Building Chords From a Scale

I'm going to explain how to get chords out of a scale. This is something that I wish someone explained to me years ago. It's very simple, but I had issue with it because it can be overwhelming. Yesterday I wrote about Eb minor, and how easy it is to see on a keyboard using the black key groupings. Today I will use that scale to show the combinations of notes to make chords. The Eb minor scale consists of Eb, F, Gb, Ab, Bb, Cb, and Db. To find chords, simply play every other note. So the first chord will be Eb Gb Bb. This is extremely easy to see on the black keys of the keyboard, it's the second key in the group of two and then the first and third in the group of three. This chord consists of three notes, the first third and fifth in the scale. If you add one more note, the seventh note in the scale, it becomes a seventh chord. From this shape, simply follow the scale by going up a note for each chord. The second chord will be F Ab Cb Eb, third chord Gb Bb Db F, on and so forth. When I was learning, there was simply too many words and letters. I would recommend practicing the scale of Eb minor, and becoming familiar with it on the keyboard visually. You don't need to remember the notes, that can be frustrating, instead remember the groupings. I wish someone sat me down and explained how straight forward this really is. A lot of time, people use the C major scale for anything music theory related, but I find that ineffective. For me, the C major scale is hard to break up into pieces. With the Eb minor scale you can clearly pick apart different groups of notes. The easiest group to see is the pentatonic within the scale, on the black keys.

The method of playing alternating notes in a scale doesn't translate as well to guitar. On a guitar, the standard chords are usually more spread out across a scale. A lot of chords are built around fifths and octaves, power chords. This is something else I wish I understood a lot earlier, guitar and piano have different approaches to chords. When people try to teach theory, they don't explain this all that well. Starting out, I think it would be more useful to learn a scale across the E string on guitar. Meaning, learn that the major scale is on the frets

0 2 4 5 7 9 11 12

and the minor scale is on the frets

0 2 3 5 7 8 10 12

This will take you so much further than trying to memorize each note across each string for one key. It'll teach you the relationships between spacings of notes, which is how you come to write music. Learn the barre chords after you've come to understand both approaches on the E string, this will teach the scale across the rest of the strings. As I've done this, I've picked up on different patterns and come to understand exactly what I like about melodies. This is how you write music, not by putting together the chords you know work together but by using them to write stories.

The worst thing you can do with a chord is be unhappy with the amount of notes. This is something I struggled with for a very long time. I thought that if my first chord had 4 notes in it, the next chord MUST have 4 as well. This is simply not true, you can go all over the place. It's all about intent, the confidence behind a melody. In the case of following a chord with another chord that has less notes, it will often create a empty feeling within in the spacing of the song. This is perfect when used with intent. Use scales to build chords that allow you to express yourself with full confidence.

Thank you for reading, I hope this makes some sense and can be useful.