Submitted 10 months ago by ilex@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
I’m fooling around with notation software that will label chords. I input a D major chord, and it offers to also label it also as F# m/5+. F# minor but then /5+?
Everyone else in the thread already worked their way through explaining how F#m/5+ gets to D F# A.
I’m here to tell you that there is absolutely no musical context, practical or theoretical, where it is the correct chord symbol to write. Period.
Zero. Zilch. Nada.
I don’t disagree but…
How do we summon Adam Neely to the fediverse?
Yeah definitely agreed here. The only ones I can come up with are horribly overwrought specifically to make it sensible. (like F#mD5 -> F#m -> F#mA5 where the C, C#, D is an implied run but like… Why)
Listen to the music man, he speaks the truth :)
hahaha - I’m following the FAFO method to musical education right now, and this advice is reassuring.
The 5+ means augmented 5th, which means sharp 5th.
F#m is F#, A, C#. F#m+ is F#, A, C## (double sharp) Which is equivalent to F#, A, D.
Now, the slash means “what comes next is in the bass”
So F#m/5+ is saying “F sharp minor, with an augmented 5th in the bass”
The augmented 5th here C##, or D… Makes it
D, F#, A. Which is a D major.
The D major scale is D, E, F♯, G, A, B, C♯. A standard chord is 1, 3, 5: D, F#, A.
The F# Minor scale is F♯, G♯, A, B, C♯, D, E. A standard chord would again be 1, 3, 5: F#, A, C#. The 5+ augments the 5, so the C# would become a D: F#, A, D.
I am guessing, and not an expert here. This may not be a definitive answer, it is just my thought process.
I guess its the first inversion of D major?
D F# A - D Major F# A D - D Major, first inversion
Since F# to A is a minor third, that to me explains the F# minor. F# to D is a a raised 5th, aka augmented 5th, and I am pretty sure + is the symbol for augmented.
Ok after writing this out, I think I am correct, but please, anyone else, correct me if not.
Seems that the software is thinking of the first inversion of D major as F# minor with an augmented 5th. Weird but I guess not technically wrong.
skeletorfw@lemmy.world 10 months ago
That reads to me as a F#m with an augmented 5th. The notes of a simple tonic triad of D would be D F# A. Meanwhile an F#m would be F# A C#. If you augment that C# to a D and take the second inversion of the chord then you again get D F# A.
The actual reason you would write it like this would really depend on what you are doing musically in the piece more widely. If you were going F#m -> Bm through D as a passing chord, you could consider it as an F#m aug5, however this kinda would make more sense if the other parts of the piece implied that chord to be an F# chord.
In general don’t worry about it too much as often you don’t really mean the alternative representations that it suggests, but there is some fun music theory underlying this.
howrar@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Do you know of any good resources for learning how this works? Things like the role a certain chord plays within a piece.
skeletorfw@lemmy.world 10 months ago
As mentioned by foggy, jazz harmony (which I frankly suck at) or counterpoint are both the things which will give a formal understanding of this sort of thing.
That said I picked up a lot of it more from playing regularly with people who are much better than me at music. In the end if you immerse yourself in music that uses these ideas more regularly you start encountering strange chord notations and seeing patterns in why they are as they are. Finally it isn’t really a prescriptive thing, there will always be many ways to write the same chord, and it will usually be much of a muchness what is written vs what you actually play.
In the case above I’d probably always write it as a D because for someone trying to learn it quickly they’ll know what a D is more instinctively than a weird augmented minor.
foggy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Jazz functional harmony and classical counterpoint would be two areas of study that would get you insight on how to answer stuff like this.
For this specifically, I’d say more jazz harmony. Others might disagree.