I will give it a shot, Eddie.

If you play the piano and not depressing two keys down with one finger, with both hands, you get a chord/sound, whatever you want to call it, with ten notes. Your digital piano will not tell the chord's name because it does not exist. On top of that, it does not sound very musical generally.

If you play Dm in the left hand and Bbmaj7 in the right hand, it is still Bbmaj7 which makes it a seven-note chord. Then play Eb7#11 ( the 11th just for you, Eddie...lol) in this voicing, again with seven notes, D, Eb, F,A, Bb, Db,A. Both of these are known chords and could occur in a jazz setting. Play the same thing but leave the F in, and you have a slightly strange Eb79 with eight notes.

So...when playing these highly extended chords, you can leave out notes or add certain notes that may make it an unrecognizable chord, but it may very well infer the extended chord. Classic music theory is not so much about hard and fast rules but definitions of what is being played.

The 13th chords are frequently played as chord fragments but infer the 13th chord. C major without the third is still a C chord, a so-called power chord, but it does not infer the major or minor.

Even with three-note chords, it is a bit hard not to form some sort of chord. For example, play C major in the root position and raise C to Db, and you get Dbminb5. Typically what takes you out from known chord names is highly discordant sounds constructed by using minor seconds.

Piano and guitar are the instruments likely to play some "unknown" chord. Piano players are much more frequently likely to have some training and will understand why what they are doing is logical.

Eddie, you have perhaps a greater liking for discordant sounds than I do based on the post you have made depicting artists using that motif.

Minor seconds are pretty distracting to me.

Billy

Last edited by Planobilly; 06/24/23 09:54 AM.
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