ABSTRACT
The word harmony can refer generally to the effect of two or more musical lines in combination or specifically to the sound produced by three or more pitches sounding together. The latter is usually called a chord. Implicit in the concept of harmony is “agreement” of some sort among the tones, although ideas about what that means differ somewhat from style to style and from person to person. Herbie Hancock’s jazz classic, “Maiden Voyage,” relies largely on chords deemed dissonant by earlier musical standards. Major and minor triads sound more harmonically stable than do diminished and augmented triads. This is due to the perfect fifth that is part of their construction. Chords can be built from stacks of intervals other than thirds. However, triads and seventh chords form the harmonic basis of the vast bulk of our concert music, popular music, and jazz.
