Chords are just groups of notes

This might be obvious, but chords are just groups of notes.

Now we have names for a lot of those groups of notes, especially groups of notes that are often put together and certain ways to change those groups of notes, but they’re still just groups of notes.

Those groups of notes can be whatever you want them to be.

In the words of Vincent Persichetti, “Any tone can succeed any other tone, any tone can sound simultaneously with any other tone or tones, and any group of tones can be followed by any other group of tones, just as any degree of tension or nuance can occur in any medium under any kind of stress or duration.”

Try out different groups of notes and see which ones you like and which ones you don’t like. You might enjoy some that you don’t know names for. You might enjoy some that there aren’t any names for.

But it can be a great way to expand your musical palette because you’re looking at notes differently than chords and functional harmony and scale degrees and scales. It forces you to think about music as just sound and groups of sounds.

ISJ