Hi, in this video I will give you an overview
of the chord explorer which comes with Listening-Music-Teacher
Listening Music Teacher allows you to look up
Note Names
Interval Names
Triad Names, Qualities and Inversions
and Seventh Chord Names
In this way the chord explorer is an easy way
to look up the musical terms
of notes placed on the staff
The chord explorer is not a tutorial
So, if you are a beginner do not let you confuse, 
that for the same hearing experience
there are multiple names used in the music language
Let me explain the different areas on the screen
To the left, we have the sheet music notation
The upper five lines build the treble staff
with the treble clef
and the lower five lines build the bass staff with the bass clef
The chord explorer only supports the grand staff with the treble and bass clef
In this configuration the note
middle C
is centered between the two staffs
Next to the clef
follows the area for the key signature
An area designated
to lower or higher notes consistently by a half step
by placing a series of sharps or flats in this area
The simplest key signature
C Major does not have any sharps or flats
We can change the key signature with this drop down menu
For example 
F Major has one flat
Did you notice that the orange short lines changed from C to F
The short orange lines mark the tonic of the scale
the starting note of a key
For C Major
the tonic is C
and for F Major
the tonic is of course F
Let us go back to the C Major key
Each Major key has a corresponding naural minor key
However, you can not see a difference
in the key signature
The C Major key and the a minor key
have both no sharps or flats
However, when using the minor key
the tonic changes from C to A
The natural minor scale uses the same notes
as the Major scale
but starts a minor third
that is three half steps
below the tonic of the Major scale
C Major
a minor
Since the starting note is no more C
the pattern for the succession of whole and half steps changes
The third interval is now a minor third
therefore the mode of the scale is minor
Already lost?
Don’t worry
Let us go back to the C Major key
and make it easy
so we do not have to struggle with these  features in the beginning
Once you have understood the C Major scale
you will see that all Major scales follow the same pattern
The only difference is the starting note
The red frame contains the notes
On the bottom we find four colored notes
To make a note visible
we have to make the loudness of the note more than zero
We also can change the sound by choosing an instrument
from the drop down menu
In the red frame we can grab the note
and move it to the left or right
The sound comes now more from the left
and now from the right
We can also move the note up or down
By moving the note up,
the red dot will jump one half step up
The note gets a sharp in front of it
to reflect the new higher pitch
Moving the note further up
brings us to the note D
The note D is a whole step above C
or two half steps above C
So the note name changes
when we go from a line to a space
when we go from a line to a space
or from a space to a line
If the pitch  changes only by half a step
and does not fit on a space or a line
we have to use accidentals
sharps or flats
to represent the note
The same pitch can be displayed
by lowering the note D by a half step
Notice that the red dot did not change
But the note position changed from C to D
To hear the note
a button below the frame
So the hearing experience is the same
but the notation is different
To the right we find the frame labeled
half steps
This area shows us the distance 
between two notes
Or, in the case of a single note
the distance to the tonic
Further to the right is the area
where the names are displayed
For a single note the note name
with the octave number is displayed
In this sample the note name is C sharp
and the octave in which the note is
is four
By moving the note up an octave
the octave number will change to five
To the right the corresponding
absolute solfege syllable is displayed
In the line below
the scale degree is shown
For example the note D
is the second note in the C Major scale
The scale degrees also have names
according to their function
For example the note C has the function
of the tonic in the C Major scale
The last entry the solfege syllable
in parathesis,
is the relative solfege syllable
for the moving “Do” system.
For example, when we change the key
to F Major
The tonic changes to the note F
which then corresponds to the Do in the movable solfege system
That is the displayed note C
will be the fifth note in the F Major scale
Therefore the movable solfege syllable will be So
A last remark about single notes
There are three possible notations for the same sound
if the pitch is not on a space or line
Here, the note D flat is displayed with a flat.
If we change the key signature to C Major
A sharp will be used to display the note
However, even so the note name changes
from D flat to C sharp
it is the same note on a piano
and therefore the two notations sound the same
We get a third way to display the same note
by changing the key signature to C sharp Major
The accidental in front of the note disappears
Because the accidental
is contained in the key signature of C sharp
By the way key signatures with sharps
- and the C Major key -
usually display out of scale notes with sharps
And key signatures with flats
represent those notes with flats
Okay let us go to two notes
An interval is the distance between to notes
If two notes are visible
the chord explorer displays the interval name
Intervals, have an interval quaity
and an interval number
If we move the second note also to C
The interval is called a perfect unison
If we move the note up by one half step
to C sharp
The interval is called an augmented unison
Since the note position did not change
the base name C is still in both notes
The rule says that for the interval number
you have to count the name changes
and add one - independent of any accidentals
In this case the name change
Thus the interval number is a unison.
The quality of the interval is augmented
Because one of the notes is one half step higher
If we use flats to represent the notes
The interval name changes to minor second
Applying the interval number rule yields to a second
and the quality is minor
Minor, because the note is not part
of the eight tones in the C Major scale
In a Major scale all intervals are Major
Since it is less than a Major second
it is called a minor second
Going up the C Major  scale in half steps using flats
will go from the Perfect unison to minor, to Major
to minor to Major to Perfect.
And the tone in the middle of a scale is called
a Tritone
The name tritone comes from the fact
That the distance from the tonic
is Three whole Tones (TT)
A whole tone - having two half steps -
fits three times in six half steps.
Just to demonstrate that the interval name
is not only dependent of the distance in half steps
we will turn off the use flats again.
The or part has changed from diminished fifth
to augmented fourth.
As for note names, there are also different interval names
for the same distance.
Since you can only hear the distance
you can only name the distance in half steps
To give the distance a musical interval name
you must know the context
That is you need to know the key signature and the placement on the staff
For a complete list of diatonic and chromatic interval names
I will show you a table from wikipedia
In the next video we will look at triads and seventh chords.
