Putting Together Chords for a Song

Putting together chords for a song is easy to do. You only need two scales and the desire to write a song. Your ear will help you with the rest.

Chromatic Scale

The first scale you will need to know is the chromatic scale. These are all of the notes on one string of the guitar. And the amazing thing is, once you know these 12 notes, you know all of the notes going up the neck of the guitar.

A quick bit of theory for you. First, this (#) is a sharp. It is generally the black keys on the piano. It raises a note up a half step which is also the next fret toward the body of the guitar. Piece of cake. We will only work with sharps for this blog.

The easiest way to remember it is that all the letters except B and E have sharps. Think, to BE or not to BE.

A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# A

If you start on the open 5^th string on the guitar, these are all of the notes up the fretboard to the double dot. Each letter is a half-step above the last one. So if you skip a letter, it is a whole step. That is it!

 

Major Scale

Now on to the major scale.  Remember that each note is a half-step, and by skipping a letter, you have a whole step. The layout of a major scale is:

Whole Step -Whole Step -Half Step -Whole Step -Whole Step -Whole Step -Half Step

Let’s build a major scale: A (whole step) B (whole step) C# (half step) D (whole step) E (whole step) F# (whole step) G# (half step) A

Chords of the Major Scale

Without taking you through a ton of theory, there is a shortcut to figuring out what chords are in the major scale. Each letter of the scale can also be a chord in that key. The chords will be major or minor and then a diminished which isn’t used much in most musical styles. The order of major and minor chords will always be like this in the major scale:

Major  Minor   Minor     Major  Major   Minor  Diminished

That is all you need. Now we just stick the letter of the major scale from above and place it before each word…

(A major) (B minor) (C# minor) (D major) (E major) (F# minor) (G# diminished)

Picking the chords

Now that you have all of that, you can let your ear decided what chords sound best together. These all work perfectly since they are in the same key. They share the same notes, so you can’t go wrong. Some chord changes sound better than others, but that is up to each of us.

For me, I like:

F# Minor to D Major to A Major to E Major

Mix up some chords and you will soon be sitting on a beach in the Cayman Islands drinking those little umbrella drinks. Have fun with this, hope to see you next time!

If you would like to learn more about how to write a song, please contact me. Thanks!