The fourth grade students have learned yet another way of creating harmony....playing chords. Chords are three or more notes played at the same time that sound good together. There are rules about the notes of a chord, however, and the general rule is that a chord is built by notes that are skips apart. So, using the musical alphabet (ABCDEFG), a C chord would be CEG.
Chords are often heard in the background, accompanying a song. But it is very unusual for there only to be one chord in a song. In fact, most of the songs we listen to have at least two or three chords, if not many more. Certain chords sound good at certain times, and we are beginning to learn some of the "rules" about adding chords to a song. For example, there is usually one chord, called the "home, tonic, or I chord", that begins and ends a song. However, at some point, the home chord will have to change based on the melody. The most common chord used along with a home chord is what is called an "away, dominant, or V chord". These two chords work so well together, giving a sense of tension and release when moving from the away to home chord. The home should always feel comfortable! Here are a couple pics of the students playing chords on xylophones. You can see that the mallets are skips apart. The next step is learning how to play the chords on ukuleles!
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