Passing Chords?

There's bound to be a lot of "semantic" chatter here because what one person thinks of as a passing chord others will cite that it's a bonafide chord in and of its own right.

In a (very big) nutshell, a passing chord is created when you use a chord to pass from one chord to another. The two most obvious example of this would be as follows:

(1) In the lesson Three Marlenas, I teach how to go from D to G while keeping your ring finger set on the D note at the third fret of the B string. So, when you're changing from D (XX0232) to G (320033) you are playing, albeit briefly (X00030), which some folks would call A7sus4 and some might call Dsus2sus4/A. It's easier to simply think of it as a passing chord.

(2) When playing descending or other walking bass lines, you also tend to create passing chords. In changing from C to Am, for instance, many people might stick in the B note located at the second fret of the A string. The resulting chord can be thought of as C/B or even Cmaj7 / B, but since it's a direct result of moving from C to Am, it's again easier to think of it as a passing chord.

There are more detailed explanations (which I'm sure will be posted shortly after this one), but I hope that this helps get you started.

Peace

A passing chord is one that doesn't affect the harmony - you could leave it out, and the music will have the same overall effect.

The term 'passing' implies a couple of things...

1. Passing chords are short in duration. If you sit on it for a while, it's going to affect the listeners more, and take a harmonic role. So passing chords are usually one beat (or less)

2. Passing chords are passed through - that is, one or more voices are moving from one main chord to another, and in the process they just happen to create another chord. In David's "Three Marlenas" lesson, the bass notes are going D-A-G, G-A-D. The G and D are the roots of main chords - the A is simply passed through, first on the way down and then on the way back up.

If you want to get hardcore about the theory, David's example doesn't quite qualify - because the A has a harmonic function (filling out a I-IV-V progression. Most of the time, passing chords are going to have an altered note - a tone that doesn't fit the key. Take a tune like "Wind Cries Mary". The tune is in F, with the main chords F, Bb, and C. But you've got that signature riff of chords Eb-E-F... the E is clearly a passing chord (G# and B are out-of-key); some folks might also classify the Eb as a passing chord.

Piston's Harmony requires an out-of-key note for it to be a passing chord:

When the altered tones enter as chromatic passing tones the chord is a passing chord.

But out-of-key notes are easy to come by; a progression Eb7 -> Bb can be dressed up by stepping through a diminished chord: Eb7 -> Edim7 -> Bb. That gives you one note (E) that's out of key.

Or the whole chord can move chromatically. Instead of Em7 -> Dm7 -> C, you could play Em7 -> Ebm7 -> Dm7 -> C. The Ebm7 is a passing chord, with a few of out-of-key notes - Eb, Bb and Db.

So if it has at least one out-of-key note, it's short in duration, and the out-of-key note(s) are moving in one direction, it's definately a passing chord.

Definitely a better definition!

Especially since it covers that chromatic half step sequence (V to bV to IV) you run into so many times in blues songs.

Thanks, Tom!

Peace

So a passing chord is a way to get a chord that's not in proggresion into it, and to make things sound better? (I think I almost got it...)

Sounds like you've got it :)

:D Thanks for all your help guys... I think I'll be browsing this forum more often, it has some interesting stuff.

EDIT: Is there any way to find passing chords? Or do you just experiment with different notes?

-Alex

Well here are my thoughts on it. i'll use an example and then explain. in stairway to heaven the 4th chord in the progression is a D/F. this is a passing chord cuz you added the bass note of F. it could also be a F6 7b( i think don't realy have time to figure it out so you could "find" one by changing the bass note. i hope that helps. i might be wrong though

That's actually a regular old D chord, played in first inversion - the bass note is F#.

I wouldn't consider that a passing chord, because of the duration - it's the same length as each of the other chords in the introduction. Because the progression is built on a chromatically descending bass line (A-G#-G-F#-F) you're going to have chords with out of key tones - but if you count the fourth chord as a passing one because a tone is out of key, you must also count the second chord as a passing one for the same reason.

The song is a great example of one open to interpretation, because the introduction doesn't follow a standard progression. That means there's plenty of room to argue over the names. But it's also a great example of a tune open to misinterpretation... a quick web search shows one view of the progression as Am-Am/maj7-C-Bm7-Fmaj7, which gets two chords wrong:

Am/maj7 = A-C-E-G#. The tones being played are G#-C-E-B; you can call that a bunch of things, but if you consider the root to be an unplayed A, it's Am9/maj7.

Bm7 = B-D-F-A. The tones being played are F#-A-D-F#... like I said, a plain old D chord. If you consider B to be an unplayed root, it would be Bm7+.