The idea of this FAQ is to give you the information you need to be
able to work out and understand which notes make up a certain chord.
Using this FAQ you will be able to :
Work out the notes you need for *any* chord.
Work out what chord name should be given to a particular bunch of
notes.
A lot of people are put off from delving into a little chord theory
because there seems so much to learn, it often seems confusing, and
it's hard to give hard and fast rules. When someone posts a chord
shape and asks 'What is the name of this chord' there are usually at
least four different replies given. It is true that in a lot of cases
there is more than one way to look at things, and often a chord
could be given two names, but it's still surprisingly easy to get
to grips with the basics of chord names.
What do you need to know to be able to work out chord names for
yourself ?
Well it is hard to give 'Golden Rules' of harmony or music theory
which can be followed to the letter always giving the right answer.
However there are a small number of basic guidelines which you can
follow that should take 95% of the mystery away from music theory
as applied to chords.
First things first. To work out chord names the first and most
important skill is to be able to count. Hopefully everybody
mastered this skill some years ago, so we're off to a good
start.
The second most important skill is to know the major scale.
Most people will be pretty familiar with this too, but in any
case it is very easy to learn.
The scale is characterised by the distances between successive notes.
If we choose G as our starting point, it goes like this :
Note of the scale Distance up from root note Actual note
------------------------------------------------------------------
1 (root note) 0 G
2 2 semitones A
3 4 semitones B
4 5 semitones C
5 7 semitones D
6 9 semitones E
7 11 semitones F#
8 12 semitones G
If you would like to read the entire subject here is the email address
http://www.harmony-central.com/Guitar/chord-formation.txt
