How can you tell the chords of a piece of music if you can only hear bass and melody?

Question

How can you tell the chords of a piece of music if you can only hear bass and melody? There are a lot of possibility that it can be more than a single chord..Also, would be better like this.. To have a bass, melody and vocals without strumming the chords on guitar or playing block chords on piano? Because to me it sound dull and boring sometimes if you write a song like this..but in the same time it feels there is no runaway from that because I always feel like something is missing when I don't play the block chords!

Answer 1

Usually, if there is some wiggle room as to what chord could be represented, theorists and composers/arrangers go with what's most likely according to chord progression theory.

Answer 2

Great Question!

A very easy way to tell which chord is being played is to look for how a melody "outlines" a chord. This is usually done by arpeggiating a chord, i.e. playing the notes in a chord individually in a melody. An excellent example of this is Metallica's Nothing Else Matters, where the opening guitar riff is arpeggiating an E Minor chord, playing each note individually and letting the notes resonate to fill in the space and give the sound of the full chord being played. This is a common method of adding rhythmic complexity and variety without overloading the sound by playing a block chord on every single beat you want the chord sounding. Bass often does this in Jazz, particularly in any 12-Bar Blues. Try playing the beginning of it with an E Minor block chord on every beat, then switch to the arpeggiation and hear the difference.

For your writing, try spreading out the notes of a chord in different patterns and rhythms across a measure. For example you could take an A7 chord and spread it out as A-C#-E-G-E-C#-G-E over 8 notes, perhaps letting the notes ring or adding an effect such as reverb, delay, or any sustain to fill in the sound.

Hope this helps answer your question!

Answer 3

Ddepending upon which instruments are playing, you can mainly tell what exactly those chords are by the feeling or tone of the chords actually are. For example. There's a huge difference between a D Major and a D minor chord.