Extended chords are easy to understand -- once you know about the Circle of Thirds.

Essentially, fancy extended chords are built by adding notes incrementally from a key's Circle of Thirds. By including ever more intervals of a third, you can play increasingly more complex harmonies.

Had I only known this in the beginning!

Without the Circle of Thirds, exotic chord names seem mysterious and complicated. WITH the Circle of Thirds, however, everything clicks into place.

🎥 This short video gives you the gist.

For more details on the construction of these chords, check out Lesson 17 in the course: https://mikegeorge.locals.com/post/6051473/296-lesson-17-pdf-video

And the PDF referenced is ChordBook 2 here: https://shop.mycolormusic.com/products/colormusic%E2%84%A2%EF%B8%8F-guitar-chordbook-modebook-bundle

Hey! Join Sunday's stream for the first in the Theory Course LIVE series.

We'll be going through the course lessons page-by-page, playing the exercises, etc. -- with questions, answers, and sidebars along the way. It's a new and insightful look into music theory.

(The live stream link referenced in this video is actually in the NEXT post.)

Why do modes seem confusing? There are a couple of reasons:

1) Because they're often depicted using traditional notation. This is a problem because the linear structure of notation distorts the inherently cyclical nature of music. So the way modes are typically pictured is warped.

2) Because different song examples are commonly used to illustrate the sonic qualities of the respective modes. But that's like comparing apples to oranges, in a way. So the point of the comparison gets lost.

So this video demonstrates how the various modes alter the sound of a single song -- using the ChordMap to visualize the changes.

The accompanying chord diagrams are in the follow-up post (341b). Cheers.

Hey, all -- question for you:
Do you have any thoughts on ways to colorize notation?

Folks regularly ask about software to use. And because we have engineers of various types in our community here, I'm hoping some of us may have ideas, or technical know-how.

I think creating an open source tool for community members is an excellent project! It will be very powerful for dissecting and composing songs. With a tool like this, our collective knowledge will rise exponentially.

See this post for context -- and please tag us if you're interested:
https://mikegeorge.locals.com/post/6059027/hey-all-mikegeorge-ive-been-really-loving-your-lessons-ive-worked-my-way-through-12-of-them?cid=8082688