Building Chords and Progressions of The Major Scale

Photo by BigstockphotoKnowing how to build chords and chord progressions is a really great tool for writing your own songs and communicating with your fellow musicians on how to play a certain piece of music, “Let’s play a 1 4 5 progression in the key of…”

You can create the most beautiful chord progressions and songs by ear and you don’t necessarily need to know music theory for that, but it makes the life of a musician a lot easier if you do know some music theory on this part.

It’s nice to know what other musicians are talking about and how you can create chord progressions in a more effective and efficient way.

Adding music theory knowledge will reveal a lot of secrets you wish you had known before, so don’t wait for later or you’ll miss out on all the good stuff. Music theory will definitely make you a better musician!

Now let’s dive in:

From the major scale you can build 7 diatonic chords. The major scale consists of 7 notes, so that’s one chord of each note.

Let’s take the C major scale for example.

C D E F G A B + C (=octave)

To build the first chord “C” of the major scale we stack thirds on top of each other. So if you start at “C” you take the 1st note (stack a third), 3rd note (stack another third) and the 5th note of the major scale: C E G
C E G = C Major

Then we build a chord of the second degree of the major scale “D”
Again from the D chord we stack thirds on top of each other.
So from “D” take the 1st, 3rd and 5th note = D F A
D F A = D minor

For example if you take the G major scale: G A B C D E F#
Apply formula and you get these chords:
G Major, A minor, B minor, C Major, D Major, E minor, F#dim

So if you wanna write a song or a chord progression in the key of G you can use all these chords randomly and they will all sound perfectly well together.

BUILDING CHORD PROGRESSIONS:
In music we use roman numerals to indicate the order of chords in a chord progression.
So let’s take the chords built of the G Major scale for example:
I = G Major, ii = A minor, iii = B minor, IV = C Major, V = D Major, vi = E minor and vii = F#dim.

Now we can build chord progressions with these roman numerals. Here are some of the most common chord progression in pop, folk, country and rock music. With these chord progressions thousands and thousands of hit songs were written and that will probably be the case for decades to come.

Progression: I – V
In the key of G that is = G D
In the key of C that is = C G

Comments

I’m confused. For the ii chord you say “Then we build a chord of the second degree of the major scale “D”” – but in the D scale the F is actually F#, so if you were stacking thirds from the D major scale you would have D, F#, and A. But in order for the chord to be minor, the F has to be F natural.

So, don’t you mean “we build a chord of the second degree by stacking thirds from the C major scale starting at the second note: D, F, and A” ?