music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

, the third factor of a chord is the note or pitch two

scale degrees In music theory, the scale degree is the position of a particular note on a scale relative to the tonic, the first and main note of the scale from which each octave is assumed to begin. Degrees are useful for indicating the size of intervals a ...

above the

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...

or tonal center. When the third is the

bass note In music theory, the bass note of a chord or sonority is the lowest note played or notated. If there are multiple voices it is the note played or notated in the lowest voice (the note furthest in the bass.) Three situations are possible: # ...

, or lowest note, of the expressed

triad Triad or triade may refer to: * a group of three Businesses and organisations * Triad (American fraternities), certain historic groupings of seminal college fraternities in North America * Triad (organized crime), a Chinese transnational orga ...

, the chord is in first inversion.

Use

Conventionally, the third is third in importance to the root and fifth, with the third in all

primary triad In music, a primary triad is one of the three triads, or three-note chords built from major or minor thirds, most important in tonal and diatonic music, as opposed to an auxiliary triad or secondary triad. Each triad found in a diatonic key co ...

s (I, IV, V and i, iv, v) being either major or minor. In jazz chords and theory, the third is required due to it determining

chord quality Musicians use various kinds of chord names and symbols in different contexts to represent musical chords. In most genres of popular music, including jazz, pop, and rock, a chord name and its corresponding symbol typically indicate one or more o ...

. The third in both

major Major ( commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicato ...

and

augmented chord Augment or augmentation may refer to: Language * Augment (Indo-European), a syllable added to the beginning of the word in certain Indo-European languages *Augment (Bantu languages), a morpheme that is prefixed to the noun class prefix of nouns ...

s is major (E in C) and the third in both minor and diminished chords is minor (E in C).

Tenth

In music and

music theory Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the " rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (k ...

, a tenth is the note ten scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the tenth. Since there are only seven degrees in a

diatonic scale In music theory, a diatonic scale is any heptatonic scale that includes five whole steps (whole tones) and two half steps (semitones) in each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by either two or three whole st ...

the tenth degree is the same as the

mediant In music, the mediant (''Latin'': to be in the middle) is the third scale degree () of a diatonic scale, being the note halfway between the tonic and the dominant.Benward & Saker (2003), p.32. In the movable do solfège system, the mediant note ...

and the interval of a tenth is a compound third.

Use

Tenth

See also

Notes

Further reading