https://banjobenclark.com/lessons/essential-chord-theory-guitar
This is a little deeper than Saturday morning cartoons, but also much more useful.
Discuss the Guitar lesson: Essential Chord Theory
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Can you post the guitar tab to the tune at the end of the inversions video?
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Sure, here you go! That’s a song I wrote for my dad called “A Little More Like You”
Gtr-LittleMoreLikeYou.tef (2.1 KB)
Gtr-LittleMoreLikeYou.pdf (74.8 KB)
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Awesome, Thanks so much! You are the best.
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“Not those kinds of models” 
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Could you show finger and fret position for these inversion cords?
This might be an off the wall question and I might be overthinking it but it’s driving me crazy. If the I, IV and V are the major chords and the II, III and VI are minor cords with the VII being the diminished, then why is the major chord comprised of I, III and V instead of I, IV and V? I guess what’s bothering me is that the III of the major chord is really the root note to a minor chord in the Gmaj chord scale right? I could have this all wrong.
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Hey Jay,
Chord tones and chords are entirely different things. A triad (a chord with three unique notes, which is what we’re talking about here) is always made up of root, third, and fifth. The third and fifth can be altered to create minor and diminished triads (e.g. a minor triad has a flat, or minor, third). Root, third, fifth, those are chord tones – individual notes (not chords) that make up a chord.
When we talk about the “I chord” or the “IV chord” or the “V” chord, we mean chords, not chord tones. Each of these chords are called “major”, “minor”, “diminished”, etc. based on their chord tones.
The cause of your confusion (and many other folks!) is that you’re getting chord tones mixed up with chords.
Let’s look at that in more detail:
Any major triad, no matter what its root is, always consists of its root, its major third, and its fifth (intervals simply as they exist, with no respect to the scale or key) Any minor triad always consists of its root, its flat third, and its fifth.
The G major “chord scale” that you mentioned (and I think Ben might cover in the lesson; I haven’t watched it), is simply chords that as a rule, use only notes from the G major scale as their chord tones. We say this means these chords are “diatonic”. They end up being very common choices in the key of G.
If you follow this rule, and base chords on each note in the G major scale, using only other notes from the scale as the third and fifth chord tones in those chords, you force each of those chords to take on a certain chord quality: major (in the case of the I, IV, and V chords), minor (II, III, and VI) or diminished (VII).
In short:
A key contains seven “diatonic” chords.
A chord contains three notes, or chord tones. (Note: I have been using “chord” interchangeably with “triad” here, which is not comprehensive – a triad is a three note chord, and chords can have more than three notes. But in this discussion, we are not talking about four, five, six note chords, etc. yet.)
Any major chord is comprised of root, major third, and fifth chord tones because that is the definition of a major chord.
If you are only allowed to use notes in the scale as your chord tones, you get the seven diatonic chords mentioned above. Three of these chords end up being major, three end up being minor, and one ends up being diminished.
The I, IV, and V chords in a key are the three chords that ended up being major because of this rule.
In even shorter:
Notes < Chords < Key
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I’ll see if I can make it even more simple.
A key is a group of musical notes identified by its root musical note.
The root establishes the boundaries for this group for the purpose of representation. Meaning, the notes, for this group represented, starts with a root and ends with a root.
There are 12 tonal notes in this root boundary, that is, 12 tonal notes between a root note and the next root note, with root note included. However, only 8 of those notes forms the musical notes for a key. Hence the term octave for this group of 8 musical notes.
For example, for key of G, the below are the musical notes.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
G A B C D E F# G
These notes repeat in the next Octave.
Each one here is a note and NOT a chord.
A song in a key of G can be played out using these notes.
To add color to the song, you introduce harmony using appropriate chords for the notes that you play.
These chords are diatonic chords as @Michael_Mark described. For a chord to be a diatonic chord, it has to be formed using only the musical notes in the key of that song.
With all these in mind, let us get into diatonic chord creation.
Chords are created using some formulas. Chords can have 3 or more notes but for the diatonic chord discussion, let us restrict ourselves to 3 note chords, which are also called triads.
The 3 note diatonic chord (triad) formation formula is:
First, Third and Fifth
Forming a chord using this formula for G note (Refer also to the note sequence in a key mentioned earlier)
G B D - is G major chord
Similarly forming a chord for A note
A C E - is A minor chord
[Notice here the A major chord cannot be formed here with A (first/root note for A), C# third/major note, E fifth/perfect note) using the above-mentioned formula as C# note does not belong in the G key musical notes. Instead, what would fit in the formula is A (first/root for A), C third/minor note, E fifth/perfect note, thus forming A minor chord for the A note in the key of G.]
Similarly forming a chord for B note
B D F# - is B minor chord
etc. etc.
The diatonic chords thus formed are:
I ii iii IV V vi vii
The upper cases are major chords, lower cases are minor chords except for the vii chord which is a diminished.
Thus for the key of G, related major and minor and diminished are:
G major, A minor, B minor, C major, D major, E minor, F# diminished.
Now when a song is played in the key of G and touches say for instance a “D” note, the harmony (diatonic) chord could be either G major chord, B minor chord or any other diatonic chord in the key of G that uses the “D” note.
So, notes in the key of a song, notes in the the (diatonic) chord formation, and the set of chords for a key with its related major, minor and diminished should not be confused one with another.
Hope this helps.
That was really interesting. I know about chords and inversions, but had never thought of using the inversions to make chords easier to play, or had walking the bass notes changes the sound of song.
My biggest weak point right now is switching chords, I’m still very slow at that. I’m still working at getting better, but it’s handy to know there are other ways work around that if need be.
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