Chords are the building blocks of music, providing its structure. Chords can be built using triads based on scale degrees that determine chord quality.
Understanding major chords and how they’re formed can be crucial when writing music. In this guitar theory lesson we’ll take a look at how major chords are constructed from scales.
Triads
Triads form the building blocks for chords. They consist of the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes in any major scale.
The interval between these three notes determines what type of chord will form; for instance, C to E is considered a major third (M3) because their alphabetic distance equals two full steps (1 octave).
Perfect fifths are another critical interval in creating triads, since they are located seven frets higher than the root note or one and a half tones (3 octaves) up. This interval provides musical consonance and resolution that provide stable tonality without dissonant sounds – this makes every major chord contain both major third and perfect fifth intervals.
Major Scale
Every major scale features a set pattern of notes arranged into groups. This arrangement differs depending on which note is started at, though its interval qualities remain constant; for instance, C to E is considered one whole step whereas F to G represents halftone intervals.
As such, it is crucial that one understands the various patterns of the major scale and their relationships with one another in order to move smoothly across the fretboard and form chords by selecting different notes from their patterns. Starting on C and selecting three alternate notes from your scale pattern – for instance C D E will form a first inversion triad; do the same again starting on D for second inversions triads.
Minor Scale
Chords can be produced on any polyphonic instrument that produces multiple notes at once. Unlike monophonic instruments like guitars, chords can be combined in various ways to produce various combinations of notes and chords can even be stacked to produce distinctive sounds.
How a chord is put together can have an immense influence on its quality; the 3rd and 7th intervals play an integral part.
Major chords are formed from the intersection of three major triads and their major seventh interval, but you can extend this by also including its major ninth interval for an expanded Cmaj9 chord. Minor scale chords follow similar logic; their difference being they contain both minor thirds and perfect fifths in their structure.
Major Third
Triads are the basic building block of chords. A triad is defined as any grouping of three harmonizing notes forming a third interval above or below its root note, creating harmony. There are two different interval types available when building triads: Major and Minor.
Example: Starting on C as your root note and moving one semitone higher yields E which is considered a major third; going up another semitone yields D which represents a minor third.
Repetition of this pattern across each scale degree produces a major triad, while as you progress you may venture into longer chord sequences such as seventh, ninth and diminished chords – each note’s order creates its own distinctive sound quality.
Minor Third
Similar chord formulas to those used above for major triads can also be altered to form minor triads by lowering the third, as shown below for a C minor chord.
Chords can be created by selecting any three notes from the scale and arranging them so their intervals are a third apart – for instance if starting on C, E is next up a third and G will follow shortly afterwards.
When counted down the scale, these intervals form a perfect fifth – an interval found in major chords as well as how dominant 7th and 9th chords are constructed. It is an easy way to construct these chords but there may also be other methods, like adding or dropping notes from their formation.