A musical illiterate asks What's this chord?

Cafe Society
1

I became sort of interested in a certain musical chord, which has an unusual “haunting” quality, when I was a kid. We had a player piano, and you could visualize chords as they scrolled by as punched holes in a paper roll. Every so often, especially in classical pieces, there would be a four-note chord where the bottom end of it would consist of two notes right next to each other - meaning a half tone apart - such as this: D-D#-G-D (the second D being an octave up from the first).

It sort of baffled me, because I thought playing two notes a half-step apart would make something dissonant and harsh, but this chord had a very pretty, haunting quality wherever it would pop up. (I liked it so much that I started adding it to piano rolls with a razor blade, which didn’t always work so well, but at least I was willing to experiment.)

I’ve been trying to find a name for this chord and its variations up and down the scale; unfortunately being unschooled in music theory I can’t quite nail it. Searching online, Wikipedia tells me there’s the Minor Major Seventh, sometimes called the Hitchcock chord because Bernard Hermann liked to use it in Hitchcock film scores. It’s similar, but is shown in a different configuration, say D#-G-B-D - note that the “dissonant” part in this version is separated by a near-octave, and they throw a B in there, which does add a mysterious quality to it. But that’s not my chord. Mine is not exactly mysterious, just sort of evocative and nostalgia-inducing and somehow sounds right, not dissonant at all when you hear it as part of a piece, which I think is sort of a miracle.

So please, could someone help the idiot name this chord? Maybe explain how it works or who has made good use of it? Thanks in advance.

2

What follows is not necessarily for the music illiterate. I’ll try to add some explanations, but I apologize for what will likely be failures. And ramblings.

So, a lot of the naming of chords has to do with chord functions, and out of context it’s hard to say. But, briefly, we often name chords using the following elements:

  • What triad is it based on, a major, minor, or diminished triad?
  • What additional pitches are part of the chord, named relative to the root of the main triad
  • The role the chord serves in relation to the localized key of the piece of music in which it is being played

We don’t always name all these parts. For example, a chord on its own out of context doesn’t always have a clear role or function.

But, sometimes chords suggest a function even when looked at on their own.

A super-common and fundamental chord movement in Western music is the motion from the V (five . . . we use Roman numerals for this kind of talk) to the I. Think a cliched classical music ending.

So, an independent chord that feels “unresolved” in some way (often dissonance implies that there will be a subsequent resolution out of dissonance) might just feel like a V that wants to move to its I. In this case, a D chord of some type wanting to move to a G chord.

So, a “V b9 11” ( or “Dominant 11 flat 9” in a slightly different naming paradigm). The particular voicing you describe leaves out the 3, 5, and b7 (which are implied by the names I gave you, and so you might want to explicitly name out of the chord . . . or not).

As you note, there are other ways to invert and voice the four pitches you’ve identified, but the fact that the D as bass note is essential to the sound you want, I’d say that calling this some form of a D chord is the best option (as opposed to, say, a G with an added flat 6).

So, to be totally explicit about what you want, I’d name this a: D, no 3, no 5, flat 9, 11.

Also, I’ll point out that this shows the challenges and limits of using traditional naming schemes on non-traditional chords. At the top of this I said that one of the key elements of naming a chord is identifying its primary triad. Your chord doesn’t really have one. I’ve made up the idea that it’s based on a D major triad (D, F#, A), but doesn’t use all the notes of the triad. Nor does it have context among other chords.

I took the importance of the bass note as a clue to the function of the chord, and everything else I said stems from that assumption.

3

Does this help?

4

For fun I made a quick track of the chord as described in the OP resolving to a G major chord (with an added stepwise melodic motion from the D on top of the first chord walking down to a B on top of the G chord).

Here’s the link to a .wav file on google drive.

5

That’s the one. And I like how you “resolved” it.

I wish I could name a definitive example of this being used in composed music. I remember the piano roll of “Cavalleria rusticana” did it in several places, but I don’t hear it in the simpler piano arrangements on YouTube. Oh well.

To jaycat: Yes it helps. Kinda. I don’t understand most of what Eonwe said (you mean to tell me that every one of the ten zillion combinations of notes doesn’t have a precise designation? That’s just lazy!) but I get that music is about the relationship between notes, whose effect can be unpredictable, but if you can crack the code, that’s where the big bucks are. Thanks for trying.

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It would be nice to see it in context and what chords are around it, what melody notes there are, etc. It’s difficult to definitively name a chord in isolation. Like that could be an Eb major seventh with the fifth omitted. That would be my first guess for a chord that has two of the lowest notes a half step apart and the rest of that structure. With that naming, you have the root, the third, and the seventh, which outlines the important notes of a chord (and the root, the Eb/D# could be omitted if you don’t want the half step rubbing up against itself there.)

Resolving to a Gmajor works, too, as @Eonwe pointed out. In that case, if C is in the bass, you have a iv-I resolution, in which you have a Cm add 9 (rootless) resolving to a G, and that works. So, that’s two possibilities, depending on the context. And there are more possibiltieis, but these are the two most likely ones, in my opinion. (Though in the Cm add 9 case, I’d add the Bb to make it a full Cm9 chord.)

7

Lovely. I also think that’s about half of Radiohead’s mid-career songs. :sweat_smile:

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The Cmadd9 also resolves nicely to an Fmajor chord (with a 6th, if you want), now that I think about it. Once again, I’d like it better with a Bb in there, too.

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That’s what I always say.

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For example, here’s what it would be like with a C in the bass resolving to the F6 chord:

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And here it is interpreted as an Ebmaj7 to Bb:

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When I played the notes in the OP (without the high D), I was immediately reminded of this:

Which has the chord essentially a Cmadd9 (or 2 if you prefer) resolving to Cm. It doesn’t actually have the C bass note, so technically not a Cmadd9. Maybe a Csus2 is a better description if the C is slightly absent. That’s the feeling I get from it anyway.

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That first chord is a not a major chord, though, if you’re basing the root on C. It’s a Cm add 9 (fully as: C D Eb G) resolving to a Cm. But, yes, that chord is reminiscent of Nadia’s Theme. A Cadd9 would be C D E G. A Csus2 would be C D G (no E).

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Very reminiscent of a night in tunisia.

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Yes, Nadia’s Theme has it. Good call, and I can see how the progression, how it interacts with what comes after it, is a big part of its appeal.

Doesn’t Debussy’s Claire de lune have it in there also?

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The Twin Peaks theme has it. It goes from a major add9 (or add2) chord to a minor add2 chord (like what we think the chord in your example may be, depending on context):

Adding the second to a major or minor chord is way to add color to it without adding all the harmonic complications (and generally “jazzier” sound) of a major or minor seventh.

17

Heheh, I have nothing to add other than this thread (and @Eonwe 's thorough explanation in the first response) is part of why I truly love this place.

18

When I played this on my keyboard, it just sounded like an EbM7 chord, with no need to resolve to anything. But, playing around with it, I wound up with D-Eb-G-D, Eb-G-A-C, Eb-Gb-A-C, D-F-G-Ab. I then added a bass line and realized I heard them as EbM7/D, F9, F7b9, Bb6.

Listening above, it sounds like I sorta combined @pulykamell’s last two. That F did not sound resolved to me, so I went to the Bb.

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Yes sorry, Cm sus2. I did say Cm add 9 though.

20

Yeah, you can go a bunch of ways with this chord. Nadia’s theme walks it down, coloring each triad on the first and second beats with an added second. So if we started with a Cm add2 (which our OP’s chord could be), it’d be like Cm add2 - Bb add2 - Ab add2 - Gm add2. In the Twin Peaks theme, transposing so our target chord is Cm add2, the progression would be Eb add2, Cm add2.

There’s all sorts of ways you can go with this. Wherever you have a minor chord in a progression, you can probably stick in an add2 if you play with it.