Thanks to Ben Senterfit for having this useful little chart on his site.
As you can see, its a simple list of which chords are in every major scale. Find the key you’re using in the left hand column, then read along to find all the diatonic chords.
Time Signatures revisited
In previous posts I’ve urged you to try using different time signatures in your songwriting. Why?
For several reasons.
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My own personal bias. I like progressive rock and I’m a bit of a music nerd.
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Doing music-nerdy stuff really appeals to certain types of music fan.
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Its a great way of adding contrast, which is an absolute must if you’re to avoid boring your audience
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A lot of the time we don’t think about rhythm and meter as much as chords and melody. Changing time signature forces you to pay attention to these sometimes overlooked aspects of music.
What is a time signature, and how do you change it?
If you listen to Episode 7 of the songwright podcast you’ll hear a few ideas about how to change time signature, and this previous post talks about the basics of what they are.
In a nutshell, the time signature is the number of beats you have in a bar. You might have four beats in each bar, six, or seven. You could change every bar, change once in a song, or, like most songs, stick with one time signature all the time.
All of those options are creatively viable of course, I’d only urge you to think about it, rather than always composing in 4/4 like everybody else.
Basics – Major and Minor
What’s the difference between a major chord and a minor chord?
The distance between the first and third notes.
Remember that a chord is made up of the first, third and fifth notes of the scale? Eg. C is CEG, the first third and fifth notes of the C scale.
Well the distance, or interval, between C and E is a major third. What does that mean? It means that if you start on C then go four semitones up you find an E. Combine that with the G and you get C major.
What about C minor?
Easy. Make the gap between C and E smaller by changing the E to E flat. E flat is three semitones above C, rather than four. Everything else stays the same.
But why is it E flat, not D sharp?
Because Chords are made up of the first third and fifth notes. The first third and fifth notes of C minor are C, E flat, G. A D, whether it is sharp, natural or flat, would be the second note of a C scale.
Basics – Some questions about chords
What is a chord?
More than one note played at the same time.
How do you know which notes to play?
Working out chords is pretty easy, providing you’re aware of the intervals in the major scale.
Here’s the C Major scale
How do I use that to make a C chord?
Simple. You take the First, Third and Fifth notes of the scale, and play them at the same time.
C E and G? But when I play a C chord on my guitar I play more than three notes.
That’s just because you’re playing more than one of some of the notes. There might be two C’s one E and two G’s, and they might be in any order, but you’re still only playing those three different notes, so you’re playing a C chord.
What about C major?
That is C major. If you’re just playing a major chord it is conventional to not say the word ‘major’. Everybody will know what you mean.
What about other chords?
Same principle. Take one note in the scale, don’t take the second, but do take the third, don’t take the fourth, but do take the fifth, and you have a chord.
Like D F A? Or E G B?
Yup, that’s how it works.
An A to Z of songwriting – B is for Basics
I’ve been posting semi-regularly about music theory basics. While the basics aren’t the main focus of songwright, they are vital for anyone who is serious about the art of songwriting. At the very least you should know:
- The major and minor scales
- Basic chord construction
- What time signatures are and how they work
- What rhythm is and how it works
- What melody is and how it works
The most important basic skill is what I talked about in the last entry to this series, the ability to analyze. You should aim to be able to hear a song’s chord progressions and basic melodic shape just by listening.
How do you learn all this? Buy a book or three, take lessons, play other people’s songs. That last one is vital, do it lots.
Episode 8 – Chords and Numbers
This is the first episode that can be put into the ‘Basics’ category. It’s subject is:
- How to convert chord progressions into roman numerals
- How to use those numbers when changing key
[audio http://www.wellwrite.co.uk/songwright/songwrightep8.mp3] Download
The episode ends with a song by The Portraits
Basics – how time signatures work.
The most common time signature is 4/4. Most of us know that means four beats in a bar, but is that all it means? If it is, why are there two fours?
It means a little more.The first 4 tells you that there are four beats in a bar, and the second four tells you what kind of beat they are.
They’re crotchets, or if you’re American, quarter notes. That’s what generally gets referred to as a ‘one beat’ note.
So a 4/4 bar contains four of these:
If you change the first number you just get a different number of these crotchets, eg 5/4. Here’s a famous song with five crotchets in a bar. Count along and you’ll see what I mean
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDOgYw5-pNs]
What if we change the second number?
The second number represents the kind of note we’re counting, so 4/4 is four crotchets, whereas 4/8 would be four quavers (or, for the Americans, eighth notes). Quavers look like this, and they’re ‘worth’ half a crotchet:
We generally use these in time signatures when we’ve got a song that has lots of quicker notes. Often they’re arranged in groups of three. For example in this next song you can clearly hear four little groups of three being picked out by the guitar. Four times three is twelve, so this song is in 12/8. Get it?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYgLng4qbe4]
Basics – Some questions about intervals
What is a scale?
A series of notes. Think of it like notes going up a ladder, each one a little higher than the last.
What is an interval?
The distance in pitch between two notes. They might happen at the same time, they might happen one after the other, but if they’re a different pitch, there is an interval between them.
What is the major scale?
You already know this one. If you live in the Western world you’ve been listening to it all your life.
Here’s the C major scale:
What different kinds of interval are there?
C is the first note in the scale, D the second. So the interval from C to D is a major second. On a guitar that’s two frets.
E is the third note, so C to E is a major third (four frets)
F is the fourth note, so C to F is a perfect fourth.
Why ‘perfect’ and not ‘major’?
Because all these ‘major’ style intervals have a ‘minor’ version too, whereas there isn’t a minor fourth. In the C minor scale, you still get the perfect fourth C to F. There’s also the fifth and octave that are ‘perfect,’ and don’t change for the minor scale.
That should be enough to work out most of the rest, but let’s go through them any way:
C to G is our perfect fifth.
C to A is our major sixth.
C to B is our major seventh.
C to C is an octave.
That’s C major. You start on C, then have a second note a major second (two frets) up, a third note a major third up (four frets), a fourth note a major fourth up (five frets) etc etc.
What about D major?
The same thing, but you start on a D.
From D, up a major second is E. Up a major third is Fsharp etc.
That should clear up a few things about intervals. Still to come: intervals in the minor scale and how to make chords out of these intervals.
Basics – A few useful links
The purpose of Songwright isn’t to teach all the basics of what scales and chords are and how to fit them together. My aim with the podcast is to share ideas you can use in songwriting, not to provide an entire music education.
Anyway, why should I try when others have put so much effort into doing it already? Here are two useful links that cover some of the basics:
http://www.chordmaps.com – a useful site for learning about the chords in the major scale and some standard ways of fitting them together.
http://www.musictheory.net/ – A bit more comprehensive and advanced than chordmaps.com, this site has some great flash lessons with sound and everything.
One useful little feature from chordmaps.com is the picture below. If you can’t think which chord to use next, try following the arrows.
- Tom
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