Basic And Easy Guitar Chords :How They Work

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Songs in a specific key use chords that are built on various scale steps of that root scale. Basic guitar chords consist of three notes that when grouped together are called triads.  Most beginner guitar songs using easy guitar chords are I, IV, V songs (the use of Roman Numerals is fairly common in music), meaning they use chords built off of the first, fourth, and fifth scale steps.

Since we’re working in the key of C, and we already have the “I” chord (C E G), we’ll build the IV and V chords using the same “skip a note” triad building formula.

So, the IV chord starts of the fourth scale step (F), skips G, adds A, skips B and adds C: creating the triad: F A C. And the V chord starts on the fifth scale step creating: G B D.

And the V chord starts on the fifth scale step (G), skips the A and adds B.  Because of the way a major scale is constructed, the I, IV and V chords are major chords.

So playing in 4/4 time, and playing one measure for each time you see a chord, you can play this progression (which repeats over and over again):

I = major chord

II = minor chord

III = minor chord

IV = major chord

V = major chord

VI = minor chord

VII = diminish chord

So now, you know how to play guitar using this sound formula to transpose the songs