Classical chords is a bad analogy, especially when you consider it constituting for everything in music from Baroque to 20th century music. The obvious truth is no certain chords give you a classical sound, but there is a good starting point behind creating classical music. Aside from what the thread is about, there was a classical era amongst baroque, romanatic, etc. Mozart was a classical musician, Bach was not of the classical era. That's why I didn't get why griphon brought up Bach in the same sentence that points the discussion towards the era's. I know Bach is the father of all modern music and of course all the chords were used during all the time periods. I was just saying most of it was simple chord shapes but more emphasis on chord voicing and inversion. With that idea as a foundation it's pretty easy to write classical music, that's my tip on how to use chords to make classical music. There is no strict menu, but be careful in using advanced chord voicing because they can create a texture that isn't classical sounding. 11th and 13th chords are more modern because they grow more increasingly ambiguos to the tonal center of a chord. Tonal centers were very important in classical music.

[Edited by noticingthemistake on 11-01-2003 at 10:08 AM]