How Chords Work in Music

0:00 in music if you want to write good songs then you need to understand chords but it's more than just mechanically memorizing how to play the notes on an instrument you really need to understand why chords relate as they do how harmonies are strung together into pleasing chord progressions so here's a look at how it all works let's take the c major scale for example with notes c d e f g a b c or intervals 1 2 3 4 six seven eight you can build seven chords from this pattern by starting on each scale degree and playing every other note of the underlying scale in groups of three to get c major the major one chord made from notes c e and g

0:45 d minor the minor two made from notes d f and a e minor the minor three e g and b f major the major four f a and c g major the major five g b and d a minor the minor six a c and e and then b diminished to the diminished seven chord made from notes b d and f to play each chord you just move up through the underlying scale now that's how these chords are built by combining every other note of this pattern of the c major scale in our example but when you look closer you can see how this alternating pattern also reveals a really cool connection between all of the chords if i play a c major chord c e and g

1:30 again it's formed by hitting every other note of the underlying scale well if i continue this alternating pattern the next note is b and by dropping this c note here that leaves me with three notes e g and b which is the e minor chord or the minor three in the key of c and by continuing on if i play the next note in this alternating pattern i get d so e g b and d and if i drop this e note that leaves me with g b and d which is the g major chord or major five and if we keep going in the same way g b d f drop the g and that leaves us with b

2:18 d and f which is the b diminished quarter the diminished seven then b d f a play these three notes d f and a that's the d minor or the minor two chord d f a c drop the d and that leaves us with f a and c which is f major the major four f a c and e drop the f and that leaves a c and e which is the a minor chord or the minor six and then we play a c e and g and drop the a that leaves us with c e and g which means that we've cycled all the way back to g major or the major one chord again all of these harmonies are connected in this way and this alternating pattern of every other note

3:05 is really just a series of major third and minor third intervals which are the intervals used in chords but you can see how this pattern also links all of the chords together all of the chords in a key share special relationships with each other based on how they're formed and where they fall within this sequence and an even more concise way to look at this pattern is to simply wrap it into a loop like this since it eventually cycles through all of the notes where these intervals are major thirds and these intervals are minor thirds which is why we call this formation the circle of thirds all of the chords are still here but now they're arranged in relation to

3:50 one another based on how they're constructed the phrase in relation to one another is the point which you can see here where each chord forms a kind of daisy chain loop that progresses in a counterclockwise direction but when you move in the other direction in a clockwise motion some other important connections stand out specifically c major the major one chord is next to and shares notes with its relative minor chord a minor or the minor six f major the major iv chord is neighbors with its own relative minor chord d minor the minor two and continuing in a clockwise direction g major the major five is next to its relative minor chord e minor

4:36 the minor three the circle of thirds gives us this concise view of how the relative major and minor chords are connected in a key so clearly there's more to chords than just playing different notes together at the same time which i definitely did not know back in the day i used to think that songwriters just memorized a bunch of chords building up a kind of mental database and then randomly put chords together into progressions to make music i had no idea that there was more of a logic or method to how chords relate together which informs how they flow from one to the next in a progression i actually started out with something like this this is a chord dictionary for the guitar that lists all sorts of chords alphabetically or chromatically by name so all of the a flat chords are at the

5:23 front then you flip to all of the chords in the key of a then you flip to the chords in the key of b flat and then b c d flat d and so on it was a lot to take in but this organization also seemed to make sense because chords have letter names and the alphabet organizes all of the letters into a certain order so a dictionary of chords seemed like it was natural and even brilliant the only trouble was it's not natural or brilliant because while this categorization outlines the content of chords meaning what notes to include in each one it totally obscures the context of harmony or how and why the various chords actually relate to one another

6:09 that's missing in an alphabetical structure like this and in music when you write chord progressions context is everything it's like if you wanted to write a novel or even a short story you wouldn't first read the oxford dictionary from a to z and then expect to create a masterpiece all of those individual words in the dictionary are artificially categorized alphabetically they're out of context so it takes more understanding than just memorizing a bunch of words to be a good writer you have to know how certain words go together to form a coherent message and it's the same with music but unlike with the written word there's thankfully much more structure and logic to how chords are related since music is all about patterns so learning about the context of harmony is relatively easy the circle of thirds definitely helps in

6:54 understanding this context because it shows how the chords within a key are connected like these seven chords in the key of c major because all 12 keys in music are symmetrical meaning they all form the same patterns the chords and the relationships between them are consistent from one to the next in other words this same sequence of major thirds and minor thirds is identical whether you're in the key of c or d-flat or d or e-flat or e etc in each key the chords form the same predictable pattern of three major chords major one major four and major five three minor chords minor two minor three and minor six and a diminished chord diminished seven all formed from the same interval

7:39 connections it doesn't matter what key you're in in the video notes i've included a link to each of these diagrams in every key so as you're playing with different chords you can just refer to the diagram for a given key and you already have the ingredients laid out for your next sonic recipe but while the circle of thirds is handy for seeing the relationships between chords in a single key there's another diagram in music called the circle of fifths that shows how all of the chords in every key in all 12 keys relate to each other in one image and here's how it works you just arrange all of the major chords in music into a ring like this organized by intervals of a fifth c major is at the top and next to that is c's fifth g major and next to g's fifth is d major and

8:26 then d's fifth is a major and so on i have another video in the notes that explains the circle of fifths and how it's formed in more detail so each of these chords are major chords arranged by how they're harmonically related so already with just these 12 harmonies you can start to compose some simple chord progressions like the 12 bar blues for example which moves through chords that are adjacent in the circle of fifths to illustrate here's this progression in the key of c and then the pattern repeats and again

9:12 since all of the keys are symmetrical i can play the same progression anywhere in the circle of fifths and it will sound good because the same harmonic relationships are at play for example here's the 12 bar blues in the key of a flat which basically sounds the same [Music] so these are all of the major chords though of course each key also includes minor chords so to add those we just align each one with its relative major a minor is positioned above c major e minor is above g major b minor is above d major and so on all the way around the circle forming two

9:57 concentric rings with all of the major chords at the center and their relative minor chords wrapped around them and then to complete the set you just add the diminished chords in one more ring around the perimeter with each diminished chord aligned with its respective major one chord of a given key so for example b diminished the diminished seven chord in the key of c is above c major f sharp diminished the diminished seven chord in the key of g is above g major and so on again all around the circle of fifths each of these concentric rings the major chords at the center the minor chords in the middle and the diminished chords around the perimeter they're all arranged in a circle of fifths sequence as the color wheel of each ring shows and because of how they're all arranged the chords in each key form a tidy little group like

10:43 these chords in the key of c and these in the key of g etc these are all of the same chords as in the various circle of thirds diagrams only now they're consolidated into a single master arrangement that provides even more context showing how different keys share chords and in which of multiple keys a given chord is included but as you can see here there's definitely a structure to how chords relate there's a method to the madness as shakespeare would say and i've included a link in the notes to this circle of fifths diagram as well so you can play around with chords in context to see and hear how they relate and which ones naturally go together that way songwriting doesn't feel like a game

11:30 of hit and miss and you can compose cool chord progressions armed with the power of music theory so hopefully that was helpful if so please like and leave a comment if you haven't already i invite you to subscribe and ring the bell for notifications and i will see you in the next video you