The fourth factor of a chord is the note or pitch four scale degrees above the root or tonal center. When the fourth is the bass note, or lowest note, of the expressed chord, the chord is in first inversion Play. However, this is equivalent to a gapped ninth chord.
Conventionally, the fourth is third in importance to the root, fifth, and third, being an added tone. It may be avoided as the root since that inversion may resembles a ninth chord on the fourth rather than a suspended chord on the original note. In jazz chords and theory, the fourth is required due to its being an added tone.
The quality of the fourth may be determined by the scale or may be indicated. For example, in both a major and minor scale a diatonic fourth added to the tonic chord will be major (C-F-G) while one added to the subdominant chord will be major or minor (F-B-C or F-B♭-C), respectively.
The fourth is octave equivalent to the eleventh. If one could cut out the note in between the fifth and the eleventh and then drop the eleventh down an octave to a fourth, one would have a fourth chord (CEGB♭D'F' – B♭D' = CEFG). The difference between sus4 and add11 is conventionally the absence or presence, respectively, of the third.
Read more about this topic: Eleventh Chord
Famous quotes containing the word fourth:
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—Bible: Hebrew Deuteronomy, 6:15.
The words are also found in Exodus 20:5, referring to the second commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image ... for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.”
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—Sara Bard Field (1882–1974)
“‘Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)