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    What Are Chords in Music?: Chord Building 101: 4 Basic Chord Types and How To Play Them

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    Heribertus Agus Poernomo
    This document provides an overview of basic chord building and types. It discusses the four main chord types - major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords. For each type, it explains the interval relationships between the root, third, and fifth notes that define each chord. It encourages practicing building chords in different keys. The document also introduces chord progressions and provides a simple 12-bar blues progression as an example for beginners to start with. The overall aim is to teach musicians the fundamentals of building different chords to improve their understanding and songwriting.

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    What Are Chords in Music?: Chord Building 101: 4 Basic Chord Types and How To Play Them

    Uploaded by

    Heribertus Agus Poernomo
    95 views8 pages
    This document provides an overview of basic chord building and types. It discusses the four main chord types - major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords. For each type, it explains the interval relationships between the root, third, and fifth notes that define each chord. It encourages practicing building chords in different keys. The document also introduces chord progressions and provides a simple 12-bar blues progression as an example for beginners to start with. The overall aim is to teach musicians the fundamentals of building different chords to improve their understanding and songwriting.

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    Chords Buiding

    Original Title

    Chord Building 101

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    This document provides an overview of basic chord building and types. It discusses the four main chord types - major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords. For each type, it explains the interval relationships between the root, third, and fifth notes that define each chord. It encourages practicing building chords in different keys. The document also introduces chord progressions and provides a simple 12-bar blues progression as an example for beginners to start with. The overall aim is to teach musicians the fundamentals of building different chords to improve their understanding and songwriting.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    95 views8 pages

    What Are Chords in Music?: Chord Building 101: 4 Basic Chord Types and How To Play Them

    Uploaded by

    Heribertus Agus Poernomo
    This document provides an overview of basic chord building and types. It discusses the four main chord types - major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords. For each type, it explains the interval relationships between the root, third, and fifth notes that define each chord. It encourages practicing building chords in different keys. The document also introduces chord progressions and provides a simple 12-bar blues progression as an example for beginners to start with. The overall aim is to teach musicians the fundamentals of building different chords to improve their understanding and songwriting.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    Chord Building 101: 4 Basic Chord Types and How to Play Them

    By Patrick McGuire
    03 . 01 . 18
    Basic music theory is important for all musicians!

    But the truth is, many fail to put the right amount of time and effort into the basics (but not
    you right? Good).

    Devoting even a small amount of energy towards a few basic music theory concepts will
    pay off in massive ways for your songwriting.

    But what are the most important music theory concepts every musician should
    know?

    One of the most vital skills is building chords… Chord-building is a music theory staple with
    the power to transform how you hear, understand and write music.

    Even if you already know how to build chords, a quick refresher will always help to
    sharpen your skills.

    In this article you’ll learn how to build 4 common chords types on any root note in music by
    memorizing simple patterns of notes. To get the most out of this tutorial, play along with
    your instrument of choice.

    If that’s not available to you, follow along with this handy printable piano visual:

    Let’s get started?

    What are chords in music?


    Chords are two or more harmonic notes played at the same time. Most basic chords are built
    using three notes. Chords are built on their root note (the starting note). The rest of the notes in a
    chord are determined by the chord quality.

    Chords can be built with dozens of notes, though the result would probably be a huge dissonant
    mess that wouldn’t be useful for anything other than experimental music.

    Try thinking of your music like a building. Your chords are the
    foundation.
    To better understand how chords work in your music, think of your song like a building. Your
    chords are the foundation.

    Listeners won’t always recognize chords in a song, but they provide the shape and space to
    support a melody. Chords can be played by anything from a guitar to a brass quintet.

    Building chords and chord progressions is simple once you understand the basics. But to build
    chords, you need to know what intervals are first…

    What are intervals in music?


    Intervals are the note-to-note relationships we hear in music. Chords are simply varying
    combinations of intervals.

    As you’ll soon learn, even the slightest change of a chord’s intervals results in massive changes.

    To understand intervals in chords, you need to plug in a specific number of semitones. Semitones
    are the distance between one note and the one directly above it.

    Chords provide the shape and space to support a melody.


    On the guitar, a semitone is represented by one fret. On a piano tones and semitones look like
    this:
    Now that you understand the difference between tones and semitones, it’s time to build some
    chords.

    Chord types: How to build 4 basic chords


    These 4 basic chord types, or chord qualities, are built using three notes.

    First, to make things easy, I’ll show you how to build these chords in the key of C—But once
    you understand chords in the key of C, you’ll need build chords in other keys to fully grasp
    chord-building..

    Remember, it’s important to master the basics before moving on to more complex material like
    adding extra intervals to basic chords to transform them into extended chords, but I’m getting
    ahead of myself!

    The 4 basic chord types are:

    Major Chords
    Major chords sound full, resolved and complete. Everything from Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” to
    the “Happy Birthday” song are built from simple progressions of major chords.

    Major chords are built by adding the intervals of a major third and perfect fifth above the root.
    The root, by the way, is the starting note of the chord (in this example our root is C).

    The major third interval is the distance between the root and the note four semitones above it.
    Since C is our root, E is the note a major third above.
    For the third note, the perfect fifth is seven semitones above the root. So in our example, this
    would be the distance between C and G. Put all this together, and you’ll get a C major chord.

    Major Third= Four semitones (C to E)

    Perfect Fifth= Seven semitones (C to G)

    Minor Chords
    Here’s the good news. If you’ve understood everything up to this point, you’ll be able to master
    the rest of the basic chords with ease.

    Minor chords sound a universe away from the cheery, resolved nature of major chords, but
    there’s only one note of difference. Most people think these chords sound morose and pensive,
    though they’re used to convey all sorts of different emotions in music.

    If you’ve understood everything up to this point, you’ll be able


    to master the rest of the basic chords with ease.
    Minor chords are built by adding a minor third (three semitones) and perfect fifth above the root.

    Minor Third: Three semitones

    Perfect Fifth: Seven semitones


    Diminished Chords
    Diminished chords will add a tense, dissonant sound to your music.

    Diminished chords are built by adding a minor third and tritone above the root. A tritone is
    comprised of six semitones.

    Minor Third: Three semitones

    Tritone: Six semitones


    Augmented Chords
    Augmented chords sound odd and unsettling like something from the soundtrack of a science
    fiction movie.

    Out of all the basic chords, the augmented is the most rarely heard in music. Augmented chords
    are built just like simple major chords but with an added raised fifth.

    The C major chord features the notes C, E and G, so the augmented C chord features C, E and
    G#.

    Major Third: Four semitones

    Raised Fifth (minor sixth): Eight semitones


    Once you’ve nailed down building basic chords in the key of C, start building chords in other
    keys too.

    Also, and this is super important, start applying your chord-building knowledge to your unique
    instrument. If your main instrument is something that only produces one pitch at a time, then
    arpeggiate the notes (play each of the chord’s notes individually in order).

    The beauty of simple music theory is that it applies to all pitch-producing instruments. But it
    only works if you work at applying it to you tools and workflow.

    Chord Progressions
    Now that you know what chords are, let’s talk about how to use chords in your music. Chord
    progressions are any series of two or more chords in a piece of music. Depending on the style of
    music, chord progressions can be simple and repetitive or lengthy and complicated.

    If you’re totally new to making music with chords, the 12-bar


    blues is a great chord progression to start with.
    If you’re totally new to making music with chords, the 12-bar blues is a great chord progression
    to start with.
    Going back to the example of C major, a simple 12-bar blues progression can be built using C, F
    and G major chords. Just add four beats to each chord symbol:

    12-Bar Blues in C Major:

    C-C-C-C

    F-F-C-C

    G-F-C-C

    Remember, chord progressions don’t need to be long or complicated. In fact, it takes real
    songwriting talent to make a song with just two chords interesting. Try experimenting with some
    simple chord progressions and see if you can make it work!

    Building better songs with chords


    Learning how to build chords might seem tough at first, but like learning your instrument, it gets
    easier over time with practice.

    Practice your chords and build them in several keys. And the next time you listen to music, try
    actively listening for the chords and progressions and take a mental note of them.

    With enough work, knowing how to play, understand and build basic chords will soon be second
    nature in your own songwriting.

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