Chord | Majors and Minors

Alright, I'm back with another entry for #educatorshowdown. I've covered what chords are and how to build a triad in my last entry. Today I'll be attempting to share a few chord type we listen to more often.

There's are a few ways on how to construct a chord. The conventional method would be to take a scale, or any modes, and build it with every other note. We'll look into that in the future, but for now we'll take a more mathematical route.

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Here's the layout of a piano. The technical term for the distance between two notes (C - C#/Db, C#/Db - D, D - D# - Eb, so on and so forth) is called semitones.

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As for guitar, it can be a bit tricky. I'll try to come back to that in my future posts.

How do we 'build' a major chord? It's actually quite easy. Pick any note, then add the next note that's 4 semitones up, and one more note that's 3 semitones further up. Let's say we pick A, the next note to add to our major chord would be C#/Db, and the last note would be E. Let's ignore what those '#' and 'b' are for the time being.

If you've given it a try, it should sound similar to this:

Next up we have minor chord. Same drill, choose any note, but this time we're flipping it over, 3 semitones up first, then 4 semitones. Say we pick F, the next note to add to our minor chord would be Ab/G#, and the last note would be C.

It will sound like this:

A quick recap:
Major is 4 semitones then 3 semitones.
Minor is 3 semitones then 4 semitones.

Most classical and modern music has been build on the foundation of major and minor chords. Once we get the hang of it and be able to notice the difference between them, it will help us express our music better.