Can Minor Chords and Major Chords be played at the same time?

9 Replies, 3733 Views

...to good musical effect?

If so, what is the music theory. Back up your answer with musical evidence.

If not, what part of music theory supports this. Back up your answer with musical evidence.
going to repost this vid, but tone clusters work great which i think would have a similar effect. look around 2:44 where he leans his forearm on the piano Hahaha


* and i have a flimsy grasp on music theory. main agenda: post video again Teef
Miles Wrote:Bird never talked about music, except one time I heard him arguing with a classical musician friend of mine. He told the cat that you could do anything with chords. I disagreed, told him that you couldn’t play D natural on the fifth bar of a B flat blues. He said you could. One night later on at Birdland, I heard Lester Young do it, but he bent the note. Bird was there when it happened he just looked over at me with that “I told you so” look that he would lay on you when he had proved you wrong.
Smile
Without doubt very gifted, but apologies, my rather crap explanations get in the way of my intent once again. I'm interested in some text describing the theory and some brief and preferably easy-to-follow examples. I am less gifted.
Roo Stercogburn Wrote:...to good musical effect?

If so, what is the music theory. Back up your answer with musical evidence.

Evidence is easy, though I'm not sure about the music theory. The notion of a key rather breaks down if you're thinking about using two or more at once.

For instance, you can easily put a minor chord on top of a major chord, but then mostly what you've got is a major chord with notes on top; e.g.

C major + E minor is a major 7th with C as the root: C + E + G + B
C major + G minor is a 9th with C as the root: C + E + G + Bb + D

More obscurely, C major + Eb minor is a nice crunching chord again based on C (i.e. C + E + G + Eb + Gb + Bb) — this is the final chord in Poulenc's Sonata for Piano Four Hands


(though the video is a bit annoying because it cuts off really quickly, whereas the chord should be left to ring out).

Polytonality (playing in more than one key at once) is more unusual. The clearest examples I can think of are Milhaud's Saudades do Brazil. Here are three of them:


The basis of the first piece is G major (left hand) / B major (right hand); the second is Eb minor (left hand) / F major (right hand) – though they modulate into other separate keys as well.

There's another big polytonal crunch in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring:


The big riffing starting at 3:38 is an Eb 7th major chord on top of an E major chord. Sounds great doesn't it? Smile

But theory, I dunno. We need UFO back here again. He could probably tell you about theory.
where've you gone? Wave
Great thread
Back. Been very busy writing over the weekend. About to link what I did in the beat ranch Smile

Oh and cheers for the above posts, going to go through them today.
Kinda cheesy but interesting for the musically uneducated like me Grin


some cretin Wrote:DudasMiska Pretty suprised how he doesnt talk about Trance and electronic dance music in general as these genres are the ones that include a little bit of everything and are beautiful and melodic...


DudasMiska Who are you to judge what needs to be mentioned? Your just ignorant towards the modern dance/club genres. Besides i wasent talking about rap and hip hop, its obvious you dont have a broad knowledge of music, which is ok, but trust me, trance/progressive/house is revolutionary, it has come so far since its early days in the 80s which was techno..electronic dance music is pretty incredible, its much more complicated then what you imagine it to be, all originating from the primitive days of music.

Hahaha
Keep JUMPin ya Bastids
Great thread - just in the process of teaching myself more chord / key theory so my music can progress a little bit from obvious major / minor chords.

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