Hey Friend,

As I was putting together yesterday’s email, I started thinking about the relationship between the key (and its resulting scale) and the chords that can be formed naturally within the key.

By naturally, I mean that you only need the notes from the key - you don’t have to raise or lower them in pitch at all to form these triads. 

And that’s when it hit me...

It’s not the notes that determine what the chord form is, whether it’s a major, minor or diminished chord. It’s the intervals, the spaces between the notes of the key.

This is something very subtle that I'm pointing out. I spend a lot of time telling you about the notes that form each chord, but the intervals are the reason the notes are what they are.

I don’t have a lot of time today to go into a lot of examples, but the basic explanation is this:

Each chord type has a specific set of intervals that determine what kind of chord it will be. Since we’ve been focused on minor keys lately, I’ll start with the minor chord.

Minor chords have the following pattern:

• Four semitones and five semitones. There are four semitones between the 1 and 3m notes, and five semitones between the 3 and 5 notes.

When you count intervals, you always include the starting note. So including the root note of the chord, you would count four frets up in pitch to find the next note in your chord if you had no idea what that should be.

Try this - if you were going to play an E minor chord, pluck the open E string (sixth string). Then counting that open note as the first note, count up four frets on that string. You would land on the third fret, which is G. This is the 3m note in the E minor chord (E, G, B).

I’m going to have to come back to this example tomorrow to finish fleshing it out. You’re smart - you know what’s going to happen with the second interval in the chord. If you count the half steps (semitones), you’re going to find yourself on a B note.

I’ll show you tomorrow. Have a good one!

Peace~

Dave