Easy Guitar Lesson on Music Theory – How are Chords Built

I teach guitar lessons in Chicago, and as students progress in their guitar lessons, I always make the fundamentals of music theory a part of what they learn. I only teach the theory topics that are practical in terms of actually playing music. One topic I always teach at guitar lessons that’s very practical to any guitar students’ guitar playing is the construction of chords. To have a real understanding of how music works, it’s essential to understand what the notes are that make up chords and where they come from. It’s not as hard as it may seem to understand, and this article can tell you everything you need to know!

The Major Scale

In order to understand how chords are constructed, it’s necessary to know how to play the major scale on the guitar. If you’re unfamiliar with it, here is a diagram of the G major scale from my guitar blog. This is the most common fingering for a major scale on the guitar and is the one that I always teach to my students first at guitar lessons.

Notice the numbers above each note. Each note in the major scale is given a note and these are used when referring to the major scale in music theory. The numbers go from 1 to 7 because there are seven different notes in a major scale. The reason there are more than seven notes in the diagram is that in this fingering, which is a very common fingering for playing the major scale on guitar, you’re actually playing the scale twice, in a low octave, and then in a higher octave. While I wrote this scale out starting on G, to play different major scales, you simply start the same fingering on a different note. For example, if you wanted to play an A major scale, you would start the scale on the note A (6th string, 5th fret), rather than on the note G.

Here’s How Major Chords are Built

Once you’re familiar with the major scale, it’s not too difficult to understand how a major chord is constructed. The notes of any major chord come from the major scale starting on the same note. For example, the notes of a G major chord can be thought of as coming from a G major scale. Any major chord has three different notes. These notes are the 1st note, the 3rd note, and the 5th note (1-3-5) of the major scale starting on the same note as that chord. So, when you are playing a G major chord, you are playing the 1st note, 3rd note, and 5th note of a G major scale. It might be confusing that in the most common fingerings for the G chord, the open G chord and the barre chord, you are playing all six strings. While you are strumming six strings, some of the notes are doubled and you are actually only playing 3 different notes, 1, 3, and 5.

…And Now Minor Chords

Minor chords are also made up of the 1st, 3rd, and 5th note of the major scale that starts on the same note of the chord. But, there is one difference that makes the two chords sound very different. In the minor chord, the 3rd note is flatted. To flat means to lower a note one fret. So, the only difference between the two chords is that 3rd in the minor chord is lowered one fret, while the 1st and the 5th notes are the same. You would write the notes of a minor chord like this: 1-b3-5. The symbol before the three is the flat symbol to indicate that that note is lowered one fret.

Try and See it on the Guitar!

At their guitar lessons, I always emphasize to students that when dealing with music theory ideas, it is extremely helpful to be able to actually see the things we’re talking about on the guitar. This helps to make the ideas into things that can actually be useful. Try playing major chords and minor chords and using their major scales to identify which notes in the chord are the 1st, the 3rd (whether it’s a normal 3 or a flat 3), and the 5th. If you can see that in different chords you play, you will have gained a great new skill!

I hope that you found this article helpful and please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.