Abstract: This chapter presents the foundations of harmony needed to understand the basis of musical chords. This chapter starts with a brief description of how a musical note could be characterized in the time domain and in the frequency domain. Chords are based on the relation between notes. The relation between notes are the musical intervals and the musical intervals are fixed by the musical scales, so, this chapter contains a description of the physical basis of scale and musical intervals. The scales that are going to be presented here correspond to the just intonation scale, that is the most consonant scale that exists, and the equal tempered scale that is the scale actually used. The MIDI pitch number is also presented due to the usefulness to represent intervals and relations between notes. Finally, the physical basis of the occidental chords and a discussion about whether it is easy or difficult to transcribe the different chords is presented.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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