- Hi, I'm Gareth Green
and in this video we're going to have a think
about how to build augmented and diminished chords.
Now, lots of people are happy
about major chords and minor chords,
when it comes to this augmented, diminished stuff,
maybe they're slightly less clear about it.
So let's see if we can make this
as straightforward as possible.
Okay, let's talk about the augmented chord first.
And I'm going to start by putting up a major chord.
So if we have the note C at the bottom of this,
what's going to be a triad,
and remember, always start by constructing the triad,
the essential three notes,
and then you can turn it into chords with four notes,
five notes, ten notes, whatever you want to do,
space it out in whichever order you want to as well.
But just getting the essential triad is the first step.
So if I am going to build on C,
a major triad will look like this,
because in order to form a triad,
I'm going to add a third and a fifth above the bottom note.
The bottom note's often called the root or the root note.
So just in case you come across that term,
and you're not quite sure what it is.
So the C is the root of this chord.
That is a major triad.
So C, E, G.
Now how do I know that's a major triad?
Well, first of all, if the bottom note is C,
and I therefore think in the key of C major,
C major has no sharps, no flats,
so the third note above C is E,
the fifth note above C is G,
and we know that E and G are notes in the key of C major.
So in this case, that's all going to work out
as long as the third note
is the third note in the major scale of the bottom note,
and the fifth note
is the fifth note in the major scale of the bottom note,
you know you've always got a major triad.
Okay, another way of looking at that,
in case you're not quite so sure about keys
and which sharps and flats might be in which keys,
is simply to do this.
If I've given myself C
and I want to build a major triad on C,
if I count in semitones up from the C,
one, two, three, four, gives me E,
then five, six, seven, gives me G.
So seven and four.
So if you wanted to count the semitones or the half steps,
it's seven semitones, or half steps, above that root note
and four will give you the notes.
Okay, now, if I want to turn this into an augmented triad,
all I need to do now is to look at the fifth
and raise it a semitone.
So that G at the top is going become a G-sharp, okay?
So if I can find the major triad, C, E, G,
all I've got to do is raise the G, the fifth, C, E, G-sharp.
Don't call it A-flat,
because then it becomes a different chord,
it's got different notes in it, but call it G-sharp.
And of course,
following on from the logic
of counting in semitones or half steps,
you'll see that that will now be eight and four.
If I start with the C, one, two, three, four,
takes me to the E.
Five, six, seven, eight,
takes me to the G-sharp.
So that gives me an augmented triad
and any of those methods we've just discussed
will give you the notes that you need
for an augmented triad.
Okay, let's have a think about
how we form a diminished triad.
So we'll do the same thing.
We'll build it on the same root note, that's C,
and we'll start with the major triad
exactly as we did before.
So exactly as we talked about before,
there's your major triad on C, okay.
Now if I want to turn that into a minor triad,
that's the first thing I've got to do
on the way from major,
then what we do is we take the third
and we lower the third by a semitone,
so E becomes E-flat.
So the major triad was C, E, G.
By lowering the third by a semitone or a half step
it goes minor, C, E-flat, G.
Okay, so you see how that one works, okay?
And we talked about the semitone thing.
So in a major triad,
you've got one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven.
So you've got seven and four, but in a minor triad,
you've got seven and three.
Okay?
So you'll have one, two, three, for the E-flat,
four, five, six, seven, for the G.
Once you've got a minor triad,
the next thing to do is to allow the top note
to be a semitone or a half step lower.
So we also have G-flat.
So now I've got C, E-flat, G-flat,
I have a diminished triad.
So you see how we did that?
We started with a major triad.
Then we said lower the third by semitone
and lower the fifth by a semitone
and now I get diminished.
Okay, what does that work out to
in terms of semitones or half steps?
Well there's the C, one, two, three,
four, five, six.
Okay, so one, two, three, for the E-flat,
four, five, six.
So that gives me a six and a three.
So if you want to go straight there
without having to think in keys and all the rest of it,
if you've got a root note
on which you want to build
an augmented or a diminished triad,
simply count eight and four half steps, semitones,
for an augmented,
or count six and three semitones, or half steps,
for a diminished.
But you might find it helpful to reference this
in relation to, well, if this is a major triad,
what makes it minor, what makes it diminished?
If this is a major triad,
what do I have to do to make it augmented?
So it just gives you different ways
of working out how to build augmented and diminished triads
so that you can then form a chord
with as many notes as you want to
using the notes of those triads.
So I hope that's just clarifying for you
how to build these essential triads.
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