Understanding Scales and Chord Progressions Pt 1

Almost every aspiring guitar player, as he or she progresses and develops into a more highly skilled one eventually appreciates the need or at least becomes interested in learning scales. We all should be! Why? Because it is through understanding and familiarity of it that one can also understand chord progression—a very useful tool when writing your own songs. If you are new to guitar scales, check out my previous post The Major scale.

Writing your own songs

We all know that without any chords, there can be hardly any song or melody that makes sense. A chord is the harmony that results from combining at least three basic pitches. This group of three pitches in harmony is called a triad or chord consisting three notes. But in the context of song- writing, granting that you already know many chords, does this necessarily mean that you know how to organise them in to a flowing music or background music? Not necessarily. Or do you know what gives a chord its name (major, minor, dominant 7^th, major 7^th minor 7^th, etc.)? Not necessarily. Well you can still write a song even without understanding chord progression. The problem is you are only going to go through the painful process of trial and error and it will take a ridiculously long time before you can complete even the simplest song.

In this article, we will learn how to determine the diatonic chords (chords that belong to a particular key) to the C Major key/scale.

From my previous article we have come to know that the C Major scale is C  D  E  F  G  A  B  C. To determine the chords, we just pick every other note in the scale.

So let start by picking C, being the root of the whole scale. Skip the D, pick the E, skip the F, and then pick the G

We have:    C    E   G – C is the root note and we have E as the Major third (2 whole steps from C or simply count 1, 2, 3 from C)  and G as the fifth (count 5 from C taking into account the half step between the 3^rd and 4^th, E and F). In music theory, root +major 3^rd+5^th= Major chord. Therefore the first chord is C major.

Next we have:   D   F   G – D is the root note and we have F as a minor 3^rd (1 ½ steps from root note D) and we have G as the 5^th. This time it is root+minor3rd+5^th= minor chord. Therefore the second chord is D minor.  

Do you see the process now? Do yourself a favour, STOP reading and derive the remaining chords yourself and then get back to compare your answer.