3.2. Basic Tone Modifiers

There are four modifiers which are more often employed than any other in chordgrams. They are the blank (   ), the dot ( • ), the plus   ( + ), and the minus   ( - ) modifiers. Here is how they work:

The blank (   ) modifier

            A tone whose label contains a blank modifier (i.e., is left unfilled) is meant to be avoided when playing the chord. In a first approach, this can be safely interpreted as “don’t play this tone”. The meaning of avoided tones will be refined later, when they will be distinguished from omitted tones.

The dot ( • ) modifier

            Placing a dot in a chord tone label tells the reader to play that tone unaltered, i.e., with the same pitch it holds in the reference major scale.

The plus ( + ) modifier

            Placing a plus sign in a chord tone label tells the reader to play that tone one halftone above its pitch in the reference major scale.

The minus ( - ) modifier

            Placing a minus sign in a chord tone label tells the reader to play that tone one halftone below its pitch in the reference major scale.

Actually, the dot, plus and minus modifiers work exactly the same way as relative natural, sharp and flat traditional accidental marks, respectively. Indeed, one could reasonably ask why these widely known symbols shouldn’t be used instead.

There are at least four good reasons for it. First, chordgram modifiers take fewer pencil strokes to be drawn, and this considerably speeds handwriting. Second, they produce objectively cleaner chord symbols, making chord recognition easier and faster. Third, they eliminate the risk of misinterpreting root-symbol sharps and flats as modifiers. Fourth, as put above, they have only relative meanings, while sharps and flats take absolute meanings in other contexts (such as in key signatures or in the piano keyboard), therefore becoming a potential source of mistakes, especially for beginners.

For these reasons, traditional accidental marks in chordgrams appear only as root modifiers. In fact, the root is the only chord tone in a chordgram that is represented like in ordinary notations.

“My-first-chordgram” example

As a very basic example, here is a step-by-step recipe for writing the B flat major triad chordgram:

1. write down the root letter symbol and accident:

2. add a dot label for the 3^rd , to indicate that it’s major, i.e., unaltered with respect to the major scale:

3. add a dot label for the 5^th , to indicate that it’s perfect, i.e., unaltered with respect to the major scale: 

4. leave the remaining labels blank, as their corresponding tones aren’t meant to be played.

Incidentally, triads are among the very few chord types for which the chordgram representation requires more symbols than ordinary notation.