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I'm practicing identifying chords from sight reading for the first time, here is what I have so far (feel free to correct any possible mistakes I might have made).

first attempt at notation

I'm struggling with that last chord as it seems to have two notes that are just one interval away from each other (F♭ and F♮ in this key). I can't make heads or tails of it and I can't seem to find this chord online either. How should this chord be analyzed?

Revision:

Here's my second pass of the same excerpt:

second attempt at notation

(turns out the final "chord" isn't actually a chord at all not that I kept track of the natural sign; the only notes it contains are F and D.b)

Robert C.
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  • from what music is this excerpt? – Michael Curtis Mar 13 '19 at 15:42
  • It's the Ruins theme from Undertale. – Robert C. Mar 13 '19 at 15:47
  • But the notation, where did it come from? I'm not familiar with the theme, how do we know it's accurately notated? We had another anime theme posted recently and the notation was bad. – Michael Curtis Mar 13 '19 at 15:48
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    Your first chord cannot be A7sus2, as its root is A flat. – Dekkadeci Mar 13 '19 at 15:51
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    I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but literally every chord symbol you've written in is incorrect. Pay close attention to the key signature, accidentals, and enharmonic spellings. – Peter Mar 13 '19 at 15:52
  • The key is **Cb**, which means it's all wrong. Sorry! For example the C#7 is simply Db major. – Tim Mar 13 '19 at 15:53
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    I've listened to the Ruins theme from Undertale before; its key is A flat minor/G sharp minor (although it might be one of those Toby Fox themes where he time-stretches it out of tune of A440, a la his "Hopes and Dreams" and "Rude Buster"). – Dekkadeci Mar 13 '19 at 16:08
  • Hmm, I did take the key in consideration, but I wrote the chords in such a way that the key isn't... incorporated? So I should write the chords in a way that's "key-agnostic", got it. Also C in the Cb key is just... B, isn't it? I though the whole point of enharmonic spelling is that it doesn't matter which one you use because both spellings represent the exact same sound? – Robert C. Mar 13 '19 at 16:35

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Remember that accidentals carry through the measure. Since the left hand in the second measure begins on an F♮, this means that beat 3 in the left hand is also an F♮.

As such, this is just a D♭/F dyad. Without seeing further context, this is most likely an incomplete D♭-major triad, but it could be an incomplete B♭-minor triad.

But most importantly, I'd recommend you pay attention to how the chords are spelled. The second chord, for instance—C♭, E♭, G♭—must be spelled as a C♭-major triad. It can't be a B-major triad, because there's no B in the chord!

When two notes that sound the same can be spelled a different way, we call it enharmonicism. For more on this, see What's the difference between a G♭ and an F#?

Richard
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