1.3 Chord Creation

So we just learned how various scales are made. Now let’s jump into how chords are made!

For this, we will be focusing on the major scale and building other chords off that. You could use the minor scale to create minor chords, but this would only get confusing and complicated when you get into augmented chords, extended chords and so on. The common way to make chords is to start with the major chord, and then make little tweaks or add more notes to make every other chord imaginable.

Like the last lesson, this one is based off my article on how chords are made, but I’m going to summarize for this lesson. Feel free to check out that article for more examples.

Step 1: Give Each Note Of The Scale A Letter

So in the last lesson, we learned the pattern for the major scale, and that is:

The Major Scale pattern is: W – W – H – W – W – W – H
The C Major Scale: C – D – E – F – G – A – B – C 

Now, when it comes to chords, each chord is built off a note/letter in that scale.
This is where roman numerals start to come in.

C (1/I) – D (2/II) – E (3/III) – F (4/IV) – G (5/V) – A (6/VI) – B (7/VII) – C (1/I)

The great thing about roman numerals is that, the letters can be uppercase or lowercase. In music, Major Chords would be uppercase and Minor Chords will be lowercase, thus preventing confusion when writing out a progression.

For the Major Key, the 1, 4 and 5 chords are Major Chords, while 2, 3 and 6 are Minor Chords. The 7th is diminished.

Major Key Roman Numerals: I – ii – iii – IV – V – vi – vii° – I

So if you are writing a song in C Major, you will have these chords:

C (1/I) – D (2/ii) – E (3/iii) – F (4/IV) – G (5/V) – A (6/vi) – B (7/vii°) – C (1/I)
C Major – D Minor – E Minor – F Major – G Major – A Minor – B Diminished – C Major

You can listen to these chords in sequence here:

I recommend just memorizing which chords get what so you can start creating and playing progressions right away. We will go into the logic of why this happens to be the case below.

Step 2: Create Major Chords (1-3-5)

So now that we know how scales are made, we can get into why some notes get Major Chords and why others get Minor Chords. It may seem arbitrary if you take it at face value, but if you take your time to understand this now, you’ll realize it actually makes perfect sense!

In general, chords require at least 3 notes. It can have more notes, and that’s when we get into the ‘extended chord’ category, but in general, you only need 3.

The 1st note is the root note. It’s the lowest note of the chord and where the chord gets its name from. If the lowest note is C, then the chord will be C something (major, minor, diminished, dominant etc). The full name will depend on the pattern of the following notes.

As a standard, all chords start with thirds. When it comes to music, counting ‘intervals’ between two notes can be a little weird, but know that 1st is always the very first note, the note you are starting on. The 2nd would be the next note, and the 3rd will be the note after.

When talking about ‘thirds’, you are technically only skipping 1 note (1 – 3 – 5 – 7). If counting in ‘fourths’, you would be skipping two notes (1 – 4 – 7). Don’t let this confuse you.

So if we are making a C Major Chord, we will look at the C Scale. We start on C (1), we will skip D (2), use E (3), skip F (4), and use G (5). Thus, the C major chord contains notes C, E and G. We are using the 1st, 3rd, and 5th degrees of that scale.

1 – 3 – 5 is a Major Chord.

If we wanted to figure out F major, we can’t just start on F and count in 3rds. I mean, it will work in this case (C – D – E – F – G – A – B – C = F – A – C is the F Major Chord), but it won’t work in other contexts, so you’ll only confuse yourself later if you always try to take shortcuts like this.

To figure out what notes make up the F Major Chord, you need to first create the F Major scale, and then count in thirds.

F – F♯/G♭ – G – G♯/A♭ – A – A♯/B♭ – B – C – C♯/D♭ – D – D♯/E♭ – E – F
F Major Scale: F – G – A – Bb – C – D – E – F

If we use the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of that scale, we get F – A – C, the F Major Chord.

As you can see, F, A and C are all notes naturally found in the C Major Scale. Thus, playing an F Major Chord while in the Key of C sounds perfect. It fits. There is no conflict. F Major Works!

I recommend trying this with G. Figure out what notes are in the G Major Scale, then create a G Major Chord using the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of that scale. You will see all the notes are also in the C Major Scale.

How about D? Why is D a Minor Chord? Well let’s look at the D Major Scale:

D – D♯/E♭ – E – F – F♯/G♭ – G – G♯/A♭ – A – A♯/B♭ – B – C – C♯/D♭ – D
D Major Scale: D – E – F♯ – G – A – B – C♯ – D

So, if we took the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the D Major Scale to make the D Major Chord, we will get D F♯ A…

Uh oh. There’s an F♯. The C Major Scale has no sharps or flats, so that F# does not belong. If you tried playing a D Major Chord while in the Key of C, it’s going to sound a little off because of that note. The D Major chord will not work in the Key of C Major because the F♯ does not belong in the Scale of C Major.

So what can you do to fix it? You make the chord Minor! Let’s learn how that is done.

Step 3: Create Minor Chords (1-3♭-5)

So, now, let’s learn how Minor Chords are made. It is a very simple ‘trick’ now that you know how major chords are made.

All you have to do is lower that 3rd note by 1 semitone/step. Just flatten it to the lower note on the left. The 1st and 5th notes stay the same, just the 3rd is flattened.

Alone, this would make the chord sound a bit sad, maybe a bit dark, because it’s no longer following the Major Scale pattern. Major Scales are pleasing and happy so Major Chords are pleasing and happy. It just sounds right and natural. But since you are deviating from it, it creates a different feeling.

Despite a Minor Chord sounding darker on it’s own, it works together in a chord progression to tell a story, whatever story you want that to be.

So let’s go back to the D Major Chord. We had D F♯ and A.
Let’s take that F♯, lower it down to an F, and bam! D – F – A is the D Minor Chord.
All those notes are naturally found in the C Major Scale, so it does not create conflict like the D Major Chord would.

So let’s also try this for E. Why is E also a Minor Chord?

E – F – F♯/G♭ – G – G♯/A♭ – A – A♯/B♭ – B – C – C♯/D♭ – D – D♯/E♭ – E
E Major scale: E – F♯ – G♯ – A – B – C♯ – D♯ – E

If we take the 1st, 3rd and 5th of that scale, we get E, G# and B….

Once again, the 3rd note, G♯, does not belong in the C Major Scale. The C Major Scale contains no sharps or flats. BUT if we flatten the G♯ to a G, it’s fine.

Thus, we will use the E Minor Chord (E – G – B) in the Key of C.

You can try this on your own with A, the 6th degree of the C Major scale. Write out the A Major Scale, pick out the 1st, 3rd, and 5th of that note, and then flatten the 3rd note. You will see, this also fits all the notes of the C Major Scale.

I have talked about how to make chords from their scale, but definitely watch the video below to understand it in regards to intervals. On my blog, I tend to refer to things on the guitar as that was what I was learning, but when it comes to music theory, being able to visualize these things on a piano is really useful. Keyboard was one of the first instruments I ever learned, and now that I’m producing, the ‘piano roll’ is a regular songwriting tool in music production software, thus, why I am using that here.

P.S. if you’re curious why we don’t sharpen (go up) a chord, it’s simple. For one, there is only a Half Step (H) between 3 and 4 in a Major Scale. If you went up, the chord is now 1 – 4 – 5, and that is actually a suspended 4th chord. A Major or Minor Chord needs a 3rd. It could be a Major 3rd, which is natural in the Major Scale, or you can flatten it to a Minor 3rd. If you go lower, you end up with 2, and 1 – 2 – 5 is a suspended 2nd chord. When you use a 2nd or a 4th, it creates tension that feels uneasy to stay on for a long time. The listener is anxious to see if the suspended chord will land on a Major or Minor Chord. We will get back to suspended chords in the next chapter of this course. 

Step 4: Create Diminished Chords

In my article, I put this as a bonus because the West doesn’t use or like diminished chords. They hate it so much that in the majority of music theory lessons I’ve watched didn’t cover the topic and said “eh, don’t worry about it!”. However, this chord is very, very common in Japanese music, so I will cover it in detail.

B is assigned the Diminished Chord for C Major. Let’s check out the B Major Scale.

B – C – C#/Db – D – D#/Eb – E – F – F#/Gb – G – G#/Ab – A – A#/Bb – B
B Major Chord: B – D# – F#

If we just flattened the 3rd note like we did for Minor Chords above, we would get B – D – F#….which is better, but there’s still a sharp in there. It’s still not going to sound right in the C Major Key. Thus, we need to flatten the 5th note too.

A Diminished Chord is just that. It has a flattened 3rd AND 5th note.

B Major: B – D♯ – F♯
B Minor: B – D – F♯ (Flattened 3rd)
B Diminished: B – D – F (Flattened 3rd and 5th)

And finally, we have a B chord that sounds natural and right in C Major.

Diminished is really special, because every note is one note away from the Key’s Major Chord. The B Diminished Chord (B – D – F) REAAAALLYY wants to resolve up to the C Major Chord (C – E – G).

Definitely check out the video below which shows you the chord in context and how songs tend to use the Diminished chord. Japan does use the diminished chord for the 7th note as usual, but they also regularly use it as a transition chord as you’ll see in the examples below. Anything you don’t understand in the video, we will be getting to in the next chapter as well!

Bonus: Create Augmented Chords

So here’s the true bonus of the basic chords: Augmented. If there’s one chord in this whole course you can skip, it would be this one, but it’s so easy to learn that you may as well take a couple minutes to understand it.
Diminished means to ‘make less’ and thus the 3rd and 5th are flattened. And on the other side, Augmented means to ‘make more’, so the 3rd stays the same but the 5th is raised. You literally just take a major chord and raise the 5th note by a half step. So if C major is C – E – G, then C augmented is C – E – G#.

We’re not going to talk much about it in this course as it is rare even in Japanese music, but it still pops up here and there and can be used to add a beautiful sound and tension to your music. Watch!

So let’s look at how we would transform the C major scale into each of the above chords:

C Major Scale: C – D – E – F – G – A – B – C
C Major Chord (1 – 3 – 5): C – E – G
C Minor Chord (1 – ♭3 – 5): C – E♭ – G
C Diminished Chord (1 – ♭3 – ♭5): C – E♭ – G♭
C Augmented Chord (1 – 3 – ♯5): C – E – G#

And let’s look at how we would transform the E major scale into each of the above chords:

E Major Scale: E – F♯ – G♯ – A – B – C♯ – D♯ – E
E Major Chord (1 – 3 – 5): E – G♯  – B
E Minor Chord (1 – ♭3 – 5): E – G – B
E Diminished Chord (1 – ♭3 – ♭5): E – G – B♭
E Augmented Chord (1 – 3 – ♯5): E – G♯ – B♯ (aka C)