On the Subject of Chord Qualities
They say that anything goes in jazz, but I didn’t know that includes long boring tables!
See the next page for chord quality lookup.
- This module consists of a wheel with twelve notes on it, ordered chromatically.
- Four of those notes are selected with a triangle pointing towards them. These notes make up the given chord.
- Every chord consists of two parts: The root and the quality. For example, the root of the chord C-7 is the note C, and the quality is ‘-7’. Use the table on the next page (or music theory knowledge) to determine the root and quality of the given chord.
- Look up the root and quality of the answer chord in the tables below using the given chord’s quality and root respectively.
- Reverse the process in step #3 to find the notes of the answer chord, and select the notes of the answer chord by rotating the wheel and pressing the button labelled ◈.
- Press the other button to submit the answer chord. There is only one correct answer.
| Root to Quality | |
|---|---|
| A | -Δ7♯5 |
| A♯ | Δ7♯5 |
| B | -7 |
| C | ø |
| C♯ | -add9 |
| D | Δ7 |
| D♯ | 7♯9 |
| E | 7sus |
| F | add9 |
| F♯ | 7 |
| G | -Δ7 |
| G♯ | 7♯5 |
| Quality to Root | |
|---|---|
| 7 | G |
| -7 | G♯ |
| Δ7 | A♯ |
| -Δ7 | F |
| 7♯9 | A |
| ø | C♯ |
| add9 | D♯ |
| -add9 | E |
| 7♯5 | F♯ |
| Δ7♯5 | C |
| 7sus | D |
| -Δ7♯5 | B |
” in the row of its interval. The offset from the root (in semitones) of each row is provided in the left-most column. Note that an offset of +12 is the same as an offset as +0.