Chord basics
So far we’ve looked at playing single-note melodies with a bassline underneath. Play a bunch of notes together, though, and you create rich musical textures: chords. The most basic chords are three-note triads, and they’re dead easy to build.
First we need a scale – we’re going to use C major, but it works in the same way for any other scale, including minor ones. Now we pick a root note for the chord, then alternately skip and pick notes until we have three of them. Numerically, the formula is 1-3-5. So for the first chord in C, we’d pick these notes in bold: CEG DFA B. That gives C-E-G. The other triads in C major are: D-F-A, E-G-B, F-A-C, G-B-D, A-C-E, B-D-F. In total, that’s seven chords, which we can number 1-7 for reference. The three notes of a triad are called root, third and fifth.
Now take a good look at the chords’ intervals – see step 3 below. Chords 1 ( C-E-G), 4( F-A-C) and 5 ( G-B-D) all have a major third as their first interval, which makes them ‘ major chords’. We name them C major, F major and G major – or simply C, F and G.
Chords 2 ( D-F-A), 3( E-G-B), and 6 ( A-C-E) are minor chords – that’s right, chords based on the major scale aren’t necessarily major chords. We call these D minor, E minor and A minor, also known as Dm, Em and Am.
We can also use a formula based on semitones to create any major or minor chord. Major is root – major third – fifth, so root-4-7. Minor, on the other hand, is root – minor third – fifth: root-3-7.
Chord 7 ( B-D-F) is a bit different. It’s made of two minor thirds stacked up, and it’s called B diminished, or Bdim. Diminished chords are often used to create moments of tension that are ‘resolved’ to a more harmonious or ‘stable’ chord, such as chord 1. For the walkthrough below, we’ll take you through it in video form.