17: Easy Diatonic Chords Guitar Lesson

In this episode you're going to learn about diatonic chords on the guitar!

By the end of this episode you will know what diatonic chords are, how they are constructed, and how to apply them to your chord progressions!

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Thank you for listening!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the guitar Jet Podcast, where you'll skyrocket your
knowledge of theory, techniques and fundamentals for guitar. Welcome to
the guitar Jet Podcast. I am your chief guitar instructor,
Miles and today I'm going to give you an easy
diatonic chords guitar lesson. This is accompanied by a tab
on my website guitar jet dot com. And if you

(00:23):
like this episode, tell a friend about it and consider
subscribing to the show. Now let's dive right into the lesson,
and by the end of this you are going to
know what diatonic chords are, how they are constructed, and
how to apply them to your chord progressions. So let's
start by defining the word diatonic. Diatonic simply means from

(00:49):
the scale. Diatonic chords refer to chords from a particular scale,
which means chords you can construct and harmonize using the
notes from the scale. The easiest way to understand this
is by looking at the diatonic chords in the C
major scale, which is the most common scale in Western harmony.

(01:09):
So let's look at the notes in the key of
C major, and those notes are CDFGAB. They're all natural notes,
and now we need to harmonize these notes by turning
each degree of the C major scale into a triad,
which is a chord with three notes. And to build
a triad from each degree, you'll stack the notes in thirds.

(01:33):
Put simply, this means stacking every other note. For example,
if your first note is the note C, and you
want to turn it into the C major triad, you'll
stack notes in thirds, which gives you the notes C, E,
and G. You'll do this for each degree of the scale,
and harmonizing this way will give you the diatonic chords

(01:56):
in the scale. And the good news is every major
scale has the exact same order of diatonic chords. Diatonic
triads in order are major minor, minor, major, major, minor diminished.
I want you to say that out loud and memorize
that major minor, minor, major, major, minor diminished, and in

(02:19):
the C major scale, this gives you the diatonic triads
C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major,
A minor, and B diminished. And then the next thing
we need to address are Roman numerals in diatonic harmony.
Each diatonic chord is given a number in order from

(02:43):
one to seven to understand where it lies in your
diatonic scale, and these numbers are depicted with Roman numerals.
For major chords, the numeral is capitalized, so for example,
you'd have like a capital I, and then for minor chords,
the numeral is lower case, and that looks like a

(03:04):
lower case I. So an example chord progression would be
like a one four five major chord progression, and that
would give you a capitalized numerals since all the chords
are major, so that would give you a capital I,
and then for the four chord give you a capital

(03:25):
I capital V, and for the five chord, it give
you that capital V. And then in the key of
C major, this will give you the chords one C major,
four F major, and five G major. Now, if you
want to add a minor chord to the progression, you'll

(03:45):
make it lower case. For example, if we add the
minor six, then we could use the progression one minor,
six four five. This gives you the chords one C major,
six A minor, four F major, and five G major.

(04:06):
The minor chord uses two lowercase letters, a small V
and a small I, which creates the minor sixth numeral.
When those are combined, the lowercase letters have you distinguish
the minor numeral from the capitalized major numerals in the progression.

(04:27):
And from here you'll just want to start practicing and
playing diatonic chords. And on my website with the example
that I link to in the description, I have an
example for you to play where you'll just run through
all the different common ways, well several common ways to

(04:49):
play diatonic chords on the guitar in order, going from
C major to D minor, t E minor, F major
to G major to A minor to the and that
is it for today's episode of the Guitar Jet podcast.
Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you
have a fantastic day.