Music Theory - Chords Intro - Warbeats Tutorials

from http://www.warbeats.com : Here is a basic intro to chords.

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what's up everybody and effects here
with another tutorial in this tutorial
we're going to talk about cord i want to
preface the tutorial by saying that I am
by no means an expert on cords or music
theory for that matter
I've kind of learned you know on my own
and know what I know and really my goal
with these tutorials is to just get your
appetites going so that you know if
there's a little stumbling block that
you're having or learning curve that you
need to kind of get over the hump you
know maybe one of these tutorials will
help you do that and get get to a point
where a little light bulb might go off
and help you to to motivate you to go to
the next level
so with that in mind let's talk about
cord now what is the cord well record is
when you play three notes or more three
different notes i should say
simultaneously for example this is a
chord
and if you look on the screen you can
see that I've pressed the sea de and the
g
and that's a c-major chord now I want to
bring up a website to help me explain
this and you've seen this website in my
scales tutorial and the website is
called a courthouse but it's located at
look no hands dot-com what I like about
this particular site is on one side you
have a cord builder pretty much and on
the other side you have a scale builder
so you can very easily just find scales
and chords without having to to memorize
all of them and I've already talked
about scales but one thing about chords
is you need to know what scale you're
going to be in in order to build a
proper cord for example you could not
build a minor oh let me take this back
for example if you're playing in a
c-major scale you could not play AC
minor chord within that scale and i'm
going to show you why in one second
first let's look at what what we're
going to start with the c major scale so
we've selected see here as our root node
and we've selected major here as our
scale type and if we look at the piano
keyboard above we can see that the c
major scale contains c d e f g a and B
in other words all the white notes in a
particular octave on the keyboard
ok so now that we've verified what notes
are in our scale
let's go look at a chord within that
scale so we're going to look at a chord
called the c major chord and we select
on this side we select see and major
and you can see the court is notated as
ceng which is what I played earlier
sounds like that
ok so how do we build that cord from the
c major scale well there's a couple of
ways of doing it one is by intervals
which is nothing notated down here in
the detail section the intervals are 13
and five and basically what's that what
that is saying is that you take the
first note of the scale the third note
of the scale and the 5th note of the
scale and in this case it returns ceng
and if we go back to the scale and we
look at the first notice see the third
note is indeed II and the 5th note is G
so ceng is our C major scale but really
a better way of describing how to build
a cord from a scale rather than the
intervals
let's talk about half steps because the
half steps will allow you to build this
chord in any major scale very easily
all you have to remember is is four and
three
so for example we start on the sea and
we go four half steps and a half step
means just go to the next available note
regardless of its of its color so if
it's see a half step would be to the
black key here which is C sharp another
half step would be back here down to the
D and another one would be d sharp and
another one would be so that's how we
can't have steps so we're going to count
four half steps so we start on seeing we
go one two three four and yet there we
go we landed on me so for we have a root
note see we have our fourth half step
which is e and then if we look at our
formula down here the second number is 3
so from the e we count three half steps
1 2 3 and we get to the G so using this
formula four and three were able to
build
a major chord from our major scale from
our C major scale now that formula will
work in any major scale so we can go to
for example and E major scale is so I
just built the E major scale and if we
remember four and three let's let's
figure it out is our first one so we're
going to include that then we're going
to go for one two three four which is G
sharp okay and then we're going to go 3
123 which is be so we need a g-sharp and
be for an E major chord and let's just
go build that over here to verify e
major and then look there it is
e G sharp and be so by remembering this
formula we can build that that cord that
that major chord from any major scale
really easily but what about minor
scales
what about other types of scales well
let's take a look at that i'm going to
bring up and a melodic minor scale
okay the reason why did that is because
they're all white notes from an a minor
scales ABCDE F and G you can see they're
all white noise well ok so now let's
let's think about this let's what
happens if we try to build a major chord
from this scale well remember the
formula for and three so we start on a
and we go one two three four now the
four happens to land on a c-sharp which
lo and behold is not in this scale which
means playing an a major chord in a song
that's using an a minor scale is not
going to sound all that great so we
generally don't want to do that
ok so now what do we have to do is we
have to figure out how do we build a
minor chord well let's go look it up
so let's select a on the cords over here
and let's find the minor notation which
is the small M you know a large am
usually means major like it's notated
here a-and with the large M is major so
we go to a minor that's a small m and
we've got a different formula a3 and a4
okay so three and four in other words is
kind of the reverse in a way because the
other one was for in a three but let's
go back to our mi a minor scale
let's build that now we know we're going
three and four so that's a we're gonna
go1 2 3 which gives us see and it is
included in the scale and we're going to
go for 1234 and then we have re so it's
a C and E and let's just verify that
with the a minor of course there is AC
any so now you know the formula for
building a minor chord from any minor
scale and really I mean that's all there
is to it
now there are ways of playing chords
that are little bit different and you
probably want to just be aware of that
and let's bring up FL studio for a
second let's take a look at that
so here we have our keyboard and and
we're going to talk about actually let's
go back to the c major which is
right there okay as long as we're using
the three notes
SI e and g we can play that scale so i
can take this G drop it down to this one
and play the play the court
that's one way of playing a c-major even
though my lowest note is aji i still
have all the notes i need to signify the
c major chord so i can play like this or
like this
you can hear they've got a slightly
different tonality to them and it helps
if you're going to be doing progressions
later on you might want to switch up to
just give give a little bit more
interest to your progression but again
we'll cover that in the chord
progression tutorial so we've dropped
the g and that's basically considered an
inverted
scale so but you could also drop the e
so instead of playing this e-fit down
there and let's go with the lower g
so that's a c-major that's a c-major
that's a c-major you can hear they all
kind of have the same feel to them but
with a slightly different tonality
because of the lower the Lower Keys and
you can play them higher and lower
whatever and mix them up but there you
go that's what a cord is that's how you
build a cord you can add a lot more
fullness and richness to your music by
using chords especially with things like
strings cords are also useful for
playing some rhythmic patterns there's a
lot you can do with it so you know
experiment and expand your mind a little
bit and just go with it and hopefully
you'll be interested enough to read more
about it maybe buy a book or go to
website or something there's a lot of
resources out there to help you if
you're just interested enough to go
looking for it and please remember to
tell all your friends about the website
www.quadzab.com and have fun and I'll
catch you guys in the next tutorial