Yamaha Portatone, PSR-270 manual Intervals of the Scale, Other Chords

AUTO ACCOMPANIMENT — THE STYLE MODE

WRITING CHORD NAMES

Knowing how to read and write chord names is an easy yet invaluable skill. Chords are often written in a kind of shorthand that makes them instantly recognizable (and gives you the free- dom to play them with the voicing or inversion that you prefer). Once you understand the basic principles of harmony and chords, it’s very simple to use this shorthand to write out the chords of a song.

First, write the root note of the chord in an uppercase letter. If you need to specify sharp or flat, indicate that to the right of the root. The chord type should be indicated to the right as well. Examples for the key of C are shown below.

Major chord	Minor chord	Augmented chord	Diminished chord
C	Cm	Caug	Cdim

For simple major chords, the type is omitted.

One important point: Chords are made up of notes “stacked” on top of each other, and the stacked notes are indicated in the chord name of the chord type as a number — the number being the distance of the note from the root. (See the keyboard diagram below.) For example, the minor 6th chord includes the 6th note of the scale, the major 7th chord has the 7th note of the scale, etc.

The Intervals of the Scale

To better understand the intervals and the numbers used to represent them in the chord name, study this diagram of the C major scale:

Root

Other Chords

Dominant 7th (flatted 7th)

C D E F G A B C D E F

	4th	Octave	11th
3rd		7th	9th
2nd	5th	6th

Csus4 C7 Cm7 CM7

5th

4th

Dominant

Major

Dominant

Minor

7th

Major

7th

chord

7th

chord

chord

Cm7b5

Cm6

C(9)

Cdim7

* Bbb = A

Dominant

Diminished

Minor

6th

9th

Diminished

Diminished

7th

chord

chord

7th

chord

(double

flatted 7th)

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