Do you find yourself reverting to the same familiar chords? Technology can help...
One of the pitfalls of becoming familiar with an instrument is that we can default to the same kinds of shapes and patterns we’ve used over‑and‑over. When I was learning guitar I was shown a trick that helped break out of this, and a comparable idea can be employed with polyphonic synthesizers (or keyboard instruments in general).
With the guitar the trick was simple: the player simply tunes to a different tuning, such as open G or DADGAD. As re‑tuning causes all of the notes to move from their normal positions on the fretboard, the shapes you would default to don’t work, or if they do, they lead to a different combination of notes from usual. This re‑tuning therefore forces the player to find different shapes and to use their ear and then, once back in good ol’ EADGBE, to start thinking in a different way about approaching chord voicings in general.
The way I’m going to do this on a synthesizer is to choose an instrument that has at least two oscillators per voice. This can be hardware or software, it doesn’t matter, but it’s crucial that two pitches sound when each single key is pressed because of the dual oscillators.
If you don’t want to use a synthesizer, you could load up two instances of a piano patch in your DAW, set them to the same MIDI track and then view them as ‘oscillators’ 1 and 2 when reading the explanation below.
If we tune the second oscillators at different intervals to the first and then play chords, all sorts of unexpected and interesting things happen.
Figure 1: The notes physically played on the keyboard have black noteheads. These are also the pitches that sound from the first oscillators. The notes with red noteheads are those created by the second oscillators that are tuned at an interval — in this first case, a perfect fifth.As you’ll see, if we tune the second oscillators at different intervals to the first and then play chords, all sorts of unexpected and interesting things happen, even if we play the same shapes we’re familiar with. Better still, we can analyse what is happening and take ideas from it.
Tuning In Perfect Fifths
In this first example, we’ll tune our second oscillators seven semitones higher than the first, so that the interval between them is a perfect fifth. If we play a simple C major triad, we immediately get something much more interesting. As you can see from Figure 1, our first oscillators give us the notes we played (C, E, G), but the second oscillators give us G, B and D at the same time. Putting the notes in order, we have C, E, Gx2, B, D, which is C major 9 (with two fifth degrees).
If we invert the original chord, we still get C major 9, but with some lovely voicings. As shown in the notation in Figure 2, playing the first inversion of our C major triad (E, G, C) gives us E, G, B, C, D, G and playing the second inversion (G, C, E) gives us G, C, D, E, G, B. Once we put these inversions into the context of a chord sequence, their usefulness will be revealed.
Figure 2.
Figure 3.
Next, let’s take a look at the relative minor triad, A minor. If we play A, C, E then the first oscillators give us those notes, but the second oscillators give us E, G and B above them. Putting those notes in order, we have A, C, Ex2, G, B which is A minor 9. Again, inverting the basic triad gives us more interesting voicings of the chord, as in Figure 3.
Figure 4.But why stop there? We’ve only used three fingers so far, so what if we added a fourth? If we play a C add 2 chord (C, D, E, G) then our oscillators give us C, D, E, Gx2, A, B, D, which is C major 9 (add 13), as shown in Figure 4. That’s impressive, considering we only added one extra note to a basic major triad!
This works for minor chords too. As you can see in Figure 5, if we play an A minor (add 4) chord (A, C, D, E), our oscillators give us A, C, D, Ex2, G, A, B, which is Am11.
Figure 5.Now, here comes the challenge. If we start playing chord progressions, as well as the juicy extended chords we’ve intentionally created, we’ll get some nasty dissonant ones, so we’ll have to use our ears and start moving notes around within our chords until we find something we like.
This is, of course, the entire point of the exercise: we are trying to break out of the same old chord progressions and note combinations.
Figure 6 shows an example chord progression to try with oscillators tuned in fifths.
Figures 6a and 6b.
Tuning In Perfect Fourths
Figure 7.Let’s try the same principle, but with our second oscillators tuned in fourths. Now our basic C major triad gives us something different: C, E, F, G, A, C, to be precise, which isn’t really a C major chord, but actually an inverted Fmaj9 chord instead. I did say that this will mix things up! A quick mental transposition tells us that playing the shape of a G major triad will give us a C chord. Again, we can add a fourth note, as we did before, to get some extra spice, as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 8.Our A minor triad also gives us something different: A, C, D, E, F, A, which is actually Dm9/A. Another quick transposition tells us that playing the shape of an E minor triad will actually give us Am9/E. Staying with this ‘E minor’ triad, if we add another fourth note (E, G, A, B) then we get E, G, Ax2, B, C, D, E which is a nice, squashy Am11/E, as in Figure 8.
Now is a good moment to mention that the transposing/bi‑tonal nature of this technique can cause problems, but this can be helped by playing root notes in the left hand. In order to keep this separate, we need to set up a keyboard split where the left side of the keyboard has oscillators tuned in unison or octaves and not at another interval.
With this is mind, Figure 9 shows a chord progression to try with the right side of the keyboard, using oscillators tuned in perfects fourths, and the left hand in standard tuning.
Figures 9a and 9b.
Taking Things Further
And here’s where things get even more interesting. What if we had two parts, one tuned in fourths and one tuned in fifths, happening at the same time? Now even the common I, V, VI, IV progression becomes a different prospect entirely. I’ll stick to the key of C major and so our four basic chords would be C (I), G (V), Am (VI), F (IV). If we extend those chords to add the seventh degrees, then we can see the fuller context: Cmaj7, G7, Am7, Fmaj7. We need to be aware of this as we work out our voicings.
Figure 10.For the first synthesizer part, we’ll use the perfect fifth tuning. There’s an issue to work around, though, which is that the upper extensions of our chords (created by the second oscillators) give us some duff notes. For example, if we were to extend the G major that is V in the key of C major, this would normally be a dominant seventh chord, as mentioned above. With our oscillators in fifths, we get a major seventh chord (actually, major ninth) instead. To work around this, we’ll need to try some different shapes and combinations of notes. F, G, D, E sounds right to my ears and, lo and behold, an analysis shows us that this gives F, G, C, Dx2, E, A, B. Restructure those notes (G, B, D, F, A, C, E) and we have all of the tones of of a G13 chord, which is an extended version of G7. Bingo!
Over to the second part, and we’re tuned in fourths. Again, to stay in the key we want, we need to play in, seemingly, a different key! We also still need to shift notes around to avoid certain bum notes being created by our second oscillators. For example, as with the first part, we wind up with major seventh chords (or extensions of) and there is a dominant seventh chord in our progression to consider.
Put these down with a unison bass beneath to tie them together and look at how dense our harmony has become in Figure 10, without us playing many keys.
So, what can we learn from this? This exercise gives us a glimpse at what extended versions of chords (and chord progressions) can sound like and so, if we tune our oscillators back into unison, we can look at bringing in some of those voicings and ideas in a ‘normal’ way by playing them on the keyboard. And then, just like that, we’re no longer playing those tired old chords.