From Scales to Chords: The Building Blocks of Music
Music scales give us the raw materials of melody, but they also serve another powerful purpose: they are the foundation of chords. Once you understand how scales work, building chords becomes a natural next step. In this article, we’ll explore how chords are formed, why they sound the way they do, and how they connect back to the scales you already learned. What is chord? A chord is a group of notes played together. Most chords contain three notes, called a triad, but chords can also include four, five, or even more notes depending on the style of music. The simplest and most common chords are built by stacking thirds — choosing every other note from a scale. For example, in the C major scale: C – D – E – F – G – A – B If you start on C and pick every other note, you get: C → E → G. This creates a C major chord, one of the most basic and widely used chords in music. Why Stacking Thirds Works Scales provide a set of notes that naturally sound g...
