Chord diagram (music)

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Chord diagrams for some common chords in major-thirds tuning Chords in major-thirds tuning C, D, G, minor, major, dominant seventh.png
Chord diagrams for some common chords in major-thirds tuning

In music, a chord diagram (also called a fretboard diagram or fingering diagram) is a diagram indicating the fingering of a chord on fretted string instruments, showing a schematic view of the fretboard with markings for the frets that should be pressed when playing the chord. [1] Instruments that commonly use this notation include the guitar, banjo, lute, [2] and mandolin.

See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Classical guitar</span> Member of the guitar family used in classical music

The classical guitar, also called modern classical guitar, is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor of the modern steel-string acoustic and electric guitars, both of which use metal strings. Classical guitars derive from instruments such as the lute, the vihuela, the gittern, which evolved into the Renaissance guitar and into the 17th and 18th-century baroque guitar. By the mid-19th century, early forms of the modern classical guitar appear. Today's modern classical guitar was established by the late designs of the 19th-century Spanish luthier, Antonio Torres Jurado.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guitar</span> Fretted string instrument

The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted and typically has six or twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A guitar pick may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant hollow chamber on the guitar, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fret</span> Bar across the neck of stringed instruments

A fret is any of the thin strips of material, usually metal wire, inserted laterally at specific positions along the neck or fretboard of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. On some historical instruments and non-European instruments, frets are made of pieces of string tied around the neck.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capo (musical device)</span> Common tool for players of guitars and other stringed instruments

A capo is a device a musician uses on the neck of a stringed instrument to transpose and shorten the playable length of the strings—hence raising the pitch. It is a common tool for players of guitars, mandolins, mandolas, banjos, ukuleles and bouzoukis. The word derives from the Italian capotasto, which means the nut of a stringed instrument. The earliest known use of capotasto is by Giovanni Battista Doni who, in his Annotazioni of 1640, uses it to describe the nut of a viola da gamba. The first patented capo was designed by James Ashborn of Wolcottville, Connecticut year 1850.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mandola</span> Musical instrument

The mandola (US and Canada) or tenor mandola (Ireland and UK) is a fretted, stringed musical instrument. It is to the mandolin what the viola is to the violin: the four double courses of strings tuned in fifths to the same pitches as the viola (C3-G3-D4-A4), a fifth lower than a mandolin. The mandola, though now rarer, is an ancestor of the mandolin. (The word mandolin means little mandola.)

The fingerboard is an important component of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument. The strings run over the fingerboard, between the nut and bridge. To play the instrument, a musician presses strings down to the fingerboard to change the vibrating length, changing the pitch. This is called stopping the strings. Depending on the instrument and the style of music, the musician may pluck, strum or bow one or more strings with the hand that is not fretting the notes. On some instruments, notes can be sounded by the fretting hand alone, such as with hammer ons, an electric guitar technique.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barre chord</span> Guitar performance technique

In music, a barre chord is a type of chord on a guitar or other stringed instrument played by using one finger to press down multiple strings across a single fret of the fingerboard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multi-scale fingerboard</span>

A multi-scale fingerboard is an instrument fretboard which incorporates multiple scale lengths. This allows each of the strings to have a different string tension and thus, balanced tonal characteristics.

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In music, a guitar chord is a set of notes played on a guitar. A chord's notes are often played simultaneously, but they can be played sequentially in an arpeggio. The implementation of guitar chords depends on the guitar tuning. Most guitars used in popular music have six strings with the "standard" tuning of the Spanish classical guitar, namely E–A–D–G–B–E' ; in standard tuning, the intervals present among adjacent strings are perfect fourths except for the major third (G,B). Standard tuning requires four chord-shapes for the major triads.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Strum</span>

In music, strumming is a way of playing a stringed instrument such as a guitar, ukulele, or mandolin. A strum or stroke is a sweeping action where a finger or plectrum brushes over several strings to generate sound. On most stringed instruments, strums are typically executed by a musician's designated strum hand, while the remaining hand often supports the strum hand by altering the tones and pitches of any given strum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guitar tunings</span> Adjusting pitches of guitar strings

Guitar tunings are the assignment of pitches to the open strings of guitars, including classical guitars, acoustic guitars, and electric guitars. Tunings are described by the particular pitches that are made by notes in Western music. By convention, the notes are ordered and arranged from the lowest-pitched string to the highest-pitched string, or the thickest string to thinnest, or the lowest frequency to the highest. This sometimes confuses beginner guitarists, since the highest-pitched string is referred to as the 1st string, and the lowest-pitched is the 6th string.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qinqin</span> Chinese String Instrument

The qinqin is a plucked Chinese lute. It was originally manufactured with a wooden body, a slender fretted neck, and three strings. Its body can be round, hexagonal, or octagonal. Often, only two strings were used, as in certain regional silk-and-bamboo ensembles. In its hexagonal form, it is also referred to as meihuaqin.

The neck is the part of certain string instruments that projects from the main body and is the base of the fingerboard, where the fingers are placed to stop the strings at different pitches. Guitars, banjos, ukuleles, lutes, the violin family, and the mandolin family are examples of instruments which have necks. Necks are also an integral part of certain woodwind instruments, such as the saxophone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baroque guitar</span> Fretted string instrument

The Baroque guitar is a string instrument with five courses of gut strings and moveable gut frets. The first course sometimes used only a single string.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kabosy</span> Wooden guitar instrument played in Madagascar

The kabosy is a box-shaped wooden guitar commonly played in music of Madagascar. It has four to six strings and is commonly thought to be a direct descendant of the Arabic oud through the gambus played in Malay-populated areas of Southeast Asia. The kabosy has staggered frets, many of which do not even cross the entire fretboard, and is generally tuned to an open chord.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chuck Wayne</span> American jazz guitarist

Chuck Wayne was an American jazz guitarist. He came to prominence in the 1940s, and was among the earliest jazz guitarists to play in the bebop style. Wayne was a member of Woody Herman's First Herd, the first guitarist in the George Shearing quintet, and Tony Bennett's music director and accompanist. He developed a systematic method for playing jazz guitar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tablature</span> Form of musical notation

Tablature is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering or the location of the played notes rather than musical pitches.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lute guitar</span> Stringed musical instrument

A lute guitar or German lute is a stringed musical instrument, common in Germany from around 1850. The instrument has a regular six-stringed guitar setup on a lute bowl, however there are many theorboed variants with up to 11 strings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Major thirds tuning</span> Regular tuning among guitars

Among alternative tunings for guitar, a major-thirds tuning is a regular tuning in which each interval between successive open strings is a major third. Other names for major-thirds tuning include major-third tuning, M3 tuning, all-thirds tuning, and augmented tuning. By definition, a major-third interval separates two notes that differ by exactly four semitones.

A chord diagram may refer to:

References

  1. Weissman, Dick (September 2013), Guitar Tunings, Routledge, p. 1, doi:10.4324/9780203958995, ISBN   978-1-1354-8368-5
  2. Richards, Tobe A. (2016), The Renaissance Lute Chord Bible, Cabot Books, ISBN   978-1-9062-0745-8