Learn Guitar Chord Theory: A comprehensive course on building guitar chords

By Dwayne Jenkins

Learn Guitar Chord Theory is a comprehensive course on enjoying the fun of constructing guitar chords. It will lead you on a path to guitar chord mastery.  It will teach you how to build and fully understand guitar chords in a simple step-by-step method. Starting with the triad (three-note chord) and building up and out from there. Learn

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tritone Publishing
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736639399

Dwayne Jenkins

Dwayne Jenkins is an independent author, private instructor, accomplished musician, and entrepreneur. He has been an accomplished musician for 35 years and has authored many books on how to play guitar. He runs a very successful guitar-teaching business out of Denver, Colorado, and has been in business for over 20 years. Dwayne's has a unique teaching style that gets students of all ages and skill levels to have fun playing guitar quickly. His passion for music and teaching shines through with every lesson plan, book, and online course that he creates. So if you'd like to learn to play the guitar, no matter if it's electric or acoustic, be sure to get involved with Dwayne's Guitar Lessons, where more can be found at his website @dwaynesguitarlessons.com.

Book preview

Chapter 1 Chord Foundation

Lesson 1: The major triad

Music has been called many times over a science of mathematics. This makes sense considering that it deals with numbers (math) and formulas (science) when you learn to work with it. This is the case with guitar chords.

Guitar chords are the building blocks of music. They are notes taken out of the key they come from and they are built from there. Triads set up the foundation for all other chords to be built upon. A triad is a chord consisting of three notes.

Now before we can get into understanding guitar chords or chords in general, we must learn about the musical alphabet. Or otherwise known as the chromatic scale. These are the twelve notes that make up all of western music. These twelve notes are where all chords and scales come from.

The musical alphabet is made up of the letters A-G. With some accidentals (sharps/flats) in between the notes except for two. The notes are as follows: A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G#. Can you see the two notes that don’t have a sharp after them?

I say sharp/flat because they are the same notes, it just depends on which way you are moving along the scale. For instance, if you go up it is sharp. If you go down it is flat. So an A sharp is the same thing as a B flat, (A#/Bb) same note.

For our training purposes here, I will refer to notes either being sharpened (moved up a fret) or flattened (moving back) when it comes to creating different chords. To set the foundation, we will start with the Major triad.

The major triad consists of the 1, 3, & 5th note of any major scale that it is taken out of. To keep things simple, we will start with the key of C major. Why? Because it has no sharps or flat notes in it.

These sharps and flats are called accidentals in music terms. But to keep things simple they'll just be referred to as sharps or flats. If we look at the 12 note musical alphabet as roots of the music tree, then the major scale (Do Re Mi etc) will represent the tree trunk.

Then all the chords and scales that come out of the tree trunk will be the tree branches.

Musical alphabet = 12 music tree roots

Major scale (Do Re Mi) = music tree trunk (8 notes of the 12)

All chords and scales (major, minor, etc) = music tree branches.

As you can see, this analysis is fairly simple and easy to understand. And if you can wrap your head around the concept, it will make learning this material a lot easier.

So, back to the major triad. All major triads will be made up of this scientific formula. In the C major scale, we have the notes C D E F G A B C. If we give each note a number value, we can see it has 8 notes.

To make our C major triad we use the 1 3 5. In this case it will be the C, E, & G. This will be the same for all major chords. The notes will be different, but the chord formula will be the same. Let’s look at another key. The key of G major.

G major consists of G A B C D E F# G. In this scale the F is sharpened to fit into the Do Re Mi I mentioned earlier. All major scales must have this. If a scale does not have this sound, it is not a major scale.

If you can hear the Do Re Mi when playing your guitar, you will be able to find all 8 notes in any major scale. In the case of G major, you will see that if you use the natural F note, it won’t sound correct.

In order for it to sound correct, it must be sharpened. To create the G major triad we use the same formula. The 1 3 5. These notes will be the G B & D. Same formula, just different notes. This will be for all twelve keys in the music alphabet.

Now to view these so we can easily play them on the guitar, we want to learn how to read chord charts. These are diagrams that show where the note locations are.

The vertical lines represent the six guitar strings from biggest on the left and smallest on the right. The horizontal lines represent the frets. The highlighted horizontal line represents the nut where the strings go through.

This will be our reference guide for creating guitar chords. Look at it like the guitar is facing upward.

Here are diagrams of the two major triads we have learned so far.

C major

G major

If you look at the chord diagrams, they tell us where to put our fingers to form these chords. It also lets us know where the notes of these major triads are located on the fretboard. This gives us a great reference guide for quickly finding these chords and forming them.

Since there are thousands of chords that can be formed, I won’t go through all of them. Just the most common ones found in contemporary songs.

A major

B major

D major

E major

F major

I left out the C and G because I presented them earlier. But as you can see, all these chords are made up of three notes. That is why they are called triads. They are also called major triads because they are made up of the natural third note of the key they are created out of.

Remember, even though the notes are different, they are all made up of the same formula. The 1 3 5. These notes are the most important because they form the foundation of the chord.

As you will see, when we move the 3rd and fifth note around (the 1 will stay the same as that is the root) it will allow us to create different chords.

Now see if you can find the Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do in the other keys and then find the 1 3 5 to create the major triad. You should be able to do this with all 12 notes in the musical alphabet.

Lesson 2: The minor triad

The minor triad is the same thing. A chord made up of three notes. Except with this chord (and all minor