When we harmonise the 7th degree of a major scale, the 5th is one semitone smaller and is called a diminished fifth, or b5 for short. It is the only chord that does not contain a perfect fifth. Harmonising the 7th Degree of the Major Scale The harmonised chords of the C major scale are: Chord 1 (I) To save space I will not show the construction of every chord (although do try this by yourself). With a minor 3rd and a perfect 5th, this chord is classified as a minor chord built on the note D, or simply ‘D minor’ for short.Īs a formula, a minor chord is expressed as 1 b3 5 and the second chord in any major key is always minor.Īll the notes of the major scale can be harmonised in this way, and with the exception of the 7th note, B, they are all normal major or minor chords. However the distance between the notes D and A is still 3.5 tones, which is the correct spacing for a perfect 5th. The distance between the notes D and F is 1.5 tones or a minor 3rd which means that the chord is minor. On the guitar, that looks and sounds like: Moving on to the second note in the C major scale, (D) and repeating the previous process we generate:Īs we start harmonising the major scale from the 2nd note of the scale, we get the notes D, F and A. So, in simple terms a major chord has the formula 1 3 5 and t he first chord in any major key is always major. It is convention in music to describe the notes in a chord in terms of their relationship to the major scale formula, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. When measured from the root, any major chord must consist of 2 tones between the root and 3rd, and 3.5 tones between the root and 5th. This is one semitone smaller than the major 3rd so we call it a minor 3rd. The distance between the 3rd and 5th (the notes E and G), is one and a half tones. This distance in music is called a ‘major 3rd’. The distance between the notes C and E is two tones.Īny chord with a distance of two tones between the first two notes can be classed as a major type chord. If we look at the notes of C major spaced out on the fret board, we can now establish what pattern of notes is required to form a major chord. This is how most simple, 3 note chords are formed.
For example, we formed this chord by Starting on C, Jumping D and landing on E, jumping F and landing on G. This can be seen as jumping over or ‘leapfrogging’ every other note in the scale. In the context of the major scale, we have taken the notes 1, 3 and 5: The chord of C Major contains only the notes, C, E and G.
#4 note c major how to
To find out which notes go together to form each individual chord, we must learn how to go about harmonising the major scale.Ĭhords are formed when we ‘stack’ specific notes from a scale on top of each other. In this voicing, the note C appears 3 times, and the note G appears twice. Even though we are playing 4, 5, or even 6 strings, we are only playing 3 individual notes which are doubled in different octaves.įor example in the following chord of C major the names of the notes are labelled… You can see that even though we play 6 strings, there are only 3 unique notes.
Often we strum major or minor chords on the guitar which use more than 3 strings. A straight major or minor chord has only 3 separate notes. What is a chord?Ī chord, technically, is the combination of three or more notes. When we harmonise the major scale, we build a chord from each note of the scale. When we use the phrase ‘harmonising the major scale’, what we really mean is ‘building chords’.
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