How chords are built

Those three fingers are degrees 1, 3, and 5 from the last page: C is 1, E is 3, G is 5. Fingers 2 and 4 stay up. Three notes built this way are a triad. The chord is named for note 1, so this one is a C chord, and because note 3 is the major scale's own 3rd, the full name is C major. Almost every song you know is a melody walking the scale while a handful of these triads take turns underneath.

C alone C E G

Each of the three notes has a job. The symbol on a chord chart is just those jobs, written short.

• Root (1). The name of the chord. C E G is a C chord because C is note 1 of the recipe. Your hand may play E or G underneath later; the recipe is still C.
• Third (3). The color. This single note decides major or minor. Change E to E♭ and the chord turns from bright to dark. Everything else can stay.
• Fifth (5). The support. G makes the chord feel settled. It stays put in ordinary major and minor chords, and moves only when the chord is meant to sound tense.

A melody often picks its notes from whatever chord is underneath it. When the chord is C, the strong notes to land on are C, E, and G. When the chord changes to F, the strong notes become F, A, and C. That is the whole partnership of melody and harmony: the chord holds up the floor, and the tune walks on it.

The last page's ladder is the ruler. Every key, white or black, is one half step:

C · C♯ · D · D♯ · E · F · F♯ · G · G♯ · A · A♯ · B · (C)

From C, count:

• 4 half steps lands on E (C → C♯ → D → D♯ → E). That distance is a major third.
• 3 half steps lands on E♭. That is a minor third — one key lower than the major third.
• 7 half steps lands on G. That is a perfect fifth. Major chords and minor chords both use it.
• 6 half steps lands on G♭. The fifth has shrunk. The chord will sound tense.
• 8 half steps lands on G♯. The fifth has grown. The chord will sound as if it is still climbing.

A triad is two thirds stacked. The size of each third is the whole recipe:

Quality	Thirds	On C
Major	4, then 3	C E G	C
Minor	3, then 4	C E♭ G	Cm
Diminished	3, then 3	C E♭ G♭	C°
Augmented	4, then 4	C E G♯	C+

Minor is major with the 3rd lowered one half step. The root and the fifth do not move. Diminished lowers the 3rd and the 5th, so both thirds are small and the chord has no settled fifth. Augmented keeps the major 3rd and raises the 5th. Songs live mostly on major and minor. Diminished shows up once in every major key, on degree 7. Augmented is rarer; it is here so the four possible triads are a closed set.

The symbol spells the recipe. C means major. Cm or Cmin means minor. C° or Cdim means diminished. C+ or Caug means augmented. The letter is always the root.

From C, skip D and take E. Skip F and take G. That skip is a third, and it is the same thing as "play 1, 3, and 5." Keep skipping and the chord grows a storey at a time:

C   E   G   B   D   F   A

Three notes is a triad, the chord songs are made of. Four notes, up through B, is a seventh chord. Five notes reaches a ninth. The long catalog of chord types is this one stack, with a note here or there raised or lowered. Learn the three-note chord until you can build it on any white key. The taller stacks use the same rule.

There is a family of chords that leave the 3rd out, so they refuse to be major or minor. C F G is Csus4: F, the 4th, stands where E stood. C D G is Csus2. C G, root and fifth alone, is a power chord. They still come from the scale. They just postpone the color. Csus4 C G

Build a triad on every degree of C major, and use only notes that are in the scale. Start on the degree, skip one scale note, skip one again. You do not get to pick the quality. The scale picks it, because the 3rd and the 5th have to be scale notes.

Degree	Notes	3rd · 5th in half steps	Chord
1   C	C E G	4 · 7	C	Hear
2   D	D F A	3 · 7	Dm	Hear
3   E	E G B	3 · 7	Em	Hear
4   F	F A C	4 · 7	F	Hear
5   G	G B D	4 · 7	G	Hear
6   A	A C E	3 · 7	Am	Hear
7   B	B D F	3 · 6	B°	Hear

Read the middle column as a test you can do on the keyboard. 4 · 7 is major. 3 · 7 is minor. 3 · 6 is diminished: the fifth itself is one half step small, which is why degree 7 feels unstable.

Walk degree 2, because this is the row that surprises people. A major chord on D would be D F♯ A — four half steps from D up to F♯. C major has F, not F♯. F is only three half steps above D, so the chord is D F A, minor. The same test, on every row, is the whole table. Nothing was chosen for flavor.

So in a major key the seven chords always come out major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished. Degrees 1, 4, and 5 are major. Degrees 2, 3, and 6 are minor. Degree 7 is diminished. Memorize that sentence. It is true in every major key, and it is the harmony half of music.

A list of seven chords is a palette. A key is that palette with jobs: one chord is home, and the others know how to leave and how to come back. The portable names are Roman numerals. A capital numeral is major. A small numeral is minor. The little circle marks diminished.

	In C	Job
I	C	Home. Songs start here and end here. Called the tonic.
IV	F	A step away. C is in both C and F, so the move is gentle. Called the subdominant.
V	G	The pull home. Its 3rd is B, one half step under C. That B is scale degree 7, the leading tone, and it wants to rise. Called the dominant.
vi	Am	A darker home. The relative minor. C and E are already inside the C chord. The next page builds a scale on this A.
ii	Dm	The path into V. D belongs to both Dm and G, so Dm walks naturally into G.
iii	Em	Home, softened. E and G are already inside C, so Em can stand in for I when a phrase should not land hard.
vii°	B°	Tense, and usually skipped on a beginner's chart. It holds the leading tone B, so it also pulls toward C.

I, IV, and V are the primary chords. Folk songs, hymns, and blues can run a long time on those three. ii, iii, and vi are still in the key; they add color. vi is the one you will meet constantly, because a huge share of pop songs sit on I, V, vi, and IV.

When two chords share a note, keep that finger down and move the others. That shared note is why some changes feel smooth and some feel like a jump:

Move	In C	Note that stays
I → IV	C → F	C
I → V	C → G	G, while B leans up toward C
I → vi	C → Am	C and E
I → iii	C → Em	E and G
ii → V	Dm → G	D
V → I	G → C	G stays; B rises to C

C and Dm share nothing, so I → ii feels like a bigger step than I → vi. You do not have to plan this while you play. Once you can see the shared note, your hand stops jumping and the change starts to make sense.

G major, from the last page, is G A B C D E F♯ G. One sharp. Stack a triad on every degree and the qualities come out in the same order. Only the letter names change:

I	ii	iii	IV	V	vi	vii°
G	Am	Bm	C	D	Em	F♯°

Look at where the sharp went. F♯ is the 3rd of the V chord, D F♯ A. The black key you learned so that G major would be a major scale is the same black key that makes the dominant chord pull home to G. In C, that leading tone was B, a white key, so it hid in the scale. The machinery is identical. G D

This is why charts are written in numerals. I–V–vi–IV in C is C–G–Am–F. In G it is G–D–Em–C. Learn the jobs once. Swap the letters when the key changes. Every key's seven chords are written out on the cheat-sheet.

A progression is a short loop of these jobs. Most songs you can hum are one of a handful of loops, repeated, with a melody on top. Hear them as one chord at a time, about the speed of a slow bar:

Loop	In C	What you are hearing
I–V–vi–IV	C G Am F	Home, the pull, the darker home, a step away. The pop loop.	Hear
I–IV–V–I	C F G C	The three primary chords. Leave home and come back.	Hear
ii–V–I	Dm G C	The turnaround. ii hands the music to V, and V resolves home.	Hear
I–vi–IV–V	C Am F G	Home, softened by vi, then IV–V to return. The 1950s loop.	Hear

A 12-bar blues is those primary chords on a fixed clock: I for four bars, IV for two, I for two, then V–IV–I–I. In C that is a long stretch of C, a visit to F, and a G that brings it home. A whole style of music is I, IV, and V with time.

One chord per beat is too fast to hear the job. Set the metronome in the bar at the bottom near 60 and play one chord per bar. Say the numeral out loud as you play it. Play along puts these loops under real tunes, later in the book, once the changes feel ordinary.

C E G, E G C, and G C E are all C major. The notes did not change. The lowest note did. That reordering is an inversion. The slash in a chord symbol names the bass note: C/E means a C chord with E in the bass.

Shape	Low to high	Bass	Symbol
Root position	C E G	C	C	Hear
First inversion	E G C	E	C/E	Hear
Second inversion	G C E	G	C/G	Hear

On the piano the left hand usually plays the bass note, and the right hand plays a close shape of the chord. For a white-key triad in root position: right hand, thumb (1) on C, 3 on E, 5 on G, with 2 and 4 lifted. Left hand, an octave lower: 5 on C, 3 on E, 1 on G. While the shapes are new, let the left hand play only the root and keep the triad in the right hand. That is enough for every loop on this page.

Inversions exist so the bass can walk instead of jump. C–G–Am–F in root position throws the left hand around. The same four chords with a bass that steps — C, then B under the G chord, then A, then F — is the same harmony with a line through it. When a chart writes G/B, it is asking for that: a G chord, and B in the bass, which is the leading tone on its way to C.

Stack one more third on the triad and the chord has four notes. The new note is some kind of 7th. This is the layer where phrases start to lean forward.

Chord	Notes	What the 7th is
Cmaj7	C E G B	The scale's own 7th. Warm, and happy to sit on I.	Hear
G7	G B D F	V, plus F. F is a whole step above E, so this 7th is lowered. B wants to rise to C, and F wants to fall to E.	Hear
Am7	A C E G	vi, plus its 7th. Mellow. Still a darker home.	Hear
Dm7	D F A C	ii, plus its 7th. Still the chord that walks into G7.	Hear

Hear the engine by itself. G7 then C: F falls to E, B rises to C, and the phrase arrives. G7 → C

Sixths, ninths, and chords with a note deliberately altered are the same stack with one more edit. Take one apart the way you took these apart: find the root, stack the thirds, and see which degree moved. The full set is in Chords & harmony, linked at the end of this page.

1. Play C alone, then C E G. Name them: root, third, fifth.
2. Play the seven chords of C in order. Say the numeral — I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii° — as each one sounds.
3. Loop C–G–Am–F for two minutes, one chord per bar, metronome near 60. Right hand first. Then add the root in the left hand.
4. Play the same jobs in G: G–D–Em–C. The letters moved. The pull from V back to I did not.

The next page takes the lowered 3rd — the one note that turned C into Cm — and stretches it into the minor scale.

Everything past the triads and sevenths on this page — suspensions, sixths, ninths, altered notes — is gathered under Chords & harmony in the book index. Chord types is one recipe per row: pick a root and hear it. The seven chords of every key sit on the cheat-sheet next to it, and every spelling in all twelve keys is in the dictionary.

Open Chord types