Major, Minor, Augmented and Diminished Chords

Chords can often seem like a daunting topic. In this guide, we’ll touch on the basics for the various types of chords; major, minor, augmented, and diminished. But before we dive into chords, it is helpful to understand Intervals.

What is an Interval?

An interval is the distance from one note to another note.

Here are the names for all Intervals within the key of C Major over an octave. Starting on C you can count the number of half steps it takes to get to the interval.

A half step can also be called a semitone.

Now, there are names for the other intervals but for the sake of this particular topic, we’ll introduce just one other interval called the minor third. The minor third is just 3 semitones up from your target note.

Now that you have an understanding of intervals, it’s time to put all this together to start forming chords.

What makes up a Chord?

A chord can be defined as a group of three of more notes that are played together to create a harmony. There’s many different types of chords but in this post we’ll just be discussing just a few. Major, Minor, Augmented, and Diminished. However, the most commonly used of these are Major and Minor.

Much like scales, chords have their own formula as well. Today we will be dealing with triads so the formula is:

1-3-5

root, third, fifth

Now using this formula, you can alter the “quality” of either the third or the fifth to create different chords. Let’s take a look now as we learn to create different types of triads, starting with the major chord.

Major Chords:

Major Chords are know for their bright, happy timbre. They are built using the intervals:

root, major third, fifth.

To break this down even further there will be 3 keys in between the root and major third and 2 keys in between your major third and fifth.

C Major Chord:

Listen to how the C Major chord sounds:

Minor Chords:

Minor chords convey a moody, darker sound. They are built using a similar formula:

root, minor third, fifth

Here, the distance from C to Eb is a minor third and the distance between Eb and G is a major third.

C Minor Chord:

Listen to how this C minor chord sounds:

Diminished and Augmented Chords:

Now that you have an understanding of the two basic types of chords, we can now dive into some of the others.

C Diminished Chord:

The diminished chord has a dissonant unresolved quality to it. To make this chord the formula is:

root, minor third, diminished fifth.

It can also be thought of a minor third stacked upon another minor third.

Listen to how this C diminished chord sounds:

C Augmented Chord:

The Augmented chord has a bright but tense sound. Its formula is:

root, major third, augmented fifth.

This one is just the opposite of a diminished chord with a major third stacked on another major third.

Listen to how this C augmented chord sounds:

Now that we’ve taken a look at the different types of triads, let’s breakdown the chords that you would find in the key of C Major.

Chords And How They Fit into Scales:

Every scale in music will have a combination of major, minor, and diminished chords. Let’s identify what those are in C Major. You’ll notice the roman numerals in the middle column which are used often in music theory as an indicator of the type of chord.

Upper case roman numerals: I, IV, & V all represent major chords.

Lower case roman numerals: i, ii, iii represent minor chords

The ° symbol is used to represent diminished chords

These roman numerals come in handy when you are talking about chord progressions and translating to different keys.

Take a listen to all the chords within the C Major scale:

Chords Contained Within the Minor Scale:

Now take a look at Major and Minor chords as they pertain to A Minor. These chords are the exact same as C Major, above, but the tonal center is on the A instead of C.

With the knowledge you’ve learned, you’re now able to create any major, minor, diminished or augmented chord in any key. And be able to identify the different chords within a given key.