By: Deepak Eapen
This is a pretty easy song for beginners and a good song/exercise for learning and improving chord strumming on guitar. This song is demonstrated by Marty Schwartz, one of the most popular guitar tutors on Youtube who is an excellent teacher who can break down a difficult piece into easily learnable chunks. And obviously, I am a great fan of his lessons.
This song has some very basic and easy chords and progression, but at the same time pretty melodious to play and listen to. Apart from learning the chord progressions of this song, this article will help you understand how to build these chords from their corresponding major scales and also playing them on different positions of the fret board. In this lesson you will learn to build Major Scales, Minor Chords and Major Chords and also learn the chords of this song.
Essentially there are five easy chords used in this song that are played in different combinations in the Verse, Chorus and Bridge sections, and they are Am, C, D, F and G Chords are built from their corresponding major scales, so the first step would be to learn how to build a major scale.
The formula for building a Major Scale is W-W-H-W-W-W-H (“W” represents Whole Step or Whole Tone which is equivalent to 2 frets on guitar and “H” represents Half Step or Semi-tone which is equivalent to one fret)
Building A Major Scale
To build an Am chord you will first need to build an A Major Scale. So let’s build an A Major Scale from the Major Scale formula above, A Major Scale: A B C# D E F# G# A
Minor Chord Formula
The formula for building a Minor Chord is 1(R)-b3-5, where R is the Root Note of the scale, which implies that a Minor chord is built from the 1st, flattened 3rd and 5th notes of a Major Scale. Flattening a note means lowering it by a semi tone.
The interval between the 1st, 2nd and b3rd degrees (or notes) of a Major Scale is 1 and ½ tones or 1 Whole Step and a Semi Tone or is 3 frets apart and is known as a Minor Third and the interval between the b3rd, 4th and 5th degrees is 2 whole steps or 4 frets apart and is known theoretically as a Major Third.
So, a Minor Chord is the combination of a Minor Third and Major Third and is known as a Minor Triad.
A Minor Chord
If you apply this formula on the A Major Scale you will get an A Minor Chord as A-C-E. (C# when flattened becomes a natural C note) where 1st note is A, Flattened 3rd (C#) is C and 5th note is E
Building C Major Scale
By applying the above Major Scale formula, we get the C Major Scale as C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C.
Major Chord Formula
Major Chord formula is quite similar to a minor chord formula, without a flattened 3rd degree. Therefore, the formula is 1-3-5 or R-3-5 where R stands for the Root Note of the scale.
A Major Chord is the combination of a Major third (C to E) and a Minor third (E to G) and is known as a Major Triad.
C Major Chord
By applying this formula on the C Major Scale we get a C Major Chord as C-E-G
In the same way we can build all the remaining scales and chords by applying the respective formulas.
D Major Scale: D-E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D
D Major Chord: D-F#-A
F Major Scale: F-G-A-Bb-C-D-E-F
F Major Chord: F-A-C
G Major Scale: G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G
G Major Chord: G-B-D
I hope this lesson helped you in learning the chords of a melodious song as well as understanding Major Scale and Chord Building to some extent. Please do let me know your feedback by leaving a comment.
