Steps to Creating a Major Guitar Chord

Creating a major guitar chord is the next step after you get through the first learning curves of playing a guitar. So now you’ve been playing your guitar for awhile, and you’ve gotten comfortable with the names of the strings, the notes on the guitar and the notes of the major scales. So what now? Now it’s time to learn the very simple process of creating a major guitar chord. To be technically correct we are actually “constructing” chords because we are “building” them using the notes of the major scales.

A major scale is made up of 7 notes (the eighth note is the same as the first note which is called the “octave”, “oct” meaning eight).  These notes are assigned a numerical value in the major scale.  Since there are 7 notes, then we can jump right to the conclusion that there are 7 numbers.  You guessed it, 1 through 7.  So let’s take a look at a simple example of creating a major guitar chord. I will use the C major scale since it has no sharps or flats. The notes of the C major scale are:

Creating a Major Guitar Chord

Steps to creating a major guitar chord

C  D  E  F  G  A  B (just the alphabet starting with c).  So in order, the numerical values would be:

1  2  3  4  5   6  7

Does it get any easier than that? I didn’t think so. So here is the rocket science formula you are going to use to creating a major guitar chord in any key:

Take the 1^st note (which is called the “root” or “tonic” note), the third note and the 5^th note and play them all at the same time.  You see the definition of a chord is simply “Three or more pitches played simultaneously”

So from the example above, the 1^st, 3^rd, and 5^th notes respectively are C, E and G.  Now go find those three notes on your guitar and play them together and you just constructed a C major chord.  To make it easy I’ll tell you where they are for this one.  The C is on the 3^rd fret of the 5^th string, the E is on the 2^nd fret of the 4^th string and the G is an open 3^rd string (just play the g string without fretting any notes). Congratulations you just constructed and played a C major chord! Creating a major guitar chord is easy eh!

This formula is universal for creating a major guitar chord (or any instrument) and can be applied exactly the same way to any major scale. Here is another example to demonstrate that. The G major scale has one sharp which is the F#.  So here is the G major scale:

G A B C D E F#

1  2 3 4  5 6 7

So looking at this scale we now know that the 1^st, 3^rd and 5^th notes are G,B and D respectively.  So if you find those three notes on your guitar and play them simultaneously, you will have played a G major chord.

Creating a major guitar chord the verdict

Guitar playing is all about practice and dedication and learning to play guitar songs will become easy through time.I hope you are now able to see just how simple it is to creating a major guitar chord.

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