piano arrangements, where chord symbols are added for people who can’t read the bass clef.
3) I get into the “grammar”, the spelling, when we encounter WRITTEN chords and I have to answer the dreaded question: “If it says dim7, where is the dim7?”

That last question is the elephant in the room. That’s what opens up the can of worms.

Again, what I see in all this is a systematic way of getting students go get a REAL understanding of chords from all sides, gradually, over time, through careful and systematic teaching. This is important for all beginners of all ages.

It is nice reading the various teachers chiming in telling us their various approaches to achieve this: Brian Lucas, Gary, JamesPlaysPiano - I think I've left out a number of names for which I apologize. We don't realize that what is first taught is the hardest to teach, because each involves brand new concepts.

Thanks to Ed and Gary. I think you left out a key part of what you are saying (so primitives like me can understand). In What's New, the problem is that the melody is a B, so if the chord is D dim, assuming the melody is part of the chord, you don't have a real diminished chord (from a spelling standpoint). That's why you need to call if a B dim over D in the bass. Theoretically, if the composer had labelled the melody note Cb, you could have a D dim chord underneath that, no?

First of all, jjo, there is nothing "primitive" about any of your work that I have seen.

Second of all, I would like to volunteer to lead a crusade to change classical and jazz nomenclature AND theory. Thenceforth, that all-so-troublesome chord we have been discussing shall be known as Dº add 6. Now is everyone happy?

(I'd sign off with, "Poor, poor Virginia", but that would start another round of what that means . . .)
Ed

That's the gist of it. And using that reasoning, D F Ab Cb is a textbook example of how to write a dim7 chord, in root position.

This is why I explain D F Ab B as Bdim7/D, to explain that B is the root of the STACKED spelling, which is the only one that contains the interval that matches the name of the chord.

In other words, if you (as a student) ask me where the dim7 INTERVAL is in D F Ab B, I have to explain in some way why we are looking at a M6.

We could also invent a new symbol - Dm6-5. Then for every spelling we would have to invent a new symbol. The result would be a bunch of new symbols that no one uses. What are we going to do fo D F G# B? You see sooner or later that by insisting that our chord symbols reflect spelling AND show the base note, we have two choices.

1) Label Bdim7/D. Problem: no one DOES that, so we have a theoretical solution that makes sense but that is not used.
2) Say that we will agree that C D#/Eb F#/Gb A/Bbb, regardless of spelling, will be labeled as Cdim7 with the assumption that the symbol describes the sound in all cases but the spelling only 25% of the time.

I think that should be C D#/Eb F#/Gb.

Off that topic but on overall topic, I've got a question about a specific chord symbol: Db9

Is it a D(b9)? or a (Db)9? or a typo for D7b9 or Db7 or Db7b9? For reference, a D7b9 does show up later in the same song and where the melody repeats, the second time it does show up as a Db7.

Having Db9 alone just seems like not enough info, to me.

Thanks for catching my typo.

Cb9 is wrong because we can't tell if it is C D G Bb Db or Cb Bb Gb Bbb Db

D(b9) will work But Db7b9 is standard. Db7-9 is also common.

PJ, this precise question started a three- or four-page hornet's nest on one of the other Forums a few months ago. When most of us write a potentially ambiguous symbol like this, we use parenthesis to make our intention clear, ie. Db(9) or D(b9).

When one is faced with guessing a composer's or arranger's intentions, which happens occasionally, the melody, and the surrounding harmonic progression(s) will usually tell us which is "correct". Do you have an exact instance about which you are puzzling?

Ed

It’s spelling time again! I’ve been dipping in and out of some of these threads for a week or two and had been meaning to say something for a while, so apologies if it’s a long post – it’s an accumulation.

May I contrast a practitioner’s view with that of the teachers? I spent practically my entire working life (now retired and recreational) in the nooks, crannies and more open reaches of commercial music where chord charts lie in the kernel of production and ‘harmonic analysis’ is a daily drudge. Between a reckless phase of playing in bands and finishing in later life as an orchestral arranger on uk pop records I spent the best part of three years preparing lead sheets for the major uk publishing houses so I can tell you something about the approach and the priorities. At some later date it might be of interest to mention something about the scandalous business of ‘piano sheet music’, a snapshot of the tolerances that pervaded the industry, the rubbish it churned out (I suspect still does), and may offer some insight as to why this constant preoccupation with fine detail – particularly when this is focused as it has so often lately been, on the diminished chord - is misplaced.

Someone mentioned a composer preparing his lead sheet. In fact for the most part this just doesn’t happen. Why? He’s far too busy writing songs so he can fatten his purse. It’s a chore he simply doesn’t want to take on. He’s very likely to be a strumming guitarist or self-taught pianist who doesn’t have the polished script of the professional and the lead sheet must pass muster for the copyright document it functions as. Which leads to the main obstacle; no small minority of composers (we’re really talking song-writers here) are all but musically illiterate. They’d be incapable of doing the work, neat or otherwise.

Of course I was incapable too at the outset and it’s well over 50 years now since I took a few first lessons in chord notation. What I took away from them was how much I needed to learn about the tricky lopsided, jazzy tensions, yet how blessedly straightforward were those symmetric constructions based on the simple divisors, 3 and 4, of the number 12. I learnt that if we look at stacked intervals of n consecutive semitones (and irrespective of starting note!!)

n=3 - diminished … 3 variants
n=4 - augmented…4 variants

(n=2 gives us the whole tone scale, n=6 the tritone)

So, I was taught that there are three different diminished chords – structurally identical of course but different by transposition. For each of those three, there are 4 chords which share identical notes – the inversions. The melodic or harmonic context will usually (but not always) favour a particular inversion, That was it in a nutshell and I have to say I was quite satisfied by that. In sharp contrast, the world of the diminished chord as discussed here appears to be a conundrum.

I spotted four contentions.

How can we know its ‘proper’ root?
How do we conventionally name it?
How do we spell the chord?
Does it comprise of 4 notes or 3?

Let’s take each one in turn.

How can we know its proper root?: I would say we shouldn’t fret about it because a lot of the time the context will determine it but let’s look at a less amenable example. We’re transcribing a lead sheet from a recording of an ensemble or a rock/pop band and there are competing voices in the instrumentation which have taken their own inversion. In such a situation (and it is not uncommon) it becomes meaningless to argue the toss between, for example, G dim and Bb dim when what was originally written on the orchestrator's score as a G bass note has yielded to the bass player's creative choice of Bb and where it has been approved by the record producer who loves the substitution for its singing quality. If that wasn’t difficult enough, the violas, the 1st and 2nd violins are playing (above middle C reading upwards) a wide spread of the notes E, Bb and G while the guy on the rhodes is playing…….one gets the drift. In popular music it is so often impossible to pin these things down therefore it is NOT an issue because it MUST NOT be an issue. So to summarise; If its root is not downright obvious then it is discretionary! Nobody in the studio or in the control room gives a fig what the chord is called. We know that irrespective of its name, it’s going to sound fine.

On nomenclature: I never used Cdim7 in any of the lead sheets I presented using always Cdim or C° but I have seen them on others’ work – usually on piano copies. Earlier work I think. My rhythm charts were always C° and on the London wine bar scene (maybe in the US too, I don’t know) we used a few other shorthands for common chords (e.g. ma7 replaced by a tiny triangle suffix). In my experience Cdim7 is less prevalent. The upshot? Working musicians have seen all variants. Chord labeling is ALWAYS about convention, i.e. that which has evolved, been accepted by the consensus and has stood the test of time. It is far less concerned with consistency or logic. Brevity and familiarity are the prime objectives. So, if tomorrow a new and rather twisted musical form takes root using outlandish harmonic combinations which would – in the current lingo – require some convoluted label, there will sooner or later be a new label, a new shorthand.

4 notes or 3? By now we’ll have seen how it might be difficult for a diminished chord to escape with only 3 notes being played when you’ve got a mob of musicians doing their own thing! Will that 4th note be avoided? Probably not. Someone’s almost bound to play it! It’s a curious thing about the diminished chord that its character, its colour if you will, doesn’t change significantly with either choice. If it’s a closely voiced chord, the 4-note sounds thicker of course but it seems to perform the same function as the triad.

Spelling: My tutor never mentioned it and in the 50+ years that have followed neither have I nor have any of the hundreds of musicians I’ve worked with. I apologise if this seems too outspoken but I think such concerns are a complete waste of time and ultimately non-musical. An hour spent ruminating on such issues would be so much better spent pulling out a reference chart and painstakingly working out some basic, arguably less controversial chords with the aim of locking them into memory. I urge any keen student to not get hung up on spelling.

Looking at chord symbols more generally, it should be clear that their main function as they are and have been used in popular music is to provide a broad-brush description that any instrumentalist/arranger can take as a starting point. In other words, their purpose is to provide a harmonic skeleton which can be fleshed out in a variety of styles and in any ensemble setting. Not all songs will adapt to all genres but it’s worth reflecting on the fact that the humble C major chord can assume markedly different voicings and modes of play when interpreted through the various genres of jazz, rock, ‘light music’, R&B, folk, C&W, soul, gospel, pop and other-world varieties. More to the point, chord symbols have become an autonomous alternative to stave-notation; this is particularly true for guitarists and the like but I know several superb pianists with an enviable harmonic instinct, good with symbols but who are poor readers otherwise. So what flows from this? We must accept that by virtue of their very rough’n’ready-ness, chord symbols in the commercial context will not submit to any kind of straight-jacket, that they cannot be set in the matrix of a water-tight and consistent grammar. If one wants precision, one must return to the stave.

I hope this will be treated as an alternative perspective, not as a correction to anyone’s thinking on the subject. In the light of Virginia’s initial post however, I think it’s fair to ask if the sort of issues being addressed in the latter part of this thread could possibly be relevant to the nature of the initial enquiry and if perhaps they might sometimes run the risk of wilting curiosity’s tender bud.

I like the way you think. Do you start with teaching by ear with a new adult student then move to reading music?

Too bad I don't live in Canada.

Yes, keystring, I think this is spot-on and sums up what has taken me a couple of pages to express (sorry I missed your post before adding mine).

Ha! It took me several years to get it out sensibly.

In addition to current practice in pop that "dire tonic" described, there also is the older set of conventions of General Bass. An organist sees 1 note written, sometimes a number too and plays 5-6 or even 10-12 (some 2-phase transitions are implied).

A lot of conventions are implied in General Bass - one sees 6+, that also implies 4+ and 2+ - and that's really a 7th chord with the 7th in the bass !

Very fine post, all of it. Breath of fresh air!

Dire Tonic,

Like others, I enjoyed your comprehensive and well-thought-out post. While I do not concur with every detail, I enjoyed reading one person’s extensive experience in the pop industry. Here is one part with which I have the most difficulty:

How does one TEACH the universal construction of, say, diminished seventh chords, without dealing with the underlying architecture of that chord, and therefore its spelling? Let us say we are working with a clarinetist.

Ed

I have a feeling that players of each instrument group relate to music from a different perspective. The keyboard player, strings player, percussionist, brass & woodwind player, are each relating to different angles as they produce the notes. The player of a bass instrument will have a different role in the music than one whose instrument typically plays the soprano that often holds the melody, or an instrument that balances the harmony because typically it plays in the middle. So I think, assuming a good teacher, that this answer comes from teachers of these various instruments.

This piano forum deals with keyboard instruments. When I joined, it struck me that several senior teachers were stressing that theory be learned first as a physical experience on the piano, via piano keys, and in some instances, via sound. I've been told "If a good teacher stresses something, explore it. Find out why." In regards to that particular chord, one instrument teacher has already answered this. I have proposed the same idea, namely that you begin with the nature of the chord physically in piano keys, "intervals" in the sense of half steps i.e. minus names, get an understanding that spellings will vary for grammar reasons, and build from there.

Now how is that carried out? I think that you would have to observe an individual instrument teacher to see how he or she meshes the concrete and physical with the theoretical, and makes them real and making sense. A forum like this can only hint. A profession cannot be explained in a few paragraphs; that's why they're professions and take years of study and honing.
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I cannot answer about clarinetists. I took violin lessons. I experienced the broken chords that we played. Our considerations involved fifths because of the tuning of the strings, and we were very involved in temperament. When you play a scale in thirds, fifths etc. then you tune your top melody note along one system, but you harmonize the lower note to the top along another system. Only geeks concern themselves with calculations of mHz - we use our ear, sense of where the music is going. I.e. I think that players of different instruments will have different theory concerns.

However, every musician going on to college or conservatory has to also play piano. Why is that? Why not just any two instruments? Why not cello, piccolo, horn? Why does the composer writing music for voice sit down at the piano? Is it not because the piano allows us to experience theory (harmony) in action?

If this is so, then maybe the piano approach to theory, holds an answer to the clarinetist question too.


I'd say that spelling, letters, the written form, are one side to that underlying architecture. The other side is the notes themselves as pitches with intervals between them. Both those sides are needed.

I had a period early in my study of formal theory that I became capable of moving notes around on the page and getting correct answer, with hardly a link left to music or sound. It was becoming a cross between advanced geometry and algebra minus physics or applied science. This is why I'm convinced that the connection to the real thing that is being represented is majorly important.

Ed, I don’t know how ‘stacked minor thirds’ together with something like the reference chart posted up earlier can fall short of providing a complete description of the diminished (aka diminished seventh). I do appreciate there is the potential for frustration where enharmonic ambiguity raises its ugly head but frankly I refuse to suffer it, and I don’t allow myself to get fussy about naming constituent notes until I need to commit to paper whereupon I rely entirely on the harmonic context of the chord to chose a ‘best' solution based on ease of writing. That in turn is almost certainly going to correspond with ease of reading.

Regarding teaching (I’ve some experience though not in music unfortunately) I would, above all, want a student to get used to the chord, to be playing it a LOT. The key to all this and far more important than the notation (I suspect we’re polar opposites on all this) is the sense-experience of the chord. One needs ultimately to be able to hear a diminished and know what it is without reference to anything else. In an ideal world, all the chords, the common ones at the very least, should be known this way. For me, notation – apart from its vital and full-time service as a means of communication - should be, for the individual, like a self-dissolving suture, a temporary tool whose function should fade away once it has served its purpose.

I can see that the clarinetist is a quite different teaching hurdle. The pianist has the advantage of the spatial representation on the keyboard and of course the simultaneity of the chord rather than the arpeggio. I haven’t thought about that so I wouldn’t know where to start or even what my or my student's goal should be.

To sort of generalize what others have already implied, I think the best explanation for any student is one that takes into account not only the instrument but also the level of the student. So, with this clarinetist, I'd consider not only the instrument and its peculiarities, but also the level of the student. I suppose the biggest question would be "does the student understand intervals?" If so, you could explain it as a stack of minor thirds and that might be enough. But with different students and differing levels, a teacher should be prepared to explain it in different ways.

If the student happens to be weak on intervals but very attuned to the construction of major scales in all keys, for example, then it might be helpful (at least for diminished triads) to point out that they can be built off of any note as the 7th, 2nd, and 4th notes of a major scale. ("Want to play C diminished? Pretend C is the seventh of a major scale, which means you're in the key of Db. Now, play 'up the scale' from this seventh, but play every other note, so that you're playing 7, 2, and 4 from the Db major scale.") Granted, I wouldn't do this for everyone because this would be a nightmare for some students, but for the right person, this could be the most logical "first step" into constructing the chord. Interestingly, this would also result in correct spelling (again, only of the triad). A similar (generic) idea for a singer could be to use solfege, assuming he/she understands solfege. ("I'll play a note. Now, call it "Ti" and then sing "Ti, Re, Fa.")

For beginners, though, I've often used the chromatic scale as a "way in." That is, if the student can establish how to play up and down the instrument chromatically, this can make it easy to point out all sorts of relationships without getting too heavily into theory at first, if that is your intent. They may not call it the chromatic scale, but many people are aware that a "full spectrum" of notes lies on their instrument, covering all possible pitches from bottom to top. IF the student is aware of this, then a quick way to teach something like diminished seventh chords could be to simply count skips along the series. In this case, "note, skip two, note, skip two, note, skip two, note").

I use O's and X's for this, which makes it easy to get the point across and which seems to do a good job of removing the physical peculiarities of any individual key from the discussion. This can be especially helpful at the piano, too, because it removes the ever-present differences between shapes in various keys at the piano. Granted, this does NOT address even the notion of what a third, fifth, or seventh is, or even note names! However, as everyone's been saying, it's a matter of balancing out how much info is too much, at what point things become too bogged down with theory, what it is you are trying to teach, and so on. If you feel it is appropriate to the situation and you want to include it, you can explain scale degrees, interval names, spelling, and so on. If not, you could use something like O's and X's.

James

The biggest question to me is: can the student PLAY a dim7 chord? And learning to play dim7 chords can happen by rote or strictly through music, and absolutely no knowledge of intervals is necessary to do this. I taught brass for many years, so an example would be, trumpet:

0 23 2 12, 0 2 2 12 0, two octaves from low C to high C. There you have C/B# D#/Eb F#/Gb etc., and the pitches for 4 different fully diminished chords are there, potentially ready to be notated in stacked thirds.

If the same set of pitches occurs in notation, then most likely it will be something like C Eb Gb A or C Eb F# A. That can be played perfectly without understanding the theory, so at that point you could write out the stacked chords, to introduce the concept:

A C Eb Gb
F# A C Eb

That would totally confuse my students. I got confused reading your explanation. Ti re fa is linked to movable do. For those who use that system, it could work. But it is function related, building on the idea of a vii chord. I would prefer to use a six chord as a way in, C6, then lower the middle two notes, just to get the sound, feel, pattern. Once that is in the fingers, it’s easy to talk about various spellings and how only one of them gives us the textbook, stacked answer (C Eb Gb Bbb)

It's true that ti re fa (used in this way) is linked to moveable do, which is related to function. Nonetheless, what I was saying is that this could be an effective "way in," for some singers- say, a college voice major at a particular level. I wouldn't explain it this way to someone who didn't understand or use moveable-do solfege. So I think we agree: for those who use that system, it could work.

I'd say the same thing about using numbers (another relative pitch-naming system like moveable-do solfege) from a major scale. It could work for someone attuned to seeing scales in this way. For others, it wouldn't be a good approach, and I wouldn't use it. My students generally know much more about chord construction by the time we get to diminished chords, and so I've not needed to avoid referencing intervals, spelling, and construction of other chords when explaining diminished chords, in the way this hypothetical situation has been sort of set up. However, it certainly works well with many of my students when explaining, say, major triads (pointing out that a major triad can be thought of as the first, third, and fifth notes of a major scale, as many teachers do).

I'd also say something similar about your preference of using a C6 chord as a "way in": perfect for many people, but not for others. It would be especially good for a beginner/intermediate player with a rock/jazz type background. On the other hand, a classical piano student in the first year of college could require extra explanation, because he/she has presumably been given a heavy dose of strict tertian harmony, in which chords are conceived as stacks of thirds.

Anyway, no need to beat this to death- I think we're both agreeing to the same thing, that a good teacher has many approaches and attempts to present the information that he/she (the teacher) feels is appropriate to teach, but in a way that the student can best understand and relate to. You seem very capable of doing this.

James