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figuring out the chords to a song

 
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shapiro



Joined: 11 Jul 2006
Posts: 46

PostPosted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 1:56 am    Post subject: figuring out the chords to a song Reply with quote

Whats the best way to go about this? What do you listen for?
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adrianclark



Joined: 22 Sep 2004
Posts: 122
Location: chair, in front of desk

PostPosted: Wed Aug 08, 2007 9:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are several ways of doing this. Listening to the bass is a good starting point... it won't always be playing the root note, but it often will. Also listen to the melody notes... it's fairly common that stressed melody notes will also be found in the underlying chords.

To give yourself a head start, it's good to identify what key the song is in. This can be a bit hit-and-miss, but listen for the chord that sounds like "home", and try to figure it out first (listening to the bass, especially). This can then narrow down your other choices.


adrian
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timjackson



Joined: 03 Mar 2008
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 3:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

some of the tricks that i like to use:

- identify the bass\root note first . Many cases the bass will be playing that note, while in some cases the bass is playing a note that sounds like something else on his way from a to b. In that case i just try to hum\sing the note that i hear as the 'central' note of the chord.


- figure out if the chord is a fundamental chord like major, minor , dominant. Most chords are. Find out what kind of 3rd and what kind of 7th there is, those are the most important notes. First try a major 3rd and a minor 3rd and see which one it is. Then add a major 7th and a minor 7th and see which one fits.

E.g. if the chord was a G9, first identify the root note G. Then try the thirds (which have to be either B or Bb), B was the one. Then try the sevenths (which have to be either F# or F), F sounded right. The fundemental chord type is then a G dominant \ G7 sound. Then I listen for\try out extensions like 9, 11 etc untll I figure out that G9 was the right sound. Then I eventually listen for which inversion \ voicing it is if I want to have that excact too, and try with and without the 5th to figure out if that is in the chord or not. It's usually not an important tone to the harmony, and a lot of chord voicings leave it out. (Unless it's a minor7b5 or something like that, where the b5 is important to get that sound)



- If neither the minor third or the major third sounded right, it's usually a slash chord or a sus chord. Try stuff like sus2\sus4. And try to hear for stuff like if it's actually another chord over a bass note. Chords like F/G , G/A are common. I find that if I just try to sing some 3 or 4 notes up and down (like an arpeggio) that sounds like the chord i'm hearing, then when I feel like I've dialed in the sound of the chord then that often turns out to be the upper portion of the slash chord. I can then figure out that the chord is something like a G/A.

Trying to listen to the record and seperate the sound of the rest of the chord from the bass note, in the same way as seperating 2 different instruments, also sometimes makes me able to hear the upper portion of slash chords seperated.

In some cases, like weird jazz chords, I just have to try to add different notes one at a time (I like to use a piano for those purposes) and see which ones seem close to the sound I'm looking for and which ones that definately don't. Then when I have some something, I just compare back and forth several times like "no, there's still a note missing" and try to hear what that might be.

Using a wave\audio editor software is a great tool for me (I use sound forge or audition). It's easy to mark a small area of the tune and play it several times, loop it, copy it to a new window and transpose it up or down and octave or timestretch it etc. And it's easy to rewind just 1 second etc, something which is a pain to do in mediaplayer or on a CD player etc.

Hope that helps!
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