Notes and Chords on the Guitar

Having learned a method of limbering up the fingers, and of finding notes on the guitar, we’ll now take a look at how to make chords.

We saw that the C Major Scale of notes is useful because it has no sharps or flats. We’ll find that it’s particularly useful in other ways for the guitarist.

Let’s review the C Major Scale of Notes. C to C gives us an octave. We can number the notes. We’ll use the numbers to build chords:

Numeric Note	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Letter Note	C	D	E	F	G	A	B	C

A major chord is built stacking the 1st, 3rd, and 5th of a scale. We can build a chord that begins with each letter of the C Major Scale. When finished, we’ll have the C Major Harmonized Scale of chords:

Chord #	I	ii	iii	IV	V	vi	vii
Name	CM	dm	em	FM	GM	am	b-dim
Notes
5	G	A	B	C	D	E	F
3	E	F	G	A	B	C	D
1	C	D	E	F	G	A	B

The C Major chord (I, or CM in the table above) contains the notes C, E, and G, the 1st, 3rd, and 5th steps of the C Major scale of notes. The D minor chord (ii, or dm in the table above) contains the notes D, F, and A. Why is it a minor chord? A minor chord is built also using the 1st, 3rd, and 5th steps of a scale, but the 3rd is flatted, moved a half step down, which, on the guitar, is one fret down. I thought you said there were no flats or sharps. Here’s where things get a bit tricky.

Let’s take a look at the C Chromatic scale of notes. This is a scale that shows all the notes, including the flats and sharps. A sharp is indicated with a # sign, and flats are indicated with a b. Note that a C# and a Db is the same note, called a flat when moving down and a sharp when moving up):

1#2b

2#3b

4#5b

5#6b

6#7b

C#Db

D#Eb

F#Gb

G#Ab

A#Bb

The C Major scale of notes uses just 7 of the notes of the Chromatic scale above. As we have seen, those notes include: C D E F G A and B. What happened to the sharps and flats? We skipped over them. How do we know where to skip? That’s a given. To build a major scale, we skip over the 1#2b and the 2#3b, but notice there is no 3# or 4b, and there is no 7# or 8b. So we have notes that skip like this:

1 (skip) 2 (skip) 3 4 (skip) 5 (skip) 6 (skip) 7 8
C (skip) D (skip) E F (skip) G (skip) A (skip) B C

In other words, there is no 3# or 4b and there is no 7# or 8b. There is no E sharp or F flat and there is no B# or Cb in the C Major scale. If we want to flat the F, we get E. If we want to flat the C, we get B.

It might be useful now to take a look at the whole guitar fretboard (depending on your device, you should be able to slide right to see all the columns):

Open Strings	1st Fret	2nd Fret	3rd Fret	4th Fret	5th Fret	6th Fret	7th Fret	8th Fret	9th Fret	10th Fret	12th Fret	13th Fret
e	f		g		a		b	c		d	e	f
b	c		d		e	f		g		a	b	c
g		a		b	c		d		e	f	g
d		e	f		g		a		b	c	d
a		b	c		d		e	f		g	a
e	f		g		a		b	c		d	e	f

And here are the same notes using corresponding numbers:

Open Strings	1st Fret	2nd Fret	3rd Fret	4th Fret	5th Fret	6th Fret	7th Fret	8th Fret	9th Fret	10th Fret	12th Fret	13th Fret
3	4		5		6		7	1		2	3	4
7	1		2		3	4		5		6	7	1
5		6		7	1		2		3	4	5
2		3	4		5		6		7	1	2
6		7	1		2		3	4		5	6
3	4		5		6		7	1		2	3	4

Notice the 1 skips a fret to 2, but the 3 does not skip a fret to 4. Same for 7 to 1. The 1 corresponds to C, the 2 to D, etc.

If we start a major scale on D and use the skipping method of counting through the Chromatic scale, we get:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
1	2#3b	3	4	4#5b	5	5#6b	6	6#7b
D	D#Eb	E	F	F#Gb	G	G#Ab	A	A#Bb

If we build the D Major chord using the 1, 3, and 5 of the scale in the table above, we get a chord with the notes D (1), E (3), and F# (5). The D Major chord is built using the notes D, E, and F#. Taking the D Major chord of D, E, and F# but flatting the F#, we get D, E, F. The chord is now a 1, flat 3, 5 chord, or, a minor chord.

Now, back to the C Major Harmonized scale, which is built with the chords C Major, D Minor, E Minor, F Major, G Major, A Minor, and B Diminished. The chords are shown in the table as

I	ii	iii	IV	V	vi	vii
CM	dm	em	F	G	am	b-dim

It’s a bit tricky to say all of the chords contain no sharps or flats, since we saw that the D minor chord has a flatted third. But the flatted third of a D chord, as we’ve seen, gives us an F note, not an F#. You can work it out for the E minor and A minor, as well as the B diminished (which flats both the 3rd and the 5th notes of a scale). What you’ll find is that the chords as expressed in the C Major Harmonized scale appear to have no sharps or flats. They are built with “natural” notes, meaning not sharped or flatted notes.

Chord #	I	ii	iii	IV	V	vi	vii
Name	CM	dm	em	FM	GM	am	b-dim
Notes
5	G	A	B	C	D	E	F
3	E	F	G	A	B	C	D
1	C	D	E	F	G	A	B

Here are some suggestions for practical application:

Play chord progressions using chords from the C Major Harmonized scale. For example, play ii (dm), V (GM), I (CM), or play I (CM), vi (am), ii (dm), V (GM). Play I, IV, V.
Memorize all of the C notes on the guitar fretboard. Be able to jump from one to the other, in any order.
Play the C Major scale of notes on the fretboard beginning (ascending and descending) with each of the C notes you found in 2 above.
Play all of the chords in the C Major Harmonized scale in the first position of the fretboard (frets 1 thru 3). Play them in order, ascending and descending.
Don’t forget to warm up and cool down using the Guitar finger coordination exercises of Manuel Lopez Ramos.