Chords

Note: There are some references to musical terms and music theory in this article.

Chords are commonly found a lot of music, and there are a lot of cases where it is desirable to highlight the chordal harmony of a particular piece. While there are many ways of treating and dealing with it, there are some guidelines that will usually produce an effective pattern and demonstrate the quality of the chord, while integrating it well with the flow of a chart.

Size of the chord

The number of notes that would go into a chord, for example determining if one should use a 3-chord or a 4-chord, typically depends on the richness of a chord. If a chord is very open-sounding because the chord is simple, there is no need to layer a lot of notes to represent the chord. A 3-chord or even a 2-chord will suffice. However, if the chord is very rich, such as a 9 or 13 chord, it would be preferred to add more notes in order to reflect that diverse range of tones present.

Positioning of the chord

Once the size of the chord is determined, we can determine how to position it. Typically, a chord's positioning will depend on the range of pitches and how the different pitches are clustered. If the chord has lots of large intervals between the notes, it will tend to sound more open, and should be reflectd with wide chords. If the chord has lots of smaller intervals between the notes, like a block chord, then there should be no, or at least very few, empty columns between the notes of the chord. There are also other ways to voice chords, such as major/minor, but these should be left to the chart artist to decide when and how they should be considered and applied.