Chord Construction 2

Ok. So now you know a bit about tones, semi-tones, scales intervals and such...
If you don't see Chord Construction 1
So how does that help you understand chords.. One way to grasp what is going on is to relate everything to the degrees of the major scale. Take a look at the C Major scale below.

Major Chords

Any Major Chord must contain the 1st - 3rd - 5th degrees of the Major scale.. Therefore the chord of C Major must be C E G.
As long as you know the major scale you can find the major chord. here is the G Major scale.
G -A - B - C -D - E - F# - G Therefore G Major = G - B - D.
Find a major scale by starting on any note and following the tone semitone pattern. Then find the 1st - 3rd - 5th. Voila! the Major chord is revealed..

Minor Chords

Once you have found the Major chord the simplest way to find the Minor chord is to flatten the third by one semi-tone. to do this you will be stepping outside the notes belonging to Major scale. See Chord Construction 1 for details of the notes used in western scales.
Flattening (b sign) a note means take it down in pitch by the amount specified Eb means go to from the E to Eb note. Sometimes you will come across the term double flat (Ebb). in this case it means go down two semi-tones from the E to the D note. Sharpening a note (# sign) Means the exact opposite E# means go up one semi-tone from E to F. E double sharp E## means go up two semi-tones to F#.

The chord of C Major consists of..		The chord of C Minor consists of..
C - 1st note of the scale		C - 1st note of the scale
E - 3rd note of the scale		Eb - flattened 3rd note of the scale
G - 5th note of the scale		G - 5th note of the scale

Sevenths

Seventh chords can cause some confusion because there are two types the
Major Seventh (C Maj 7) and the C Dominant Seventh (C7) The Dominant 7th is always one semitone down from the Major 7th See the examples below...

The chord of C Major 7th (CM7)		The chord of C Seventh (C7).
C - 1st note of the scale		C - 1st note of the scale
E - 3rd note of the scale		E - 3rd note of the scale
G - 5th note of the scale		G - 5th note of the scale
B - Major 7th note of the scale		Bb - Dominant 7th

The Minor Seventh can be found by the same method as before.. Flatten the third..
Example: C Minor 7th = C - Eb - G - Bb

Ninth Eleventh And Thirteenth Chords

Take another look at the C Major scale this time with a few notes from the second octave added. You can see that the Ninth note is a D, which has already appeared once before as the second note of the scale. The reason that it has changed from a second to a ninth is because the note is not an octave and a tone above the root or starting note of the chord...

Ninth chords always must also contain the Dominant seventh, unless it is specified as an Added Ninth. In that circumstance, the Dominant 7th is omitted.

The chord of C 9th (C9)		The chord of C add 9th (Cadd9).
C - 1st note of the scale		C - 1st note of the scale
E - 3rd note of the scale		E - 3rd note of the scale
G - 5th note of the scale		G - 5th note of the scale
Bb - Dominant 7th note		D - In the Second Octave
D - In the Second Octave		*****************

The same principle applies to 11th and 13th chords.. Again they must contain the Dominant 7th unless specified as Add 11th or Add 13th .. In which case omit the Dominant 7th.
Once again to find the minor chord flatten the third..

The chord of C Eleventh (C11)		The chord of C Thirteenth (C13)
C - 1st note of the scale		C - 1st note of the scale
E - 3rd note of the scale		E - 3rd note of the scale
G - 5th note of the scale		G - 5th note of the scale
Bb - Dominant 7th note		Bb - Dominant 7th note
F - In the Second Octave		A - In the Second Octave

Suspended Chords (Sus)

Suspended (or Sus) chords are formed by removing the third from the chord and replacing it with the scale note named..
Example: C Suspended Fourth = C - F- G
If you compare this C Sus 4 chord to the C Major chord of C - E - G you will see that the third note of the scale E has been removed and replaced with the fourth note of the scale F.

Suspended Second chords follow the same principle, only this time you replace the third note of the scale with the second
Example: C Suspended Second = C - D - G
Once again compare this C Sus 2 chord to the C Major chord and you will see that the same principle has been applied as in the suspended fourth example, the only difference being, which note from the scale replaces the third.

Augmented and Diminished Chords

Augmented chords can be thought of as a series of Major thirds one on top of the other.

The interesting thing about these chords is that they take their name from the notes that are included in the chord itself. So the chord above can be either..

This is quite handy, because it means once you have learned one augmented chord shape on the guitar, as soon as you move it along three frets you have got all of them and the pattern repeats..

Diminished Chords can be thought of as a series of Minor thirds one on top of the other.

As with augmented chords, diminished chords take their name from the notes which form the chord itself and one chord shape moved along a couple of frets on the guitar forms all of them.

Now that you have completed the chord construction section see if you can put your new found knowledge into practise ...

Chord Inversions

To use a chord inversion simply means to rearrange the order of the notes in the chord.
Example:

All that is happening is that you are removing the bottom note of the chord and putting back at a the top Try these on a keyboard to hear the different tonal characteristics produced by this procedure
This works with any chord type.
Can't be bothered with this theory rubbish..? Download Nutchords and let this nifty little program do all the work.

Transposition

Transposing means moving a song from one key to another. The key of a song is based on the chords used in it.
Take this chord sequence. C - Am - F - G (When a letter is used on it's own to denote a chord and has no accompanying information, it means play the Major chord. The A Minor chord in the sequence, has a small m, to let you know that the minor chord is required.)
This is sometimes known as a turnaround. This is where you start at one chord, go through the sequence and then start from the beginning again.
This chord sequence is said to be in the key of C Major because the notes which make up the chords are all in the scale of C Major.
If you wanted to move this sequence to the key of G, the first thing to do is find out how many semi-tones there are between C and G in this case there are seven - to the G above C - or five - to the G below C. (See keyboard to visualise this.) All you now have to to do is move all the other chords the same amount of semitones as the first one and the key change will have been accomplished.

Incidentally, you can play these chords in any order and they will always sound pretty good.
try mixing them up and see what you can come up with.. You might even recognise one of the countless hit songs, that have been created from this idea.. Maybe you will create a sensation of your own..

Well there you are...That's the end of my brief guide to a couple of the branches of Music Theory. Though by no stretch of the imagination can this be considered to be a complete guide, hopefully it will have served to point you in the right direction and dispelled some of the mystery surrounding the subject. Any mistakes that are here, (if there are any) are entirely my own fault and if anyone would care to point them out to me I will gladly rectify them. Email Me.
Well we wouldn't want the new generation of musicians going round with erroneous information filling their heads now would we..?

Now that you have learned some of the rules of music theory, my advice to you if you are writing your own material is to break all of them. It's always been my view that any method of condensing music down into a written form, has ever been an inexact science and all great music contains that indefinable element 'feel'. I believe that musicians paint a sound canvas which attempts to elicit an emotion from the listener... If you can do that, you have got something.. Even if it is only raising your own spirits by banging out a few tunes in your bedroom...That can only be a beautiful thing..

Love all this pursuit of musical knowledge and want more...? Try this excellent guitar resource...
Aaron Curtis Guitar Page