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 7th, major 7th minor 7th,
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 3rd
and 4th, E and F). In music theory, root +major 3rd+5th=
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 3rd (1 ½ steps from root note D) and we have G as
the 5th. This time it is root+minor3rd+5th= 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.
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