"Jerry Kohl" <jeromekohl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote
>"Tom K." <tkor...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> "Fiona Abrahami" <fiona@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>
>> > Much of my harmonic thinking these days seems to revolve around
higher
>> > tensions, and I rarely build a diatonic chord in a composition
without
>> > including a ninth and thirteenth (and 11th where appropriate) -
>> > non-diatonic intervallic structures are another thing, but even then
>> > I'm
> > into big chords these days.
>>
>> > Generally, having decided my melody and bass notes I'm taking the
mode
>> > of
>> > the moment, re-arranging it as a stack of thirds to get my 13th chord
>> > and
>> > then deciding how to voice it - which includes whether it will be
>> > rootless
>> > and whether to include the 5th and 11th.
>>
>> > My question to you guys is simply one of terminology, what is the
>> > easiest,
>> > most understandable name for a stack of thirds up to the 13th? Is
there
>> > an
>> > existing term? Or do we have to invent one, Septachord, perhaps?
Urgh,
>> > that sounds like a disease. A Septad? Like triad, that sounds a bit
>> > better.
>>
>> You could borrow from pitch class set theory and call them: "Ordered
>> collections of the cardinal number seven", but I suspect that's not
quite
>> what you're looking for:-) What's wrong with (as you mentioned above)
>> "13th
>> chord"?
>>
>> And, of course, another issue is voicing since if you stack the tones
in
>> 2nds rather than 3rds, you'll have a tone cluster.
>
>Agreed on all points. "Thirteenth chord" is the only term I have ever
>heard and, yes, the voicing is doubtless more im****tant than the pitch-
>class content.
>
>However, a fine point about Fiona's suggested alternatives: "triad",
>"tetrad", "pentad", etc., as well as the "-chord" constructions use
>Greek stems, not Latin ones, so the form for seven-membered sets would
>be "heptachord" and "heptad".
Ah, Greek not Lating, that's an im****ant bit of knowledge, duh, oh well, I
never did do classics.
But I like the sound of heptad, that's what I was looking for, thanks.
> The confusion comes from the ensemble names, "quartet", "quintet",
> "***tet", "septet", "octet", "nonet" (rarely "decet", "undecet",
> duodecet"), which are derived from Latin.
Yeah, that's probably it.
Fiona
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