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Jazz Guitar Chord Theory

How are guitar chords built?  What makes a chord minor or major? If you're not sure about this then read on ... Some background theory makes a tremendous help when learning how to play guitar chords.

Let's get started with the C major scale :

C Major Scale C    D    E    F    G    A   B
1    2    3    4    5    6    7


Triads (a chord that is built with 3 notes) and seventh chords (chords that are built with 4 or more notes) are based on thirds.

There are 2 kinds of thirds (or 3rds) :

minor third interval of 3 half steps symbol : b3
major third interval of 4 half steps symbol : 3



Let's start by stacking 2 thirds on the 1 (first note) of the C major scale:

C    E    G
1    3   5

The result is a C major triad or C.  From C to E is a major third and from E to G a minor third : every major chord has this structure.
The thing to remember here is what we call the chord formula for major chords: 1 3 5
Another thing to remember : another name for the 1 of a chord is the root.

Let's do the same for the 2 of the C major scale :

D    F    A
1    b3   5

The result is a D minor triad or Dm.  From D to F is a minor third and from F to A is a major third : every minor chord has this structure.
Again the thing to remember is the chord formula for minor chords : 1 b3 5

Now we're going to skip a few notes and stack thirds on the 7 of the C major scale :

B    D    F
1    b3   b5

The result now is a B diminished triad or Bdim.  From B to D is a minor third and from D to F is also a minor third : every diminished triad chord has this structure.
So the chord formula of diminished chords is : 1 b3 b5

I'll summarize and complete the other notes of the C major scale :

Notes Formula Chord Name Symbol
1 C    E    G 1     3     5 C major C
2 D    F    A 1  b3      5 D minor Dm or D- or Dmin
3 E    G    B 1  b3     5 E minor Em or E- or Emin
4 F    A    C 1     3     5 F major F
5 G    B    D 1     3     5 G major G
6 A    C    E 1  b3     5 A minor Am or A- or Amin
7 B    D    F 1  b3  b5 B diminished Bdim or B°

There are 2 ways to construct chords

1. The first way starts from the major scale.

  1. Find the major scale of a given key. If you're not sure how to do this, go here: How To Construct a Major Scale. If you need to find for example the notes of a Gm chord then find the G major scale : G A B C D E F#
  2. Construct the major chord : 1 3 5. In our G major example that would be : G B D
  3. Apply the chord formula to the major chord. The chord formula for minor chords is 1 b3 5. This means the 3rd of the major chord has to be lowered half a step : G Bb D

2. The second way involves some memorization and will be explained in part 4, after we covered seventh chords and tensions.

Part 2 of jazz guitar chord theory : constructing seventh chords  



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