3rds Harmony

BasicUke

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In UUU 102 Aldrin talks about 3rds harmony. Does that apply to chords as well? If I am playing along with someone who is playing the guitar, the song is in the key of G, and they play a C chord, can I play an E chord and have it be harmony or does this only apply to melody and single notes?

Jim
 
Hi Jim, great question. Short answer, it applies to single notes. If the song is in the key of G then the G note is the "one", A is the "two", B is the "third" and so forth until you have all the individual notes in the key of G. The harmony exsists between the single notes in each chord.
I am no theory expert. Perhaps one of the experts will give a better explanation. You can also ask this here: http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?60805-Music-Theory-Questions-Ask-Away
Good luck,
Don
 
They are talking about 3rds with regards to single notes as pointed out above. Using DAPuke's example, B is the 3rd in the G chord. If you play a B chord at the same time the G chord is played, it will sound disonant since the 3rd in the B chord is D# and the 5th in the G chord is D natural. At least that's my 4 cents worth. I'm no expert either.
 
Yup, that's pretty much it. The trick doesn't quite work with chords in that way.

When you're harmonizing with thirds, you have to chose between using major third or a minor third. You (usually) pick whichever one gives you a note that's in the key you're playing in.

If you wanted to extend this concept to chords, you'd have to account for all the notes in the chord--not just the root note. You'd need to use the appropriate chord that would contain notes in the key you're playing in.

So if you're in the key of G and someone plays a C chord, you could play some type of E chord over that, but not an E major. You'd probably want to play an E minor.

Basically, you'd be harmonizing using the appropriate third above each note in the C chord. Think of it as doing the "thirds trick" three times at once!

C major is C, E, and G. What would you play over each of these? Well, you'd play an E note above the C, a G note above the E, and a B note above the G. The result would be E, G, and B, which is an E minor chord!

(And when you take the notes of the C major and E minor chord together, you get C, E, G, and B, which is a C major 7th chord!)

JJ
 
Alright... it is as I feared! I guess I just got excited about the 3rds and thought I could apply it to chords, but as all of you have pointed out, it wouldn't work that way. Chords are a group of notes and I would have to do 3rds for EACH of those.

Got it. Thanks! (this stuff is still pretty cool thought!)

Jim
 
Generally i would have thought he was referring to single note lines.

When harmonizing in 3rds you have to be careful whether you choose a minor or major 3rd interval. S couple if good examples would be brown eyed girl and the Mario theme everyone seems to play on the uke.

This been said it can work with chords as long as you use the right one... Playing an Em over a Cmajor will give you a major 7 sound (like stated above) you can do same with other chords too, obviously if you're playing simple 3 chord songs the jazzy subsitutions are going to sound out of place.

This is also an awesome tool when improvising...

Remember your harmonized major scale.

I (major) II (minor) III (minor) IV (major) V (major) VI (minor) VII (dim)

If you don't know it, read up on it as will open your understanding right up.
 
Yes, he was talking about notes,

BUT

If one person is playing a C chord and a second person is playing an Em7 chord, the notes that would result would be C E G B D, which would make a Cmaj9, so there are interesting harmonic possibilities in this approach.
 
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