User Guide

Selecting and Playing Styles

4 Play the chord.

Play the chord (as indicated in the display) in the chord area of the keyboard.

The chord name ﬂashes in the display when the correct notes are held down.

(Inversions for many of the chords are also recognized.)

To leave the Dictionary function, press the [DICTIONARY] button again.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • What is a Chord? • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

The simple answer: Three or more notes played simultaneously is a chord. (Two notes played

together is an “interval” — an interval being the distance between two different notes. This is also

referred to as a “harmony.”) Depending on the intervals between the three or more notes, a chord

can sound beautiful or muddy and dissonant.

The organization of notes in the example at left — a triad chord — pro-

duces a pleasant, harmonious sound. Triads are made up of three notes

and are the most basic and common chords in most music.

In this triad, the lowest note is the “root.” The root is the most important note in the chord, because

it anchors the sound harmonically by determining its “key” and forms the basis for how we hear the

other notes of the chord.

The second note of this chord is four semitones higher than the ﬁrst, and the third is three semitones

higher than the second. Keeping our root note ﬁxed and changing these notes by a semitone up or

down (sharp or ﬂat), we can create four different chords.

Keep in mind that we can also change the “voicing” of a chord — for example, change the order of

the notes (called “inversions”), or play the same notes in different octaves — without changing the

basic nature of the chord itself.

Dict.

Indicates notes to be

played.

Flashes when correct

notes are held.

Major chord

(ex. C)

Minor chord

(ex. Cm)

Augmented chord

(ex. Caug)

Diminished chord

(ex. Cdim)

Minor 3rd Major 3rd Major 3rd Minor 3rd Major 3rd Major 3rd Minor 3rd Minor 3rd

Inversion examples for the key of C