Chords of the Major Scale

Chords Created by the Major Scale

It’s essential knowledge for every musician to understand The Major Scale and the Chords the scale creates.  In this post, we’ll learn how scales create chords and how understanding this aids you in learning songs, figuring out lead parts, and writing your own music. 

A scale and its chords are used in the same way a Chef’s uses a recipe. It tells us what chords will work well over our melody.

There is less searching around when we already have the chords created from the scale. 

How are Chords created; Here, we’ll talk about Triads, which are Chords made of 3 notes.

Let’s use the C Major Scale as an example:  Once we have the scale written out and numbered, we can go about developing the chords.

C Major Scale as an example: Notes:     C   D    E    F   G    A    B 

Degree:   1    2    3    4    5     6    7

Chords (Triads); Created by starting with a note and simply jumping over every other note till we have three notes.

The First chord; Starting on C, we use the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the scale. 

This produces C-E-G, the notes of the C Major Triad.

Second chord; Starting on D, we use the 2nd, 4th & 6th notes of the scale and this 

produces the notes D - F - A or the D Minor chord.

Moving through this sequence, we ultimately end up with the following Chords from C Major;

1. C Major C-E-G

2. D Minor D-F-A                

3. E Minor E-G-B

4. F Major F-A-C

5. G Major G-B-D

6. A Minor A-C-E

7. B Dim. B-D-F

** Notice, Major chords are the 1st, 4th & 5th chords on the list. This is important as every musical scale will follow this pattern.

Chord degrees 

Each Major Scales produce 7 Different Chords in three types; Major, Minor and Diminished.

To describe Chords of a scale, we use Roman Numerals.

• Major chords - use upper case (I, VI, & V). 

• Minor chords - use lower case (ii, iii, & vi). 

• Diminished Chords - use lower case (vii)

C Major Scale Chords;

Major Chords Minor Chords Diminished Chords

I      C ii       Dm vii     B

IV    F iii      Em

V    G vi      Am

G Major Scale Chords; If you follow the same steps in G Major, we arrive at the following;

G     A     B     C     D      E     F#

I       ii     iii     IV     V      vi      vii

G Major Produces:

Major Chords Minor Chords Diminished Chords

I      G ii       Am vii     F#

IV    C iii      Bm

V     D vi      Em

Additional Examples of Major Scales and Chords.

Major Scale   I ii   iii     IV   V vi   vii

      C C        Dm   Em     F   G Am   B dim

      D D Em   F#m     G   A Bm   C# dim

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

      F F Gm   Am   Bb C Dm   E dim

      G G Am Bm     C   D Em   F# dim

I hope you find this introduction helpful. If not, please let me know and I will find a way to make it clearer for you.

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