| 4. | HOW CHORDS FIT IN THEIR KEYS | |||||||||||||||||||
| CREATING CHORDS FROM A KEY | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Notes In All Major Keys Important Chords All Major Keys Chord Formulas Maj, Min, Dim, Aug Chords 7th Chords: Dominant, Maj, Min 5th, Sus 2nd, Sus 4th Chords Chord Progressions More Chord Progressions |
Look at Table 7. It contains the notes of the key of C. The notes E and F, along with B and C, are separated by only a half step (a flat or a sharp, or one fret on the guitar). Each chord is denoted by a Roman numeral as shown in the row below the note designations. |
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| Table 7. Notes And Chords In The Key of C. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Go through the key and construct chords as follows. For each key, pick the first note of the key as the first note of the chord name. Then go to the third note from that, then the fifth. Use these as the other notes in the chord.
So for each key, you should have three notes - the first (I), the third (iii), and the fifth (V). As we saw in the third tutorial, this defines a major chord. The notes in the key of C are C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. So the first, the third, and the fifth for this key are C - E - G, which defines the C Major chord (usually just called the C chord). We also know from the third tutorial, that a minor chord is defined by 1 - b3 - 5. For the key of C these three notes are C - Eb - G. While C and G appear in that key, Eb does not. What happens if we start with the next note in the key? In other words, rather than use the first, the third, and the fifth notes, use the second, the fourth, and the sixth. For the key of C, this means using D, F, and A. Is this also a major chord? Now we need to be careful. In the key of C, the difference in pitch between the first and the third is two steps. To go from C to E, we have to go from C, to C#, to D, to D#, to E. Since the pitch difference between each of these (from C to C# or C# to D) is half a step, the total difference is two steps. (Steps and half steps were explained in Tutorial 1.) Is the difference in pitch between D and F also two steps? No, it's not. To go from D to F, we go D to D# to E to F - that's only three half-steps. How about from D to A? Is that the same as the difference between C and G? To go from C to G, we go C - C# - D - D# - E - F - F# - G, which is a total of seven half steps. If we go go from D to A, we go D - D# - E - F - F# - G - G# - A, which is also seven half steps. A major chord uses three notes, with four half steps between the first and the second note, and seven half steps between the first and the third. The chord we get using D, F, and A has seven half steps between the first and the third, but only three half steps between the first and the second. Wait a minute. We learned in the third tutorial that a minor chord uses notes 1 - b3 - 5, and that's what we have. In the key of C, this gives us C - Eb - G, the chord of C minor. In the key of D, this gives us D - F - A, which is the chord of D minor. Let's summarize. The notes in the key of C are C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. We can form chords in this key, using three notes, skipping every other note, starting with the first note, the second, and so on. Starting with the first note (C), and skipping every other note, we use C - E - G, which is C Major. Starting with the second note, and skipping every other note, gives D - F - A, the chord of D minor. Starting with the third note, and skipping every other note, we get E - G - B, the chord of E minor. We can check this by looking in Table 4. Starting with the fourth note, we get F - A - C, the chord of F Major (or just F). And if we use the three notes starting with the fifth, we get G - B - D, the chord of G Major (or just G). And using the three notes starting with the sixth, we get A - C - E, the chord of A minor. Using the three notes starting with the seventh, we get B - D - F, the chord of B diminished (written Bdim or B0). |
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So now we see the meaning of the Roman numerals in Table 1 and in Table 7. The upper case Roman numerals indicate major chords; the lower case Roman numerals indicate minor chords (except in the case of Bdim/B0, when it indicates a diminished chord). And what we did above, with the key of C, we can do with any key. If we look at the key of D (notes D, E, F#, G, A, B, and C#), we can use the first, third, and fifth notes (D - F# - A) to form the chord of D Major (or D) – see Table 4). If we use notes 2, 4, and 6, we get E - G - B, which defines the chord Em. For the key of C, this process gave us the chords C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, and B0. In the key of D, this gives us the chords D, Em, Gbm, G, A, Bm, and Db0. We can repeat this process for all the keys (and notes) listed in Table 2. Then using the chord definitions from Table 3 or Table 4, we can construct Table 8. There is one more thing I can do. (Probably a lot more I can do, but only one more thing I will do.) In Table 8, I have added one more column. In the key of C, the chord G7 fits with the other chords because all of its notes (G - B - D - F) are in the key. Since G is the fifth note in the key, G7 is a V7 chord. There is a similar chord in every other key, and those chords are listed in the last column of Table 8. Okay, there's one more thing. In the same way that I constructed Table 2A from Table 2 in the second tutorial, I can order the keys according to the number of flats and sharps. That is how I constructed Table 8A. |
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