Chords

Chords are made up of three notes or more, but i'll only be talking about basic chords which only contain three notes. I will be discussing how major, minor, diminished and augmented are made and the intervals they contain.

Chords have two parts to them: The root note which is the first note of the chord, but not always, and the chord quality which tells you what the other notes in the chord are.

The chord quality tells you the intervals within a chord and intervals are measured in whole and half steps, for example a whole step is C to D and a half step is C to C#. This is used to measure the distance between notes.

In a chord any two notes must be at least a minor third apart from each other and cannot be more than a major third away from each other. I will be using the root note of F to explain how the following chords are made up and the intervals within them. 

A major chord is made up of the root note, which in our case is F, the major third, which is two whole steps from the root note A, since we are using F as our root note, and a perfect fifth, which is three whole steps and a half step from the root note which is C. 

A minor chord is made up of the root note, F, a minor third, G#, which is a half step less than a major third, and a perfect fifth, C. Those two chords are the most common chord types but you'll also need to know about a diminished and augmented chord.

A diminished chord is made up of the root, F, a diminished fifth, B, which is a half step less than a perfect fifth (three whole steps) and a minor third, A flat, because its the only interval that fits, a major third is too close to the diminished fifth to work.

Lastly an Augmented chord is made up of the root note, F, an augmented fifth, C#, which is a half step more than a perfect fifth (four whole steps) and a major third, A, because its the only internal that fits, a minor third is too far from the augmented fifth to work.