Harmony

Building chords is extremely easy. First, you must pick a scale. In this example, I’m going to use the A major scale.

At the end of the chapter, we will repeat this process using the a minor scale. Below, I will first derive the A major scale (ignore the roman numerals at the top for now, they will be explained later):

Building chords is extremely easy. First, you must pick a scale. In this example, I’m going to use the A major scale.

At the end of the chapter, we will repeat this process using the a minor scale. Below, I will first derive the A major scale:

I will choose what is known as the root note for our chord. In this case – and I’m sure it will come as a surprise – we will use the note A. After coloring in our root note in RED, we will color every other note in YELLOW until we have a total of three notes. This is the most basic form of a chord, also known as the triad.

There are a few ways to play a chord. One method is to play all three notes on one instrument, such as a guitar or a piano. These instruments can handle multiple notes at once.

Another strategy is to split the three notes between separate instruments. You can pick any. An entire orchestra could split these notes between its members. The arpeggio is another possibility, with one instrument playing the chord’s notes as if it were a melody. The possibilities are endless.

First, I will derive the a minor scale:

You will notice, it looks a lot like the first chord, except this time the C is not sharp.

When played simultaneously, these three notes will make an a minor chord. Notice that chords built off of their major scale are major, and chords built off of their minor scale are minor. That is not the only way to differentiate major chords from minor chords, however.

Chords have a certain amount of space inside of them. The way we distribute the space determines whether or not it is major or minor.

Notice the musical distance within these two chords. The middle note is placed differently between these two chords.

Notice that the musical distance is identical to the first example, and that the only change between these two examples is our root note.

Stretches of music where the chords change are referred to as chord progressions. Chord progressions are built using a single scale, or multiple scales. In this chapter, we will limit ourselves to a single scale; chord progressions involving multiple scales will be examined at the end of this book.

The first step when building a chord progression is to choose the scale that you plan to use. In this example I will stick to the A major scale. I diagrammed how to derive this scale earlier in the chapter, so if you are confused as to how to do this, refer to the diagram at the beginning of the chapter. Below, you’ll find a diagram listing the A major scale multiple times in the grid. This grid will be referred to as our harmonic map.

Below, I have selected four root notes, and colored them in red. These are the first, second, fourth and fifth scale degrees.

The remaining notes will be colored in in yellow. Notice how some of them have to overflow to the beginning, like the B in the last chord. If you imagine this scale repeating, you can see that the second scale degree is the next chord note above G# in that last chord.

Just like with the single chords, we can have one instrument play all of these chords one after another. Another way of playing this chord progression would be to give each note to different instruments.

As these instruments play one note after the next, it will become apparent that this chord progression is actually made up of three separate melodies. Below I have listed those melodies in the same format as our melodies from last chapter.

The first melody is comprised of the first note from the left that appears in each chord. The second melody uses the second note, and the third melody uses the third note.

Capitalized Roman numerals are major. The Roman numerals that are not capitalized are minor. Let’s examine the space within all four of these chords.

Every scale also includes a diminished chord, which will be discussed in a later chapter.

These patterns hold true in all major keys. Minor scales have their own pattern, as well. Of course, we can alter these patterns as artists, but in their natural form they follow these patterns.

In Major: I is always major, ii is always minor, iii is always minor, IV is always major, V is always major, vi is always minor, and vii° is always diminished.

In minor: i is always minor, ii° is always diminished, III is always major, iv is always minor, v is always minor, VI is always major, VII is always major.

In this example, we will be using the e minor scale. This example is going to move much quicker, only listing the steps.

I encourage the student to really explore these. The Roman numerals in the previous example are by no means your only options. Circle the root notes corresponding to the Roman numerals.