The Morning Show - Pugs not Drugs

The Morning Show is a blog companion to the podcast audio.

Good morning, and welcome to the Signalman show!  It's 420...but pugs not drugs, bro! OK, so yesterday, in our quest to understand music for non-musicians, we looked at notes, and a major scale.  Now, let's build some chords - combinations of notes- from that scale.  On it's own, a note doesn't really tell us much.  It's just sitting there, minding it's own business.  But when we put it in a context of other notes, then we start getting these beautiful colors.  I'm going to take the do-re-mi scale I did yesterday (plays scale) and then select certain notes to combine.  The most common is the first, or root note, the third note, and the fifth note.  This gives me a major chord.  Note how it sounds happy or warm.  If I slide the third back one notch, listen to how it's suddenly sad, as if a cloud has gone over the sun at the picnic.  If I slide the fifth back one notch too, now it's raining at the picnic.  If I put the notes back, but raise the fifth one notch, now it's a flashback to a picnic in 1979.  Technically speaking, these are major, minor, diminished, and augmented triads, or three note chords.  Now we're getting some color, and a few new ways to relate to the world.  Tomorrow we'll look at those weird chords.