Day Five: Major and Minor Chords and their Progressions

This article will teach you how to write beautiful sounding chord progressions.

This post is part of 14 Days of Harmony, a free course for musicians who want to deepen their understanding of harmony, and learn how to develop their connection with sound as a result. You can view the entire course here.

For the best experience, listen with headphones.

A chord is simply a collection of 3 or more tones. Any collection of 3 notes is a chord. The connection of chords is what creates harmonic tension. 

As we remember from looking at the physics of sound and by examining the intervals, certain tone combinations are more consonant and harmonious than others. We've already done much of the heavy lifting!

Based on the natural overtone series, we know that the most harmonious new tones that go together with a fundamental tone is its fifth and third.

A triad consists of a root with the fifth and third.

You can form a triad on top of any note by considering that note a root, and then building a chord by adding the third and fifth above it. 

Figure 1. Each triad is composed of a root with its perfect fifth and third. 

The main thing to remember is that the fifth above the root must be a perfect fifth. A reminder: the interval of B-F is a tritone, so that fifth needs to be B-F# or Bb-F.

Major and Minor Triads

So the fifths in triads are always perfect, with a few exceptions as we'll soon see. But remember that thirds are not perfect—there are 2 qualities of thirds: major and minor. A triad with a major third above the root is a major triad. Similarly, a minor triad has a minor third above the root. The fifths above the root are always perfect. 

Figure 2. When labeling triads with the note names, use upper case for Major and lower case for minor.

The name of the triad is given by the root. For example, the root of a C major triad is C. The recipe for building a triad is: "root-third-perfect fifth".

Try building some triads: B major, b minor, Eb major, c minor. 

Answers: B-D#-F#, B-D-F#, Eb-G-Bb, C-Eb-G. 

Augmented and Diminished Fifths

We've just seen 2 forms of the same triad that differ by lowering or raising the same pitch, the third, by a half step. We can do the same with with the perfect fifths, although they will no longer be perfect, sadly. Raising a perfect fifth by a half step makes it larger, or augmented. Conversely, lowering a perfect fifth by a half step makes it smaller, or diminished. Triads with the same root come in 4 varieties then as shown by Figure 3. The last 3 are the most common; augmented triads are used later in history and belong to the realm of chromatic harmony. 

Figure 3. An augmented fifth is enharmonically equivalent to a minor sixth, and a diminished fifth is enharmonically equivalent to a tritone. 

How are chords organized?

We've seen through the study of the intervals that the musical effects only take place within us when we live the connection between two entities. It is the same with chords. 

In the case with tonal harmony the chords are organized by the musical scale. 

The notes of the musical scale have names and their names actually describe the connections between it and the root or tonic of the scale! 

Figure 4: The names of the notes. Numbers are the degree of the scale. Italics show the Solfege syllable. 

Let's look at the major scale. Again, the name (tonic, supertonic, etc) refers to the connection of the scale note and the tonic of the scale that it belongs to. The name "subtonic" makes no sense without being in relation to the tonic, and the same is true for each note name. 

Remarkably we can understand the connection, the meaning of the names, by studying the interval itself. For example, the dominant can be studied by experiencing the perfect fifth up, or a fourth down. The submediant can be experienced by singing a major sixth up, or a minor third down. Just like we did with the intervals. 

These names actually represent the connection, so dominant means harmony built above the fifth scale degree of the tonic. Mediant means harmony built above the third scale degree. 

The harmony itself is built as a triad above each scale degree. Another way of saying this is the harmony is built with thirds above each scale degree as the root of the triad using the other notes of the scale. For example, the triad above D is not D-F#-A but rather D-F-A because those tones are in the C major scale. 

Figure 5: The Roman numeral represents the name and corresponds to the scale degree as in Figure 4, but now it also represents the chord quality. Upper case numerals represent major triad, and the lowercase numerals represent a minor triad. The major and minor thirds are determined by the notes in the C major scale itself. The circle next to the vii represents a diminished triad. The fifth is diminished because F# is not in the C major scale.

What is the difference between a chord and a triad? A triad is a chord, but a chord is not necessarily a triad. That is to say, a triad is a specific type of chord built from thirds above the root. But there are plenty of other non-triadic chords, especially since we defined them as any collection of 3 or more simultaneously sounding tones. 

As you can see in Figure 5, each triad is built with the notes of the scale. This is also to say that the triads are in the key of the tonic. 

The plan now is to first learn how we connect the triads, and then we will learn the meaning of each chord name by experiencing them to find out how they function. 

The Connection of the Triads

First a quick detour to cover some basic part writing directions. If we want to play the connection between tonic and dominant for the purpose of experiencing how the connection feels, then you could just play them as they appear organized by the scale.

Figure 6. 

As you can see and hear, it's not very smooth. 

This brings us to our next chord feature. 

Chords can be inverted.

Triads can be inverted by raising the bottom note up by an octave.

Figure 7. Each tone is raised just one octave. When the root is the bottom most note in a triad then it is said to be in root position. The structure of the first and second inversions are shown here. 

To smooth out our chord connection from Figure 6, we can use the same triad in another inversion to keep the common tone (G) in the same voice, and make horizontally moving intervals as smooth as possible. 

Figure 8. The tonic chord is in root position and the dominant chord is in first inversion. That's some smooth voicing. 

Chords can also be in the open position.

Figure 9. We are open for business.

The open position of the triad is made by raising a middle voice up an octave. This also creates a very different sound. Let's now connect tonic and mediant with 4 voices in the open position. 

Figure 10. Always try to find the common tones between connecting chords and sustain them, which means keep them in the same voice that they are in. The voices are referred to as Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass (from top to bottom), usually abbreviated as SATB.

This art of connecting chords has been practiced for at least 500 years, and extends all the way back to the vocal music in European churches. That's why we study the 4 'voices.' But what is the purpose of studying music this way, especially if we wish to create contemporary music that breaks tradition? I would say that this approach is in touch with a very human way of working with the tones, and does so in a way that respects their nature. Composers from Balada to Stravinsky, Brahms, and Beethoven all studied the tones in this way, and each of them has created an influence of the sound of our music today. Learning this method is to learn the method of the greatest musicians. On connecting the triads, Anton Bruckner called it "the law of the shortest way."

Directions for writing chord connections. 

1. Keep the root in the bass (for now).

2. Sustain the common tones.

3. Fill in the remaining tones with the middle voices, obeying the law of the shortest way.