Jazz and folk music chords have names like "E sharp minor seventh" and "D diminished with an augmented fourth and a flat thirteenth." Traditional American dance music chords have names like "D major" or "A minor." Chords are almost always "major" and we just say "D." If you can't tell what kind of music the jam's playing, ask the guitar/piano/accordion player what chord he's playing. If you're coming in from some other genre and thinking about throwing in a seventh chord, wait until the fiddler plays a rag.
Major and minor chords have three notes. One down, two to go.
The top note of the chord is the fifth. The root is the first, so in an A chord, the fifth is an a, b, c, d, ... e. In an F chord, it's f, g, a, b, c , and so on. Scales usually have sharps and flats, but you don't have to worry about them when finding these except when the note you land on in your counting has a sharp or a flat. For example, in a D chord, the fifth is d, e, f, g, a, but in a D scale, the a note needs to be a#, so the top note of a D chord is an a-sharp.
This answers a question I used to ask: since a-sharp and b-flat are the same fret -- the same black note on the piano -- which should I call it? Use your alphabet skills. The do, re, mi of an F scale will be f, g, a, b, c, d, e, f. If your choices are f, g, a, b-flat, c, d, e, f or f, g, a, a-sharp, c, d, e, f , or f, g, a, b-flat, c, d, e, e-sharp, or anything else equivalent, pick door number one.
Violin players and music history buffs will tell you that b-flat and a-sharp are slightly different notes. Ignore them. They're poltroons.
It also helps you understand why fiddle tunes are easy on the fiddle (and mandolin, which is tuned the same). The tunes are full of G, D, and A chords. The first of each of these is an open string. The fifth is the string right next to it. Play those two open strings together as a double-stop, and you have a chord.
It also helps you understand why fiddle tunes are easy on the fiddle (and mandolin, which is tuned the same). The tunes are full of G, D, and A chords. The first of each of these is an open string. The fifth is the string right next to it. Play those two open strings together as a double-stop, and you have a chord.
Okay, that's the root and the fifth. One to go: the third. In an A chord, that's a, b, c .
This one has a small wrinkle to it. "I knew there'd be a catch," you're thinking. You're right. Major chords use the major third. Minor chords use the minor third, one fret down. For an A major that's a c#., for an A minor that a c natural. So: an A major chord -- root, third, and fifth -- is a, b, c#, d, e while an A minor chord is a, b, c, d, e .
There. That wasn't so bad, was it?
If you have an instrument with more than three strings, and you're playing four, five, or six-note chords, some are the same note in different octaves -- a low A and a high A. They rhyme.
What happens if you skip a note in the chord? If you skip the root or the fifth, the third still tells you whether it's major or minor. If you skip the third, it could be either -- the chord sounds dramatic, ambiguous, and a little hollow. The bottom three notes of a guitar's F chord are an example that can you can slide up and down the neck, without even learning to bar. Ron Sommers, who uses these to great effect, calls them "power chords." He should be doing K-Tel ads.
To summarize, just find the first, third, and fifth (do, mi, la). Play them at the same time and it's a chord. That's all you need to know.
If you separate the notes out and play them one at a time, it's called an arpeggio. If you do it on a bluegrass banjo, it's a roll. If you play flamenco guitar and you move the fingers of your right hand in a circle, strumming them over and over again, continuously, that's a rasgueo. There are more words in music theory than ideas.
