"It Is A Puzzlement!"

All right, ubulele, you can't talk all that trash to us without telling us a bit about yourself. College? If so, major? If not, where do you find the time to study all that stuff? You sound like a teacher, or at least a wannabe.

As for myself, I've been playing and studying music since I was in the fourth grade. I understood all your theory info except some of the chord stuff was a bit over my head. I've played many different instruments in my life, but my embouchure is on it's way out as is my concentration and memory. Gettin' old is the pits. My major is English, and that's why I wanna sing. So there it is.
 
Let’s look at an example….

The C Major chord is C-E-G (the first, third and fifth notes of the C major scale). If we add the sixth note of the scale (A), then we have C6 (C-E-G-A).

The A minor chord is A-C-E (the first, third and fifth notes of the natural A minor scale). If we add the seventh note of the scale (G), then we have Am7 (A-C-E-G).

Amen to all that.
 
The two chords absolutely sound the same... They are the same notes. It is where you use them that defines their major or minor quality.

Amen again - what chord comes before? What chord comes after? Location, location, location...
 
The thing about music theory is there's a lot of it, and much if it is completely optional. The other thing is its supposed to be helpful, but it isn't often explained very well to someone who's not versed in it.

Hahahaha! Reminds me of learning all the rules of part writing and having to write them all verbatim, and then spending the next three semesters breaking them.
 
One way to think about it is, look at a piano. It has 88 keys, going from lowest to highest. That piano has seven octaves, plus a few extra keys.

Now, think of your two chords -

For your C6, you would find a C and build the chord from there - going up (toward the right)
For your Am7, you would start with an A instead, and build the chord from there.

On a piano, these two chords could sound quite different, because of which note is the root (here, the lowest played) and the sequence of notes will be different.

On a piano, a C E G A does, in fact, sound a bit different than an A C E G.

Now, think of an orchestra - tons of instruments, broken into parts, and you put the root of each chord in the tuba/double bass. Then spread out the rest through all the instruments and parts. You can add many different colors/timbres you can mold it a zillion different ways.

Using this example, we can see that a two octave ukulele can play a wide variety of sounds, combinations, and tone colors.

A seven octave piano can expand on that and do quite a bit more.

A full blown orchestra can throw in all the different instruments and take it to the next level.

This in no way means that an orchestra is better than a piano or a ukulele - just that there are different sets of possibilities.
 
Ukejenny, that's the way most schooling is. Either that or one learns lots and lots of stuff and then never sees it again after school.

This comment was directed to your 07:17 PM comment.
 
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