Introducing the chords in a major key signature

If you want to start writing music, one of the first decisions you’ll need to make is which chord progressions you want to have as the foundation of your song. There are a couple of ways you can get started in this.

One way is to look up advice on which chord progressions other musicians have used and try them out for yourself. YouTube is great for this! There are a ton of videos by musicians and music educators sharing their favourite chord progressions that you might want to try out. If that sounds fun to you, that may be all you need to get started!

Another way to get started is to learn a bit about how chords work so that you can choose chords yourself that are more tailored to the emotions you’re trying to express in your music. And that’s the challenge I’d like to help you with today.

In today’s post, I’d like to introduce you to how we build chords in the major key signature, and also how you can think about chords to create your own chord progressions that result in music that is meaningful to you.

So if that sounds good to you, let’s get started!

Where do chords come from?

All the chords that could possibly be used in a song are made up of triads from within that song’s key signature. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of triad, a triad is the most basic chord shape, it’s three notes stacked on top of each other, where each note is three notes up from the one below it. Triads must follow the sharps and flats of the key signature in order to be accurate. In the video above, I work with C major because it has no sharps or flats and is the easiest key to follow.

The major chords in a major key

Songs that are written in a major key predominantly sound happy — that’s because these songs predominantly use major chords within their chord progressions.

This can lead many people to think that a major key signature is mostly made up of major chords, but that’s not actually the case. In any major key signature, there are only three major chords: those are the triads built on steps 1, 4, and 5. Note that in the video, when I label these chords I use capital Roman numerals.

These chords do a lot of heavy lifting in major key songs! They’re holding down all the happy feelings of the music, when there are actually more non-major chords than major chords in a key signature.

What this means for music writing is that if you want to write a happy song, you’re going to rely on these three chords a lot. So if you’re just getting into this for the first time, I recommend sitting at your piano and figuring out what the 1, 4 and 5 chords are to whatever key signature you want to work with, because you’re going to be relying on those chords the very most.

If you want to try these chords out in more of a song style but you’re totally new to piano, I recommend my earlier video “My favourite rhythm pattern for beginners” which gives your hands something to do while you try these chords out and you can practice going back and forth between these chords in a way that actually sounds like music :)

The minor chords in a major key

So what’s going on with the rest of these chords? Well, in a happy coincidence, to balance the three major chords within the major key signature, we also have three minor chords, which are the sad-sounding ones. They are found on steps 2, 3, and 6 of the scale. When we label minor chords, as in the video above, we use lower case Roman numerals.

If you were to look closely at most music that’s written in a major key, minor chords are used, but less often than the major chords. Minor chords bring a bit of emotional complexity to the music — they provide a little bit of tension that gets resolved when go back to our happy-sounding major chords.

If we didn’t use any minor chords in our song, and only used major chords, we’d have a song that sounded unabashedly happy. Think “You Are My Sunshine” — that song only uses major chords. It’s a pretty song, very bright, but if we look really closely at it, it’s kind of emotionally one-dimensional. It’s only happy.

Compare that with another love song, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles. That song is written in a major key but uses some minor chords as well. The minor chords help express some of the tension that comes with love — tension that ends up being resolved by the end of the song.

Choosing your own chord progressions

So, knowing all this, the first thing I’d encourage you to think about when you’re writing your own chord progressions is, what kind of feelings do you want to convey through this song? If you want your song to feel eternally optimistic, you’ll probably want to stay within the 1-4-5 chords. If there’s room for pining or disappointment or some other tension, maybe try adding some minor chords and see if they feel right.

We just have to be careful not to overdo it with minor chords in a song that’s ultimately meant to be happy. Think of minor chords as a seasoning, not the full flavour. The longer we linger on minor chords, the more negative the pull is for our listener. For a song to register to the listener as being in a major key, we need to skew the balance toward major chords.

Next steps

In my next post, I’d like to get deeper into the details on how to translate your feelings into chord progressions. But before you get there, it would be really beneficial if you paused and put some of the ideas we just discussed into practice.

Start by thinking about what kind of song you’d like to write. I’m not talking about actually planning or writing anything yet. Just decide, what kind of emotions would you like to convey through your music? Will your song be eternally happy? Or do you want to include any feelings of tension? If so, which tense feelings might those be?

Once you have a somewhat clear direction of what you want to do with your music, check out my next post, How to translate your feelings into chord progressions.

If you have any questions about any of this, please leave a comment on this YouTube video. Have fun!