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17: Easy Diatonic Chords Guitar Lesson · The Guitarjet Podcast

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the guitar Jet Podcast, where you'll skyrocket your
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  Speaker 1: knowledge of theory, techniques and fundamentals for guitar. Welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the guitar Jet Podcast. I am your chief guitar instructor,
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  Speaker 1: Miles and today I'm going to give you an easy
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  Speaker 1: diatonic chords guitar lesson. This is accompanied by a tab
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  Speaker 1: on my website guitar jet dot com. And if you
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  Speaker 1: like this episode, tell a friend about it and consider
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  Speaker 1: subscribing to the show. Now let's dive right into the lesson,
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  Speaker 1: and by the end of this you are going to
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  Speaker 1: know what diatonic chords are, how they are constructed, and
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  Speaker 1: how to apply them to your chord progressions. So let's
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  Speaker 1: start by defining the word diatonic. Diatonic simply means from
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  Speaker 1: the scale. Diatonic chords refer to chords from a particular scale,
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  Speaker 1: which means chords you can construct and harmonize using the
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  Speaker 1: notes from the scale. The easiest way to understand this
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  Speaker 1: is by looking at the diatonic chords in the C
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  Speaker 1: major scale, which is the most common scale in Western harmony.
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  Speaker 1: So let's look at the notes in the key of
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  Speaker 1: C major, and those notes are CDFGAB. They're all natural notes,
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  Speaker 1: and now we need to harmonize these notes by turning
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  Speaker 1: each degree of the C major scale into a triad,
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  Speaker 1: which is a chord with three notes. And to build
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  Speaker 1: a triad from each degree, you'll stack the notes in thirds.
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  Speaker 1: Put simply, this means stacking every other note. For example,
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  Speaker 1: if your first note is the note C, and you
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  Speaker 1: want to turn it into the C major triad, you'll
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  Speaker 1: stack notes in thirds, which gives you the notes C, E,
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  Speaker 1: and G. You'll do this for each degree of the scale,
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  Speaker 1: and harmonizing this way will give you the diatonic chords
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  Speaker 1: in the scale. And the good news is every major
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  Speaker 1: scale has the exact same order of diatonic chords. Diatonic
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  Speaker 1: triads in order are major minor, minor, major, major, minor diminished.
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  Speaker 1: I want you to say that out loud and memorize
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  Speaker 1: that major minor, minor, major, major, minor diminished, and in
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  Speaker 1: the C major scale, this gives you the diatonic triads
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  Speaker 1: C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major,
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  Speaker 1: A minor, and B diminished. And then the next thing
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  Speaker 1: we need to address are Roman numerals in diatonic harmony.
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  Speaker 1: Each diatonic chord is given a number in order from
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  Speaker 1: one to seven to understand where it lies in your
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  Speaker 1: diatonic scale, and these numbers are depicted with Roman numerals.
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  Speaker 1: For major chords, the numeral is capitalized, so for example,
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  Speaker 1: you'd have like a capital I, and then for minor chords,
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  Speaker 1: the numeral is lower case, and that looks like a
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  Speaker 1: lower case I. So an example chord progression would be
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  Speaker 1: like a one four five major chord progression, and that
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  Speaker 1: would give you a capitalized numerals since all the chords
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  Speaker 1: are major, so that would give you a capital I,
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  Speaker 1: and then for the four chord give you a capital
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  Speaker 1: I capital V, and for the five chord, it give
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  Speaker 1: you that capital V. And then in the key of
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  Speaker 1: C major, this will give you the chords one C major,
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  Speaker 1: four F major, and five G major. Now, if you
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  Speaker 1: want to add a minor chord to the progression, you'll
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  Speaker 1: make it lower case. For example, if we add the
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  Speaker 1: minor six, then we could use the progression one minor,
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  Speaker 1: six four five. This gives you the chords one C major,
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  Speaker 1: six A minor, four F major, and five G major.
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  Speaker 1: The minor chord uses two lowercase letters, a small V
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  Speaker 1: and a small I, which creates the minor sixth numeral.
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  Speaker 1: When those are combined, the lowercase letters have you distinguish
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  Speaker 1: the minor numeral from the capitalized major numerals in the progression.
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  Speaker 1: And from here you'll just want to start practicing and
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  Speaker 1: playing diatonic chords. And on my website with the example
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  Speaker 1: that I link to in the description, I have an
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  Speaker 1: example for you to play where you'll just run through
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  Speaker 1: all the different common ways, well several common ways to
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  Speaker 1: play diatonic chords on the guitar in order, going from
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  Speaker 1: C major to D minor, t E minor, F major
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  Speaker 1: to G major to A minor to the and that
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  Speaker 1: is it for today's episode of the Guitar Jet podcast.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you
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  Speaker 1: have a fantastic day.