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The Major Chord

Mike Edwin 69 lessons

Building Major Chords is quite simple, and with this video I hope to show just that.

We begin by picking the chord we want to build. In this case it will be a CMaj chord.

Play the Major scale which begins on the same root note as the Chord your after. This would be the C Major scale for a CMaj chord. Scale
C D E F G A B C

Count from the root note C and skip every second note.
C D E F G A B C

The bold notes are the notes that will become our Cmaj Triad. C E G A triad is a chord which contains 3 notes. Hence the name Triad. There was some talk about Intervals in this video aswell.

An interval is a musical term used to describe the distance between two notes.
In a Major scale, the distance from the Root note to the 3rd degree of the scale is a 'Major 3rd'. So in the case of this chord. From C to E is an interval of a Major 3rd.

This applies to all Major scales. For example; In the key of G major.
G A B C D E F# G.
From G to B is an interval of a Major 3rd.

Moving on.

From the Root of a Major scale to the 5th scale degree is a Perfect 5th. The same applies to all major scales. So from C to G, in this case, would be a Perfect 5th. Also known as 'P5'

Having said all that. Major Triads are built by stacking, from the root note, Major 3rd and Perfect 5th intervals.

From here we can add a Major 7th to create a CMaj7 chord. This simply requires that we add the 7th degree of the major scale to the chord. C D E F G A B C

From C to B is an interval of a Major 7th.

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