- Hi.
In this video, I'm going to
try and answer a question
that I'm frequently asked.
And this comes from musicians
working in all sorts
of different areas of music
but it's something that is quite important
to be absolutely clear about.
What constitutes a major, minor,
augmented or diminished chord?
So, let's have a little think about this
because there is a recipe
that can be followed,
if you know about your intervals.
So, let's start with a note C,
just to keep all this
fairly straightforward.
And let's build a triad,
because once we've got a triad,
you can take your chord
from the notes of the triad
and as long as you use
the notes of the triad,
you can arrange the chord
in any way you like,
but the essential thing is to know
which notes are going
to belong to the triad
so that you've got the
right notes in the chord.
So, if I want a major chord
built on C, it sounds like this.
And it's worth just
engaging with that aurally
so you can hear that tonality,
hear that major tonality.
So, there is a C major chord.
Now, how do I know it's a C major chord
and not one of these other things?
Well, if you know about intervals,
in a major chord, you have a root,
that's the bottom note of the triad,
that's C in this case,
you have a major third
above it, which is E
and you have a perfect
fifth above it, which is G.
So, if you know about your
intervals, you can think
okay, C is my starting point,
put a major third above it, E,
put a perfect fifth
above the C, I get my G.
If that's not quite so clear,
you could think in semitones.
So, if I think of it in
semitones, from my C,
I go one, two, three, four
semitones up to the E.
And having gone there, I go
five, six, seven semitones
to take me to the G.
So, four plus seven semitones
will give me a major triad,
which I can use to make a major chord.
So, once I've got C, E, G,
I can organise C, E, G any way I like.
Those are all examples of a C major chord
and if you wanted to
build that major chord
on any other note, you'd
do exactly the same thing.
So, there's the recipe
for it, if you like.
Okay, let's think about what
constitutes a minor chord.
So, here was that C major chord again.
Now, I'm going to play C minor.
So, you can immediately
hear the difference.
C major.
C minor.
So, it's quite useful to be able
to hear the difference in that tonality.
So, what constitutes a minor triad?
Well, I've got C at the bottom
and I've got E-flat this time and G.
Now, what you need above
the root, the bottom note,
is a minor third and a perfect fifth.
So, in a major chord,
you had a major third
and a perfect fifth, but in a minor chord,
you have a minor third
and a perfect fifth.
So, C to E-flat is a minor third,
C to G is a perfect fifth,
just as it was before.
If you're not too happy
about these intervals
I'm talking about, think in semitones.
So, one, two, three semitones
takes you from C to E-flat
and you've still got seven from C up to G.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Okay, so that's how the minor triad works
and again, you can take those
three notes, C, E-flat, G,
organise them in any way that you want to.
As long as you're using the
notes of that minor triad.
Brilliant, next on our list, augmented.
So, let's see what happens in augmented.
It's a very dramatic chord
actually, so listen to this.
You can hear immediately that's got
more drama about it,
more tension, hasn't it?
It's sometimes used in film scores
to kind of create
slightly chilling effects.
Oh, someone's about to
be stabbed in the shower.
So, you can hear how that chord
has its own distinctive
quality so listen to this,
here's major.
Here's minor.
Here's augmented.
Very different sound, isn't it?
So, what do we have in an augmented triad?
Well, we have a major third from C to E
and we have an augmented fifth
from C up to the G-sharp.
So, C, E, G-sharp
is giving me an augmented triad on C
and again, you can organise
that in any way that you want to
to give us maximum drama
from that augmented chord.
What does it mean in terms of semitones?
Well, it's got the major third,
which is just the same as
it was for the major triad.
So, one, two, three, four semitones
but remember, we had
seven semitones to go up
the major triad to the perfect
fifth and the minor triad.
So, we're now going to have
to go eight, aren't we,
to get to the top of this one.
So, this one is one, two, three, four
so four plus five, six,
seven, eight, four plus eight.
So, there's the augmented
triad, C, E, G-sharp
and you can use either of these recipes
to construct that on any other note.
And finally, the diminished chord.
So, what's a diminished chord sound like?
That's a different kind of chord,
it's got its own kind of musical tension
or own sense of drama, hasn't it?
So, now I've got C, E-flat, G-flat.
So what's going on here?
Well, C to E-flat is a minor third
so that's the same as the
minor triad, isn't it?
But then, at the top, I've
got this diminished fifth
from C to G-flat, so what does that mean?
So, at the bottom, I've got
one, two, three semitones
and then to get to the
next note, four, five, six.
So, this is a three-semitone
plus a six-semitone
above the bottom note, or a minor third
and a diminished fifth and
again, you can spread this out
in whatever way you want
to, you can even use
different notes of the
triad as the bass note
and that's what called
putting it in inversion
but that's a topic for another day.
Today was just
to give you the recipes for
determining a major, minor,
augmented and diminished triad
so you can hear the sounds,
see how they're different
from each other and also,
if you have to read those
chords on a lead sheet
or if you're trying to
compose something, thinking
"I'd like to have these
different kinds of chords,"
you've now got a recipe
and all you've got to do
is apply that on whichever
note you want to build a triad
that you can then turn into a chord.
