Forte Clip ‘N’ Save Learn Your Degrees ■ CHORDS—GROUPS of NOTES PLAYED INTERVAL DEGREE C MAJ TOGETHER—Are Building Blocks of Music

Home , Major chord

Forte clip ‘n’ save Learn Your Degrees ■ CHORDS—GROUPS OF NOTES PLAYED INTERVAL DEGREE C MAJ TOGETHER—are building blocks of music. NAME SCALE DEGREE NAME SCALE They are also responsible for much of music’s emotional power. Depending on what notes Prime I Tonic C are combined and what their relationships are Major Second II Supertonic D to each other, chords can seem happy, or blue, Major Third III Mediant E or tense, or angry. Perfect Fourth IV Subdominant F Major chords, for instance, create a bright, uplifting feeling. To our ears, they sound “right.” Of Perfect Fifth V Dominant G course, if all music were played in major chords, Major Sixth VI Submediant A it would be boring, so other types of chords convey diverse moods. Subtonic or Leading Major Seventh VII Note B Music theory says a major chord of three notes—a triad—such as C major is consonant, HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF CHORDS CREATED FROM THE SCALE OF C MAJOR: or stable. Consonant chords start with a note called the tonic, or prime, and add notes that CHORD SCALE play well with that tonic. Dissonant chords, on TYPE INTERVALS DEGREES EXAMPLE NOTES the other hand, add notes that sound a little jarring. It’s said that they are unstable, or un- Major Prime, Major I, III, V C, E, G On a piano, try resolved—and sometimes they leave our ears Chord Third, Perfect Fifth (C maj or C) moving this wanting the music to return to notes that are (Major chord up half a consonant with the tonic. Triad) step at a time. There are a few ways of expressing what notes The chord after must follow a tonic to create either consonant C maj will be D or dissonant chords. Using scale degrees is one maj.  way; using intervals is another. Minor Prime, Flatted I, fl atted III C, E , G Minor chords C major is made up of the consonant notes Chord Third (or Minor (or iii), V (C min or Cm) can be made by C, E, and G. C is the tonic, E is the third note in (Minor Third), Perfect fl attening the the scale of C major, and G is the fi fth note in Triad) Fifth middle note of a this scale. (Log on to www.makingmusicmag. major triad. com/pdfs/clip06may.pdf for a reminder of how Diminished Prime, Flatted I, fl atted III C, E , G A fairly jarring to play major and minor chords.) Chord Third (or Minor (or iii), fl atted V (C dim)  chord, often Thus, one way to express the C major chord Third), Flatted (or v) used to create combination is to say it’s made up of scale Fifth (or Dimi- tension. degrees I, III, and V. Another way is to say it’s nished Fifth) the prime, plus a major third and a perfect fi fth. Our chart shows the names of scale degrees, Major Prime, Major I, III, V, VII C, E, G, B Don’t confuse intervals, and their relations. The same applies Seventh Third, Perfect (C maj7 or with a dominant to C maj’s relative minor key, A minor, except Chord Fifth, Major CM7) seventh chord, that the third scale degree is written iii for a Seventh which fl attens minor third, rather than a major third, in all the VII note minor keys. to B . The beauty of these two naming systems is that  Minor Prime, Flatted I, fl atted III C, E , G, B Minor sevenths you can apply them to any major or minor scale Seventh Third (or Minor (or iii), V, fl at- (C min7 or are popular to create many more chords—uplifting major Chord Third), Perfect ted VII (or vii) Cm7) chords in jazz chords or bluesy minor chords. For instance, the Fifth, Flatted music. chord of G major is also made up of the I, III, and Seventh (or Minor V scale degrees, but in the scale of G major—the Seventh) notes G, B, and D.