By Mark Slater |
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Ear Fusion Guitar Lessons - How To Play By Ear Chord structure A chord is a combination of notes in a scale. Here we discuss major chords. Let’s look at the chord C major. C major consists only of notes in the C major scale or key. The notes that make up a major chord are always the 1st, 3rd and 5th note of that chords corresponding key. We know the notes in C major are C, D, E, F, G, A, B and C again. The 1st note is C of course…the 3rd note is E and the 5th note is G. So in order to make a C major chord we need these three notes. Let’s look at the C major scale starting from C on the 8th fret (also referred to as the 8th position). FIGURE 17
Notice where all the C’s, E’s and G’s are at. If you take all the other notes out, it looks like this in figure 18 below. FIGURE 18
This would be the pattern of a C major chord in the 8th position (the Ionian or first mode of C major). Now this is as basic as a chord gets. Let’s say you wanted to play a C major 7 chord. This means you want to add a 7th note from the C major scale. If we just said C7…this would be a C major chord with a 7th note from the C minor scale…which happens to fall just one fret lower than a 7th note from the major version of C. If we said C minor 7…we would play a C minor chord with a 7th note from the minor version of C. So you see that C maj 7, C7 and C min 7 are three different chords. Now you are probably wondering how to make a C minor chord...unless you already know of course. Look at the 3rd note of the C major scale…which is E of course. (Note figure 18 has only one E note). In order to make a chord minor, you need to play the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the minor version of that notes key…which in the key of C minor would be C, Eb and G. The C and the G are the same 1st and 3rd notes you’d play in a C maj…the only difference is the 2nd note, E, is flat. All the notes in C minor go as follows…C, D, Eb, F, G, A and Bb. So all you do to make any major chord a minor chord is flatten the third note…in this case E to Eb. So C minor looks like this in figure 19… FIGURE 19
Figure 20 shows you how to play these chords in terms of what fingers to use and what frets to play. FIGURE 20
If these chords are difficult, you may need to practice making them for a while. Of course there are plenty of open string chords you can play in the first three or four frets that are easier to play if you are a beginner, but remember that it’s also nice to understand how chords are made in different voicing. The voicing of a chord is a reference to the order in which the notes in a chord are played and how many of each of a chords notes are being played in the chord. For example, if you look at figure 18 again, you’ll notice that the C Maj chord diagrammed shows you notes played in the order C-G-C-E-G-C from the low E string to the high E string and you’ll see that it consists of 3 C notes, 2 G notes and 1 E note. These combinations can vary in many ways. You could play a C Maj chord with any number of each of its notes in any order as long as you only used C’s, G’s and E’s. In figure 20, of course we are making C chords on the 8th fret which is a C note on your low E string. That low pitched C note is the root note of that chord. So in other words, you are using that C note as the foundation of that chord. There’s another way to make a C major chord using that same C note. There is also a way to make 2 more basic C major chords using the C notes on the second lowest bass string…the A string. These are the 4 basic ways of playing a C major chord shown in figure 21. Of course there are many other variations on making a C major chord…these are just to show you the structure. FIGURE 21
Figure 22 is similar to figure 21 but it also displays the names of the notes that are being played on each string just left of each chord so that you can see how many of each note and in what order they’re being played. These are what you would call the “voicing” or the way in which the chord is voiced. FIGURE 22
All 4 chords in the diagram are C major of course, the only differences are the number and order of the notes. Now you’ve seen the four basic chord shapes lets look at the fret board with just the C major chord notes…C, E and G. FIGURE 23
Looking at figure 23 you can see all the C major chord notes. You can make a C major chord using any combination of the C, E and G notes in figure 23. Practice looking for and making different versions of C major throughout the fret board. Remember, of course, that you can move this whole pattern up or down to whatever position you want…so that you can play in different keys. C is on the 8th fret as you know, try moving the whole pattern down just one fret to B on the 7th fret. Also…now that you know how to derive a C major chord in virtually any different voicing possible on the fret board, you can simply take any C major chord that you find and move it up or down according to the twelve basic notes and that will be the chord you will be playing. Remember that if you are playing a chord with open strings, you will also have to move those open notes up too…of course you can’t move them down, because open is the lowest note on each string. So for example, when you are playing any C major chord, simply move each string up one fret…and you have C#, two frets up and you have D…one fret down from C and you have B and so on. So now that you know that you can find any major chord someone throws at you just by moving up and down in position…and if you just count the four basic chord voicings we’ve discussed in figure 22, you can make every major chord at least in those four voicings not to mention all the other possibilities of making a major chord that you derive from figure 23. Remember where the four basic voicings sit on the fret board in relation to each other and how some notes from each of them will tie into the notes of the others. Remember also that a chord only needs just one of each note in the chord to be considered a full chord. A “chord” with only 2 notes in it is simply a pair and a chord with only 3 notes in it is called a triad. Now of course the C major uses the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the C major scale. Let’s look at the notes of the key of C again in figure 24. FIGURE 24
If we start this key of C sequence from C…we have the Ionian mode…and if we start from D, we will be playing Dorian mode. If you recall that the mode only refers to which tone of the key (in this case C Major) that you will use as your root note. Using C as our root note…we make our root chord, C major, using the 1st, 3rd and 5th note of C major Ionian mode…which is C, E and G as we know it. Let’s look at C major Dorian…which starts from D in figure 25. FIGURE 25
Of course the intervals move around a little. Now the D note is the root of the scale. Still C major…just starting from D. Notice that in the Ionian diagram in figure 24…the 1st note is a 2 whole step interval from the 3rd note and the 3rd note is a 1 ½ step interval from the 5th note. Now that we start from D…the first note, D is only a 1 ½ step interval from the 3rd note, F is now a 2 step interval from the 5th note which is A. So in terms of intervals (spacing between tones)…the 3rd note is flattened in Dorian mode. You learned earlier that in order to make a major chord into a minor…you simply flatten the 3rd note. In other words if you were to look at the D major scale, it would consist of the notes D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#...the 1st note would then be D, the 3rd note would be F# and the 5th note would be A. That’s D, F# and A to make a D major chord…so if we wanted to play a D minor chord…we would flatten the 3rd note…F# to just simply an F…leaving D, F and A which are the 1st, 3rd and 5th note of the C major key in Dorian mode (starting from D…the second note of the key of C). So in order to play your root chord of C major Dorian, which would be D, you would have to make it a D minor for it to consists of just notes that are in the key of C major in this case D, F and A. Each of the seven modes is going to have its corresponding note as its root. You can start the C scale from each note in C major to see how the intervals move around if you like…otherwise just remember that the 1st, 4th and 5th chord is always major and the 2nd, 3rd and 6th chord are always minor. The 7th chord is what’s called a minor 7b5. So in the key of C minor…it goes as follows: C Maj, D min, E min, F Maj, G Maj, A min, B min 7b5. Let’s look at the root chords of each mode as we move up the fret board from C major in the 8th position. Figure 26 shows just the notes from the key of C. FIGURE 26
In figure 27 below, we mark the notes C, E and G that we use in the first of the four basic voicings. FIGURE 27
The dotted frets make up the C major chord. Move each dotted note up one note in the scale and you will be playing the notes D, F and A…the same notes that make a D minor. The D minor is shown in figure 28 Figure 28
If you continue moving each note up one note in the key of C, you’ll come up with the sequence C Maj, D min, E min, F Maj, G Maj, A min, B min b5. I, IV and V are major and II, III and VI are minor…VII is a minor b5. Let’s look at chords with the root note C. In figure 29 there are a few different types of C chords…some major and some minor. FIGURE 29
You manipulate any chord by adding and taking out certain notes. To make a C major you have a C, E and a G hence 1st – 3rd – 5th, so if we want a C major 7 we will add the 7th note of the scale which is B…so we have C, E, G and B. The C7 chord is still the C major notes, only instead of adding a 7th note of the C major scale, you would add the 7th notes of C minor which is Bb…so a C7 consists of 1st – 3rd – 5th – flat 7th. Of course we know already that C minor is simply a flattened 3rd, so that would be C, Eb and G. Finally, C minor 7 is simply a C minor with an added 7th from the key of C minor. I hope that from here you will be able to better understand how most if not all chords are made up. You may not understand everything here in one sitting, so practice and give yourself a fair chance to learn it. Keep in mind that all of this applies to each key relatively. Next - Lesson #15 - Learning Music By Ear
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