The Chords of a Key
What chords are going to sound good in a particular key? We’ve gone to the trouble of figuring out what notes are in that key, you figure, probably chords that are built out of those notes are gonna sound good.
You’re right. So let’s start in the key of C and build ourselves some chords.
We’ll start on each note in the key and build chords by skipping over every other note. (You may remember that exercise from the article on chord construction.)
| C - E - G | C major |
| D - F - A | D minor |
| E - G - B | E minor |
| F - A - C | F major |
| G - B - D | G major |
| A - C - E | A minor |
| B - D - F | B diminished |
OK, how about the key of D? The key of D has two sharps: F# and C#
| D - F# - A | D major |
|
E - G - B |
E minor |
| F# - A - C# | F# minor |
| G - B - D | G major |
| A - C# - E | A major |
| B - D - F# | B minor |
| C# - E - G | C# diminished |
You’ll notice that in both keys, the first chord is a major, the next two are minor, etc. It makes sense that both keys (and all keys) follow the same pattern, since all the notes have the same internal distance from the root no matter what key you are in.