How to Build a Major Chord on Guitar

Chord building can boost your guitar knowledge by laying out "recipes" for chords on the fretboard. For a major chord, it's pretty straightforward to figure out what's involved: the major chord includes the first, third and fifth scale note.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Get your major chromatic scale written down. For the key of C, it goes like this: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. The key of C is easy because there are no sharp or flat scale notes in the major scale. Other key scales may include more sharps or flats.
2. Select your first scale note. The first scale note is the note the key is "named" after, so for the key of C, it's the low C note, the first one in the sequence. You'll be adding this note to your major chord.
3. Add your third scale note. The process is easy, once you've drawn out your chromatic scale: just skip two notes up and select the third note in the scale--in this case, E.
4. Find the fifth scale note. Again, you just want to count your scale notes from the left and select your fifth one.
5. Take these 3 notes and add them to your fretboard. In all cases, your notes will repeat themselves, because to build a true major chord, you want only these notes and no others. Find a note on each string that corresponds to one of these selected notes, or leave strings out of your chord. Either way, you're building the major chord of your selected key.