Julie Swihart

Chords for Major Keys

Let’s look at how to find the chords belonging to a particular key. Finding chords for major keys will enable you to play other people’s songs, and play your own impromptu music.

What are Chords for Major Keys?

“Keys” are groups of notes used to write songs. Songs written in the “key of C major” use the notes of the C major scale to write the song.

Learn how to build a major scale here.

If we build a chord off each note of a major scale, using the notes of that scale to build the chord, we can find all the chords in that key.

These are the chords used to play songs in that key.

How to Find Chords for Major Keys

Let’s find the chords for a C major scale. Here’s a C major scale:

C – D – E – F – G – A – B – C

Now we’ll build a “1 – 3 – 5” chord off each note of the scale, using the notes of the scale to build the chords.

Starting on C, we’ll build our first “1 – 3 – 5” chord, using the notes of the scale: C – E – G

Then we’ll start on D and build another “1 – 3 – 5” chord, using the notes of the scale: D – F – A

Then we’ll start on E and build another “1 – 3 – 5” chord, using the notes of the scale: E – G – B

We can continue this pattern, building a “1 – 3 – 5” chord off each note of the scale, and using only the notes of the scale to build the chords.

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Chords for C Major

Using this pattern, here are the chords for the key of C major:

C – E – G = C major chord

D – F – A = D minor chord

E – G – B = E minor chord

F – A – C = F major chord

G – B – D = G major chord

A – C – E = A minor chord

B – D – F = B diminished chord

And now we’re back to C!

How to Label Chords for Major Keys

You may be wondering how we can tell whether the chord we’ve built is major, minor or diminished. It all comes back to the intervals used to build the chord (learn about piano intervals here).

But to summarize, “1 – 3 – 5” chords are called “triads”, and triads come in different forms.

Triads can be:

Major
Minor
Augmented
Diminished

We can build a major triad (major chord) with the first, third and fifth notes of the matching major scale.

And we can build a minor traid (minor chord) by taking a major chord and lowering the middle note 1/2 step.

We can build an augmented triad (augmented chord) by taking a major chord and raising the upper-note 1/2 step.

And we can build a diminished triad (diminished chord) by taking a minor chord and lowering the upper-note 1/2 step.

Types of Chords for Major Keys

When we build a triad off each note of a major scale, these are the types of chords we’re building:

Major
Minor
Minor
Major
Major
Minor
Diminished

The nice thing is, these are the types of chords we’ll build no matter which major scale we’re using. The notes will vary, but the type of chord will be consistent.

Chords for G Major

Let’s look at this once more, starting with a G major scale:

G – A – B – C – D – E – F♯ – G

We can build a chord off each note of this scale, using the notes of the scale to build a “1 – 3 – 5” chord.

Using this pattern, here are the chords for the key of G major:

G – B – D = G major

A – C – E = A minor

B – D – F♯ = B minor

C – E – G = C major

D – F♯ – A = D major

E – G – B = E minor

F♯ – A – C = F♯ diminished

And now we’re back to G!

Conclusion

The chords that belong to each major key are the chords used to play songs in that key (some songs also use “accidental” chords, which don’t belong to the key but still sound nice). And now you know how to find these chords!

You have a lot of knowledge you can apply to your own piano playing!