Building Chords; Easy Music Theory Video Lecture - The Ultimate Guitar

one question that I get asked a lot is
how I stay so fit and handsome into my
late 20s most of the other questions I
get are about guitar chords now when you
first start out in your first playing
guitar chords are just kind of hand
shapes that you learn to move around and
basically you're just memorizing them
now one of the best ways to really
advance at guitar and something that's
gonna be great for your playing no
matter how long you've been playing is
having a fundamental understanding of
how these shapes work now it's also a
lot of confusion because the naming
system can be completely confusing if
you don't understand it from a
fundamental level like what's the
difference between major chords and
minor chords and how they interact with
each other etc etc so we're gonna do is
actually put the guitar down grab a
piece of paper and a pen and talk about
that the fundamentals of how chords are
made okay now I know a lot of you are
probably like man this is stupid I just
want to play well get over yourself for
like one minute and pay attention
because this is super important and it's
gonna make everything you do from here
on out so much easier to understand once
you just kind of get these basic
concepts down so we're gonna start by
writing out the notes in the key of C
major now if you don't know how to come
about these notes we can talk about that
later but right now we're just gonna
assume that you know the notes in C
major are c d e f G a and B okay so
that's it that's all of C major just
written out for you now the rules that
apply to this apply to any key we're
just using C because it's not really
messy if there aren't any sharps or
flats all hotel okay so the first thing
we're gonna do is we're gonna assign
each one of these letters a number so C
is gonna be one because it's what's
called the root note of E scale D is two
he's three F is for G is five a six B
seven so on and so forth alright so now
we want to figure out how these seven
notes combine to make different chords
so let's start with
most important one in the scale which is
gonna be C major now it's pretty simple
any major chord is gonna be what's
called a triad now the definition of a
triad is just a chord with three
different notes there's a very precise
formula that goes along with this so a C
major triad you just take the first note
the third note and the fifth note and
combine them now these three notes
together C E and G will make a C major
chord now there are a lot of different
ways that we can combine these all these
different ways are gonna be called
different voicings and some voicings
you'll probably find more familiar with
another but this is just a bit now if
you can't notice when you go one three
five like that or just skipping a note
every time now this is actually a really
important concept because it will tell
you all the other chords in this key now
the difference between major and minor
other than you know minor chords sound
kind of sad major chords sound a little
more happier and uplifting is that in
any key and a major key the first fourth
and fifth notes are going to become
major chords and the second third and
six notes are going to become minor
chords now what that means is any of
these seven notes just single pitches
all by themselves have the potential to
become a triad chord now that we haven't
talked about is the seventh one B this
is going to be a diminished triad ax
which doesn't really sound super
pleasing to the ear but it definitely
has this place in music and like rock
and pop you don't hear it too much but
it's deafening worth talking about so
the way you find out which chords go
with each other
like I said the one four and five are
all gonna become major chords two three
and six are like a minor you just do the
same thing you did with the SIA you want
one skip two note three skip to note
five so if we want to find out what d's
chord in the key of C is we already know
that since it's the second one it's
gonna be a minor chord well a D minor is
gonna be
skip 1f skip wanna hey ease cord was
gonna be e skip 1g skip 1 be so eg and B
are gonna make an e minor f4 is a major
chord F a all the way back to the
beginning
C facu s F major G major also sounds
good with this Jeeves if 1 B skip 1 d a6
is minor a c e b this is B diminished so
this card is gonna be B D and F now
there's a lot of different types of
chords and once you kind of see this as
your framework for building them all the
names of the chords are gonna make sense
like for a major 7 all you do is just
add the 7th note from there so I will
probably do another video discussing
that but basically that's it now you've
got a collection of seven chords all of
which are gonna sound quote-unquote good
together
and you can make a progression just by
randomly choosing which ones work
together like you don't think a C major
F major G major progression that's gonna
be really happy and uplifting you could
go a minor D minor an E minor and that's
gonna sound great too but basically that
is the fundamental element of building
chords