How to construct minor / diminished chords?

Miss Informed

Hi guys,

Just wondering how to form chords, in general! I've been practicing the piano recently and would like to be able to form major and minor chords, as well as diminished chords, and anything else that's interesting.

I just want to check my understanding:

You form a major chord by playing the root, third, fifth and octave (always octave or not?) or the scale, eg C major: C, E, G, C.

You figure out the minor chord from that by flattening the third and fifth? I think I might be mixing something up there. And what about diminished 7ths?

Rigsby

Chords are made from what the Americans call.."stacking thirds". In other words, every other note in the major scale..i.e. 1,3,5,7 etc. My teacher taught me this way and I found that the penny dropped :

We'll take the C maj scale and stack thirds. So here goes.. We will write out the scale. Then work from the bottom up, starting each line with the third note from the line below :

BCDEFGA
GABCDEF
EFGABCD E is the third note of the line below
CDEFGAB = Maj scale

Now...if we read from the bottom up and from left to right we get all the diatonic chords of the C maj scale. So...the first line from left to right and from the bottom up gives us...CEGB which is Cmaj7 The bottom three lines gives us the Maj chord and when we add the top one we get the 7th.

If we do the same with the 7th line (from left to right ) we get BDFA which is B diminished. I'd recommend doing this exercise with all the scales.

Whether you use the octave or not is up to you.

stateofflux

Miss Informed wrote: »

Hi guys,

Just wondering how to form chords, in general! I've been practicing the piano recently and would like to be able to form major and minor chords, as well as diminished chords, and anything else that's interesting.

I just want to check my understanding:

You form a major chord by playing the root, third, fifth and octave (always octave or not?) or the scale, eg C major: C, E, G, C.

You figure out the minor chord from that by flattening the third and fifth? I think I might be mixing something up there. And what about diminished 7ths?

From C Major scale:

C Major Chord: Root + 3rd + 5th (C-E-G)
C Minor Chord: Root + b3rd + 5th (C-Eb-G)
C Diminished chord: Root + b3rd + b5th (C-Eb-Gb)
C Diminished 7th: Root + b3rd + b5th + bb7th (C-Eb-Gb-A)

Octave notes are optional as the note is already there once.

Rigsbys method of making chords fast is really good and worth learning

Miss Informed

Thanks guys, perfect explanations!

The Codemaster

Or alternatively, a Minor chord is also made up of the 1st (root) 3rd & 5th notes - when using the minor scale.

So major & minor chords are always made from the 1st, 3rd, & 5th notes.

Em is 1st, 3rd, & 5th notes from Em scale (E, G,
Dm is 1st, 3rd, & 5th notes from Dm scale (D, F, A)
A major is 1st, 3rd, & 5th notes from A major scale (A, C#, E)
G major is 1st, 3rd, & 5th notes from G major scale (G, B, D)