How To Find Guitar Chords In a Major Key | How to Know What Chords Are in a Key

in order to know which chords belong in a key and therefore which chords work together when writing chord progressions or songs we first need to understand some basic principles the first being the major scale let's start by learning our major scale from the third fret of the low e string as this is a g note we would call this a g major scale which would place us in the key of g now let's assign a number to each of the notes in this scale so 1 2 three four five six and seven now for every note of this scale we need to assign a specific type of chord the one chord is major the two chord is minor the three chord is also minor the four chord is major the v chord is also major the sixth chord is minor and the seven chord would be a diminished chord so altogether that would be major minor minor major major minor and diminished you may also see this depicted using roman numerals which would look like this i would advise you to memorize this as it will form the basis for knowing all seven chords available in a major key and therefore is an integral part of this lesson something that may help with this is knowing that the one four and five chords are major the two three and six chords are minor which just leaves you with the seven chord which is diminished now let's put this into practice let's start with the one chord as our first note of the scale is a g note and as we now know the chord type of r1 chord is major we can now say that the first chord in the key of g major is a g major chord or just g there are many ways of playing a g chord on guitar and you might be tempted to play a traditional open g chord at this stage which would work absolutely fine but i would urge you to play a g bar chord starting from the first note or g note in our scale for reasons that will become clear towards the end of this lesson that would look like this now let's move to our two chord as the second note in our major scale is an a note and as we now know our two chord is minor we would call the two chord a minor once again a traditional open a minor chord would be fine here but let's stick to an a minor barre chord starting from the second note or a note in our scale which would look like this now the three chord as the third note in our major scale is a b note and our three chord is minor we would call our three chord b minor so let's play a b minor bar chord starting from the third note or b note in the major scale which would look like this as the fourth note in our scale is a c note and the iv chord is major we would call the four chord c major or just c an open c chord is fine here but let's play a c major barre chord starting from the fourth note or c note in the major scale which would look like this now for the five chord as the fifth note in our major scale is a d note and our five chord is major we would call our v chord d major or just d you could play an open d chord but once again we will be using a bar chord starting from the fifth note or d note in the major scale which would look like this as the sixth note in our major scale is an e note and the sixth chord is minor we would name this chord e minor you could play this chord as an open e minor but let me show you a way of playing this starting from the sixth note or e note in our major scale which would look like this in essence you could see this as what you might recognize as an open d minor chord shape that we've simply moved up two frets and of course as the open d string is part of the d minor chord this would also need to be shifted up two frets also this would now give us the e minor chord starting from the sixth note of our major scale as the seventh note in our major scale is an f sharp note and the seven chord as mentioned earlier is a diminished chord we would call this an f sharp diminished to play this place your first finger on the seventh note or f sharp note in the scale your second finger on the b string fourth fret your third finger on the g string fifth fret and your fourth finger on the high e string fifth fret which would look like this so all together we have seven chords in the key of g those being g a minor b minor c d e minor and f sharp diminished because all these chords belong in the same key you can technically play them in any order and they will all sound good together for example let's pick our one five six and four chords so that would be g d e minor and c or even 1 3 2 5 which would be g b minor a minor and d you just have to be careful when using the diminished chord as it's much more difficult to make this work but that's for another lesson try this out yourself to begin writing your own chord progressions or songs in a major key which is really the main point of this lesson but let's move on now everything we've talked about so far has been in relation to the key of g but what if we wanted to change key or write the chord progression in a different key altogether this brings us to the reason i have told you to play our seven chords starting from their place in the major scale as opposed to open chord voicings to change key all you need to do is shift our major scale to the new desired key for example if we wanted to know the chords in the key of a we would simply play our major scale starting on the fifth fret of the low e string which would be an a note from here all the previously learnt steps would remain the same so we would still have our one chord which would now be called a major as our first note is an a our second chord would be b minor our third chord is now c sharp minor our fourth chord is d and our fifth chord is e our sixth chord would be f sharp minor and our seventh chord would be g sharp diminished you could apply this to any key and it would work using the same seven chord shapes this is also useful if you think in terms of numbers or roman numerals instead of chord names as if you wanted to for example play a one four five in the key of g so the first fourth and fifth chords in the key g c and d all you would need to do to change key is move your starting position once you've figured out the chords in a key that you're working with to write a song or chord progression feel free to then use whatever chord voicings you like anywhere on the neck to play them including open chords this is simply a quick hands-on practical approach to identify the chords available to you in any given key on the guitar if you enjoyed this lesson and would like to see more lessons like this then feel free to like below subscribe and ring the notification bell see you in the next one

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Id: T26l_3JkogU

Length: 6min 37sec (397 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021