twevle tones for twevle chords???

[dwest2419]

Hi guys back with another thread. I have this question in this video that this guy talks about how there are 12 notes and that you only need to know twelve chords. What does he mean by this and what are twelve chords you can use in a specific key? i know your probably thinking brother west  - "why dont you learn guitar material and stay away from piano material!?" - But I'm also into whatever that's going to further my playing along the way. 

TUTORIAL: Gospel/Jazz Using Suspensions To Play Cycles

[dwest2419]

Can anyone further expand on this thread????

Passing Chords Exposed - Easily Create Infinite chord progressions - Music Theory 101

[funkStrat_97]

I'm at work right now and cant' watch the videos, but in the context of the chromatic scale, you have 12 notes and each of those notes could potentially be used as the basis of a chord or be applied as an altered chord so you don't necessarily have to be locked into diatonic chords..........as long as everyone is on the same page.  Depending on the feel of the song, you could apply secondary dominant chords or borrowed chords to make things interesting.

[gtrdave]

The narrator is being a little vague and misleading in claiming that there are only 12 chords.
I could do him one better though and claim that there are really only 4 chords; major, minor, diminished and augmented. 
But that's not telling the whole truth as there are literally hundreds of chords in the entire 12 tone chromatic universe, but there are only 12 root notes to those chords (but only if you're talking sharps OR flats).

He gave it away in the second video in saying that each of the 12 tones on the keyboard "represent" a chord, but doesn't tell you that any one tone can have dozens of options of chords based on it.

[dwest2419]

....Yeah!  Like for instance I understand the chords for the key of C. In the key of C of course C major D minor E minor F major G major A minor and B dim. But we're missing five chords here. So far we have a total of seven chords but what about the five remaining? The notes or the tones that are missing are C#, D#, F#, G#, and A#. So far that completes the list of the twelve tones for twelve chords! But what I want to know is what are the chords for the outside notes of the C major scale are they dim, dom, min, major, aug, or suspended?

[funkStrat_97]

....Yeah!  Like for instance I understand the chords for the key of C. In the key of C of course C major D minor E minor F major G major A minor and B dim. But we're missing five chords here. So far we have a total of seven chords but what about the five remaining? The notes or the tones that are missing are C#, D#, F#, G#, and A#. So far that completes the list of the twelve tones for twelve chords! But what I want to know is what are the chords for the outside notes of the C major scale are they dim, dom, min, major, aug, or suspended?

Since the potential outside chords are in fact outside, they can be pretty much whatever you want them to be in light of where you're trying to go with them.  Having said that, it is quite common to see the as a diminished passing chord or as a passing note (usually in the bass) over between two diatonic chords.

[T-Block]

This guy is crazy for saying that. I think his attempt is to try and make the student feel more at ease learning. I agree wit gtrdave, this is very misleading.

The narrator is being a little vague and misleading in claiming that there are only 12 chords.
I could do him one better though and claim that there are really only 4 chords; major, minor, diminished and augmented. 

I could do one better and say that there really is only 1 key to learn. Every other key is just a different position, but then yall would look at me even crazier than this guy, lol.