How chords are built (one recipe, endless music)
Every chord — from a campfire G major to a jazzy m7♭5 — is built from one recipe: take a root note and stack thirds on top. The type of thirds decides the flavour.
The four triads
Starting from any root, count semitones:
- Major (root + 4 + 3): bright, resolved — C, G, D.
- Minor (root + 3 + 4): darker, inward — Am, Em.
- Diminished (root + 3 + 3): tense, wants to resolve — B°.
- Augmented (root + 4 + 4): dreamlike, unstable — C+.
Notice the pattern: only the middle note changes between major and minor. That one semitone is the entire difference between happy and sad.
Add another third: seventh chords
Stack one more third and you get four-note chords that drive blues, jazz and soul: the dominant 7 (G7) pulls home to C; maj7 (Cmaj7) floats; m7 (Am7) relaxes. Sus chords break the recipe on purpose — Dsus4 replaces the third with a fourth, creating a suspension that begs to resolve.
Same chord, different instruments
The formula never changes; only the layout does. Our chord pages show each voicing on the fretboard and on a piano keyboard with the left hand playing the root octave and the right hand playing the chord — compare C on guitar and C on ukulele: different grips, identical notes.
Make it stick
Play a chord, then sing the notes bottom to top — root, third, fifth. Then test yourself in ear training: level 1 asks you to tell major from minor, and by level 4 you will recognise sevenths and sus chords blind. Ten minutes a day beats an hour on Sunday.