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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

Frets make chords possible.

You only have to put your finger somewhere in between two frets to get a particular note, so you can play more than the tiny handful of chords that can be played on something like a violin.

There are non-fretted guitars but they are rare, and I think early banjos were not fretted.

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Frets make chords easier

It makes hard chords easy, and impossible chords possible (if not easy). Most barre chords, for example.

Fretless bass is quite popular though, and they play chords all the time. What would 80s music have been without them?

And all uprights are fretless, too. And cellos of course. They can also play chords.

Isn't it the curvature of the fretboard (to allow for bowing individual strings) that prevents chords on a violin rather than lack of frets?

I can play chords on a violin or viola and strum them. Keeping a four-finger chord perfectly in tune in rapid changes is really hard (near impossible) without frets.

Chords can be rolled. Here's an all time favorite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngjEVKxQCWs&list=RDngjEVKxQC...

> Frets make chords possible.

What do you think double-stops are?

There are those who say it isn't a chord until you have 3 notes. I'm going to skip the complex music theory behind the arguments (I haven't studied them enough to understand much less form an opinion).

Of course in most music contexts there is more than one instrument playing and so the others can fill in the missing note making a full chord. Only a "one-man-band" really feels the loss.

Power chords only have two notes (although more than two octaves, I don't know if you count that)

It's self-consistent: those who say that a chord must have at least 3 notes also say that power chords are not technically chords

What do you mean about more than two octaves? The basic power chord is 3 notes, for example E2 + B2 + E3. One of those is an octave.

"Power chord" sounds cooler than "power dyad".

Whimpy-ass chords. You need three or more notes for a serious(tm) chord.

Five for the Hendrix Chord, E7♯9 ;-)

That's E, G♯, B, D, F

Every jazz player knows you can drop the fifth, and the root too if the bass is filling it in. That gives your fingers room to add even crazier extensions

Oh man have you seen the Adam Neely video "Seven Level of Jazz Harmony"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz3WR-F_pnM

If not, stop and watch it. But make a cup of tea to enjoy with it first, and maybe put a cloth over your keyboard for when you inevitably splutter tea all over it.

I read a pretty good argument once that this chord should really be called a b10 (no one does though...)

We seem to have a pretty hardcoded preference for using sharp in everything that's not brass and woodwind, don't we?

I think it's also ingrained that the chord starts from 3rd and 5th degrees so numbers above 7 are always adding in one of the other degrees. Or that a chord should have at most 'one of each'.

The argument was that this chord is unusual in that it's best thought of as having a second modified 3rd, rather than a #9 (raised 2nd)

The major-minor-7 chord is another example of the same degree twice... and we don't call that a maj-14 either

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