03. Chord Construction

Now that we know the names of intervals, we can move on to the topic of chord construction.

It is through the names of intervals that we will determine the distances between notes in a chord and the names of the chord components.

Okay, what are these distances, and what are the components? Let's organize this somehow. Let's list the most important things with numbers so that we can discuss them later:

A chord consists of at least three notes played simultaneously.
These notes are usually spaced apart by the fundamental building block of a chord, which is a third (we will discuss various modifications of this concept later).
Each note in a chord is called a chord tone, and as mentioned earlier, we label them with interval names.

Referring to these points, let's see how it works with an example.

1. Let's take the simplest major triad from the C note (We'll discuss other types of chords in a moment).

Three notes of the C major chord are: C, E, G.

2. Next, let's talk about the tertial structure of the chord and how it relates to our example.

We have the root note -> C

If you refer back to the lessons on intervals, you'll see that the note E is 4 half steps away from C, which gives us a major third.

So, we have C with a major third, E.

Let's count how many semitones separate E and G in our chromatic scale. It's 3 semitones, which this time gives us a minor third.

So, we have a major third between the notes C and E, and a minor third between E and G.

We've created a sequence of thirds and formed the C major chord in this way.

This way, if we want to expand our chord, we'll be adding more thirds (we'll discuss this with examples in further sections).

3. Let's see how to name the three notes in our chord and identify them as chord components.

Since these are interval names, the basic note from which we will count is the root. The note E is our mentioned third, and we also know that G is a minor third from E. Therefore, the total distance from root C to G is 7 semitones, which gives us a perfect fifth.

Let's summarize everything and take a look again:

C major chord:

Successive thirds in the sequence are:

C, E = major third,

E, G = minor third

Chord components are:

C = root (1)

E = major third (3)

G = perfect fifth (5)

C(1) + major third -> E(3) + minor third -> G(5)

It looks great! 🤩 And with this information, we can discuss other types of triads! Let's keep going... 😎

02. Intervals - prev lesson

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