Chord families are the cornerstone of learning and playing music.
Hi I'm Tomas from Real Guitar Success. Let's say
you're learning a song by ear. You're going to listen to the song and
figure out what chords to use. Would you rather have this?
These are all the possible chords that you could choose from to
play the song. You'll have to admit it's. Kind of an organized mess
or would you rather have this? These are the same chords
organized into chord families.Not only does it look more organized
but once you figure out the key of the song you've narrowed your job to
choosing from just about 6 maybe 7 chords if you include the diminished. You
can see that organizing chords in the chord
families not only makes it easier to learn songs
but makes it much easier to practice efficiently and
to create your own music and don't worry about figuring out the key.
I'll put a link to a video that tells you more about that.
Let's stay with this chord family concept for now. Here's how it works.
Here we have the C major scale and we're going to build a chord off each step
of the scale. So the c scale is C D E F G A B and C again.
I didn't put the last C on there. So we can make a chord
out of each degree of the scale and I'm just using the C
scale as a demonstration. We could pick any scale
but with the C scale if we take the notes out of the C
scale the first chord the one chord is going to be
C. Clever, huh. There are 3 major chords
if you just use the notes in the scale. The
one chord, the four chord and the five chord that's C F and G in the key of C.
There are also 3 minor chords and again we're just using notes out of
the C scale. So the D chord, the E chord and the
A minor chord that's the 2 3 and 6 chords so you probably
realized what I'm doing. I've numbered each of the scale degrees
and I'm calling the chord based on the scale degree
number. So the C chord is going to be called the one
chord. The D chord is the two chord or D minor in
this case. The three chord E minor. The four chord
F major. The five chord G major. The sixth chord
A minor and the seventh chord is the one that's a little different. It's a
diminished chord in this case B diminished. Now the
diminished chord is just not used so much in popular
music. So for now I'm just going to leave it out of the discussion to
keep things kind of focused. Let's talk roman numerals for a minute. A common way
to distinguish these chords that are built on the scale
is with roman numerals. We use capital roman numerals
for the major chords and small letter or lowercase
roman numerals for the minor chords. You can see them underneath
the scale degrees. The diminished chord is indicated
sort of like a minor chord with lowercase but
it has this little circle next to it that indicates diminished.
This is a traditional way of indicating chord progressions and it's used fairly
commonly. There's another system also where you
just include the number and for minor chords you add a little M
to indicate minor and for diminish the circle and so on. If
there's none of those it means major. You can see in the big roman numerals
I'm indicating a chord progression and this is where it
really comes in handy. This particular progression is one of many common chord
progressions. I've indicated the Arabic numbers what
we call them underneath the roman numerals just to
give you a reference. I'm going to play this chord progression so you hear it. It
starts off with a big roman numeral one so that's a one
chord. A C then it goes to the 5 chord that's a
big roman numeral V
and then to a 6 chord. Notice it's a lowercase so it's a minor chord
and then to the 4 chord again a major chord
that's a common chord progression.
I want to talk just a little bit about the functions of the chord.
The one chord we often call the home chord. It has a sense of stability. When
you get to the one chord , you kind of feel a sense of
rest. In the key of C, that's going to be the C
chord. Now let's go on to the 5 chord, in this case
G chord. The 5 chord also called a dominant chord
has this sense of tension and it's the first chord that kind of brings tension
into the mix. The tension tends to want to pull back
to the home chord. So when you play the one chord and the 5
chord.
There's a sense of wanting to go back to that one to get to a place of rest.
One way to look at music is just about tension and release.
You're kind of going on a trip and you feel tension and then it resolves
slightly but there's a trick and it doesn't quite resolve and goes back to
another chord and then finally comes to the home chord and then starts a whole
another series of tension and release. We've got the 1
and the V. The two probably most important chords
in any key because of that relationship of tension
and going back to home. What we're going to add now the IV
chord. In this case, an F. The IV chord has a sense of wanting to
go to the V chord so now you're kind of setting
yourself up - 4 to 5 to 1. Listen - C
4, G chord, 5 and then uh there's even a stronger pull
to get back to one to feel like you're back home back to rest. The four chord
the function name is called subdominant. So now we've got the home chord also
known as the tonic chord. We've got the V chord the dominant
chord and the subtonic right? 4 Don't worry too
much about those names. I just want you to hear them at least once.
Let's go on to the minor chords. The 2 chord functions very similar to a IV
chord. Other times you'll see in music that
they use the two chord kind of the same place you'd use a IV chord
but gives it a little different flavor because it's minor. Listen.
D minor, to the V chord G and going home.
Okay. The 3 chord another minor chord often is used to go to the four chord so
it's kind of again another setup. So it's going 3
4 5 and 1. Listen to this - 3 4
5 and 1.
Now I'll tell you right now don't take these
descriptions of the functions too seriously. I want you to have an essence
of kind of traditionally how people think
about it but part of modern music is kind of breaking the rules and
surprising you. Here's an example. The six chord is often used as a kind of
a surprise. When you hear a progression it seems like it's leading up to the
home chord all of a sudden you'll throw in a six and it kind of
shocks you then it'll go back around and resolve to the
one chord which make you feel home. Listen to this. Here's an example
4 5 remember we're going to feel like one.
Again
Adds a little interest to it. Now I know this seems like a lot of information the
first time around but here's the four most important
things to remember . First off, the chord families we're discussing are
all based on a scale in this case the major scale.
Secondly the one chord, the four chord and the five chord
are all major and three, two chord three chord and six chord are
minor. And then finally number 4, the seventh
chord is a diminished chord. It might be worth watching this video a
few times and let it just soak in. Here's a quick story to demonstrate how
practical this is. I used to hire myself out
as what we call a hired gun basically if somebody needed a substitute for the
band their guitar player didn't show up they could hire me to
come play. So I got a call like a few days before a
gig and there was no time to even practice
anything that the band was playing but they needed somebody right away.
So I went to the gig without seeing any of the music.
The band leader would call out the key of the song.
He'd tell me if there was a chord somewhere in the song that's a little
different or unexpected. He'd say something like look out for the
three flat on this song kind of to the side so the audience
wasn't listening. The gig went perfectly smooth. It was a heck of fun
and afterwards I remember one of the audience came up and said gee you guys
are great. How long you been playing together?
I know you're probably thinking it's not likely I'm gonna get called out to go
fill in for somebody in the near future but you can see how this
whole concept can make it so much easier and fun to learn songs and for me
to create my own music. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Hey
as a bonus I want to give you a copy of that
chart that I showed you earlier. The chord family chart I call it.
A key change chord chart because you can also use the same chart
for knowing how to change keys from one to the other and that's another benefit
of understanding chord families. If you like what I'm doing let me know.
Give me a thumbs up and most importantly leave me some kind
of comment, Let me know if there's a video you'd like to see me make. This is
day 13 of my 30-day guitar coaching and I'd
love to get your input on what you'd like to see
somewhere in the next what 18 days I'm off hope to see you tomorrow