what is chord

A chord in music is a harmonic set of pitches consisting of multiple notes that are sounded simultaneously or nearly so. Chords are the harmonic framework found within music and are responsible for setting the emotion in music. They are used to add harmonic content to a song and create a sense of movement within the music. Chords are built off of a single note, called the root, and are usually made up of three or more different notes played together at the same time. The most frequently encountered chords in tonal Western classical music are triads, which consist of three distinct notes: the root note, and intervals of a third and a fifth above the root note. Chords with more than three notes include added tone chords, extended chords, and tone clusters, which are used in contemporary classical music, jazz, and almost any other genre. A series of chords is called a chord progression, and one example of a widely used chord progression in Western traditional music and blues is the 12 bar blues progression.