We are going to begin our study of chords construction with “Chromatic Scales” and “intervals“. Everything you need to know about music starts from here. Well, we are not going to make you “theologians”, so I’ll just cover very briefly what you need to know to understand “practical guitar theory”.

The good news is that this is probably the driest – get through this and the rest is easy!

Simply put, the chromatic scale are your musical alphabets, and an Interval in music describes the distance (or pitch) between 2 notes.

Chromatic Scale

In music, we have a total of 12 notes which when put in a running sequence one after another is called a Chromatic Scale.This is just like your ABCs. Every chord and scale in music can be derived from the Chromatic Scale.

The first note is the “Root” of the Chromatic Scale, just like the first note in the scale is the name of the scale:

C Chromatic Scale: C  C# D  D#  E  F  F#  G  G#  A  A#  B  C

Similarly, if we start from E, we have E Chromatic Scale:

E  F  F#  G  G#  A  A#  B  C  C# D  D#  E

If you look at the notes, there are a total of 12 unique note names.

7 of the notes are called “Natural Notes” and they are C, D, E, F, G, A, B. 5 of the notes are called “Accidentals” and they have the symbols “#” or “b” following them. The natural notes are basically all the white keys you see on the piano, and the accidentals, the black keys.

Which symbol to use depends on whether you are moving up or down in  pitch. They are essentially the same (pitch wise) and are also called “enharmonic“. “#” will be used if you are referencing an accidental with a higher pitch than the previous natural note, and “b” will be used if you are moving lower in pitch. It’s more like “musician lingo”, so don’t be too bothered by it.

Intervals

Intervals describe the distance (or pitch) between 2 notes. There are a few common “intervallic qualities” used to describe them, namely:

Unison (represented by “U“), minor (represented by “m“), major (represented by “M“), perfect (represented by “P“, and Octave (”O“)

Every finger you press on the guitar string within a fret corresponds to one of these notes. For example, pressing 2nd fret 5th string gives you a “B” note. Pressing on the 4th fret of the same string gives you a C# note, and so on.

The pitch between the “C” note and the “D” note is called a “major second”, or “M2″ – this describes the pitch quality, which has a distance on the guitar of 2 frets apart. The pitch between the “C” note and the next “C” note on the same string is called an “Octave”, or “O” – distance of 12 frets apart.

If you are confused now, you’re normal. Otherwise you’re a genius! I was lost when I first learned it! Just know that intervals are like the term to describe the distance between Singapore and Malaysia, Singapore to Thailand or Thailand to USA, etc.

At the end of the day, for the purpose of understanding chord construction, just remember the following 4 things:

1) adjacent notes have a distance of “m2” or  “half step/tone”

2) notes 2 frets apart have a distance of “M2” or “whole step/tone”

3) “m3” is the distance between 2 notes with a distance (or interval) of 3 frets apart. It has a “sad“, “dark” or “dull” feel when played one after another.

4) “M3” is the distance between 2 notes with a distance (or interval) of 4 frets apart. It has a “happy“, “bright” or “cheerful” feel when played one after another.

m3 and M3 are the core building blocks of diatonic chords construction – which is the only reason why I even want to talk about it.

Now we’re ready to go on to talk about diatonic triads, which are the basic G, C, D, etc chords that you see in songs. But before that, let’s touch very briefly on Major Scales..

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