Have you ever stumbled across a guitar chord you love and had no idea what it is or what to call it? Then read on!
One of the best features of the guitar is the ability to play more than one note at a time, also known as a chord.
Triads – Simple Chords
Let’s start by looking at a Triad which is a pattern of three notes using every other note of the scale. In the Key of C Major, a simple triad built on C would be C, E, G.
If we limit ourselves to just these notes from anywhere on the fretboard, we’re playing a C Major Chord. Check it by looking at the notes used in the C Major Chord with which you are probably already familiar:
Now let’s look at the notes in a D Minor chord:
The D Minor Chord uses the notes D, F, A again, skipping every other note in the sequence of the C Major Scale.
Note: These chords are said to be Diatonic meaning their notes naturally occur in the Key of the music (which in this case we’ve established as C Major).
Major/Minor, what’s the difference?
The simple answer is that the musical distance between the notes C & E is different then the distance between the notes D & F.
To find the number of half-steps using a piano, count the number of steps needed to get from one note to the next using all sequential keys (both white and black). We notice the distance from C to E (4 half-steps) is one half-step more than the distance from D to F (3 half-steps).
You might also notice that the number of half-steps from the note C to G and from the note D to A are exactly the same (7 half-steps). That small difference in the number of half-steps between the first and second note of the chord makes the difference between whether the chord is Major (4 half-steps) or Minor (3 half-steps).
Dominant 7 Chords
Finally let’s look at the notes in a G7 chord:
The G7 chord aka (G Dominant 7) uses the following notes: G, B, D, F
In this case we used 4 notes so this is no longer a Triad, it’s now a 7th chord because we’ve added the note F which is called the 7th because it is the seventh note in the scale. This chord is similar to a Major Chord in that the distance between the notes G & B is 4 half-steps, however the distance between the notes C & F is 11 half-steps instead of all possible 12. The distance of 11 half-steps between notes is called a Minor 7th and when we build chords with a Major 3rd (4 half-steps) and a Minor 7th (11 half-steps) we call the Chord Dominant.
Chord Extensions
We could extend this concept of adding every other note to the chord to build what are called chord extensions.
Extensions are like the 7th and 9th are found in all types of music while extensions like the 11 & 13 are heard more frequently in Jazz.
Note Choice
Chords sound great when arranged in order from lowest pitch to highest pitch. Often you can invert using a different note in the bass or lowest voice of the chord. To keep the sound of the chord, stick to using the 1st (or root), 5th, and 3rd the notes as the deepest notes of the chord.
Also, notes that are closer together tend to sound clunky while notes that are spaced further apart sound more open. Experiment to get that sound you’re looking for.
Cheers! – Chris
Leave a Reply