Building Chords from the Major Scale

Basic Chord-Building Method

Most chords in popular music can be created by simply stacking notes in groups of thirds. The most common method of creating chords from this scale is to add two more notes to each, using thirds. Consider the first note, C. To create a chord out of this note, we will start on C, skip the next tone (D) and add E. Then we’ll skip the next tone (F), and add G. This creates C-E-G. When these three notes are played together, they produce the chord C major. Comparing this to the C major scale reveals a chord made from the first, third and fifth notes of the C major scale. Our following note is D. When we repeat this process, we have the configuration D-F-A. This will also be a major chord, right? Not so fast. Let’s pretend to be in the key of D. D has two sharps: F♯ and C♯. A major chord would have the notes D-F♯-A in the key of D. Because our D chord is constructed from notes out of C major and not the D major scale, we have to shrink the F to fit it into our scale. That means we’ve produced a minor chord instead of producing a major one.