Understanding Chord Scales

If we want to understand how songs are made or indeed, how chord progressions are made we need to understand their relationship to keys

Hopefully you have all heard of musical keys - some songs stay within a key, others move from it.

Firstly we need to understand how a key is made up.

Here is the major scale of C

C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C

Nice and simple as we have not got any sharps or flats.

Now, to make a major chord we take the first, third and fifth note out of the major scale to get the major chord. So to get a C major chord we take the first note (C) the third (E) and fifth (G)

We can actually do this with each note of the major scale. This is also known as harmonising the major scale.

Here is where you need to know all your keys - If we take the second degree of the C major scale - the D. Lets take the first, the third and the fifth note of the C major scale but starting at the note D. This gives us D - F and A.

If you know your keys you will know that in the Key of D there are 2 sharps - F# and C#

This means that if the above chord was a D major chord we would not have an F but an F#. Here we use our theory knowledge - we know that to create a minor chord we take the first, flattened third and the fifth or a major scale. This would be D - F - A. This means that building a chord off of the second degree of a major scale will result in a minor chord.

If we continue doing this with every note you will find that the chords work out like this -

Major - Minor - Minor - Major - Major - Minor - Diminished

Play through the chords and you will notice it will sound like you are playing the major scale but in chords.

Play these chords and check it out.

C - Dm - Em - F - G - Am - Bdim - C

If a song was written purely in the key of C then it would only use the above chords. Of course this can be extended to 7th chords which we will do another time.

Whatever key you opt for the formula will remain the same so it is important to get into your head :

Major Minor Minor Major Major Minor Diminished.

We label these chords with roman numerals so they can be transposed into any key you like very easily.

I - II - III - IV - V - VI - V11 - I

So now you know - if f someone said to you to play the I - IV - V progression in the key of C then you would play C - F - G

I hope this makes sense - there is plenty more to learn regarding this which I will go into -