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Understanding Diatonic Chords is as close as we'll get to a "magic songwriting formula". This will "solve" the chord progressions of a great majority of songs in popular music, and let us begin to dissect what's going on when we move from chord to chord.
This is the piece of the puzzle a ton of beginner songwriters are looking for when they want to write something catchy.
When a song is written to be centered around the C Major chord (for example), it is said to be in the Key of C.
That means we'd use the C Major scale for improvisation over it, and typically the melody of the song will use C Major as well.
But what it also means, is that if the song is Diatonic, the other chords used will also be made from notes of the C Major Scale.
That's what a Diatonic Chord Progression is - a chord progression where all of the notes used can be traced back to a single scale.
So the question becomes, how do we know which chords work within a given scale? Let's continue using C Major as an example.
If we start our Major Scale shape on the 8th fret of the Low E, we get the C Major Scale, as shown below with the scale degrees, and notes marked.
If you know your Triads, then you know that off of the Root Note, we can build a 1-3-5, giving us a C Major Triad. Okay, nothing too surprising there. Of course we can play a C Major Chord with the C Major Scale.
But, what happens if we try it from the next note? Let's build a 2-4-6! That's D, F, and A, giving us a D Minor Triad.
Now we know - you can play D Minor when in the Key of C.
If we continue along through all 7 notes, we will discover the following chords:
1-3-5 (C-E-G): C Major
2-4-6 (D-F-A): D Minor
3-5-7 (E-G-B): E Minor
4-6-8 (F-A-C): F Major
5-7-9 (G-B-D): G Major
6-8-10 (A-C-E): A Minor
7-9-11 (B-D-F): B Diminished
Check it out! The diminished triad has a place within the Major Scale.
Now we have a list of chords that we can be 100% sure will work great along with C Major. That doesn't mean you HAVE to stick to those chords only (where's the fun in that!), but they're relatively surefire, and many famous songs are entirely constructed from Diatonic Chords.
So, we found all the Diatonic Chords of C Major. Do we have to repeat that laborious process every time we want to find the Diatonic Chords of a Major Scale? No, not at all!
Because it always follows the same pattern:
Major, Minor, Minor, Major, Major, Minor, Diminished.
So, for example, let's try it with the D Major Scale. You first need to find the 7 notes it's built from, that's:
D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#
Great, now we apply that same pattern to those 7 notes, and we can find all the Diatonic Chords of D Major:
D Major, E Minor, F# Minor, G Major, A Major, B Minor, C# Diminished.
Easy!
Now let's take it one step further, and look at this with 7th chords. If you don't understand yet how to Build A Chord, start there.
Looking at C Major again, let's repeat the same process except this time, we'll use 1-3-5-7. After working through all 7 notes, we get:
1-3-5-7 (C-E-G-B): C Major 7th
2-4-6-8 (D-F-A-C): D Minor 7th
3-5-7-9 (E-G-B-D): E Minor 7th
4-6-8-10 (F-A-C-E): F Major 7th
5-7-9-11 (G-B-D-F): G Dominant 7th
Now we finally see how the Dominant 7th chord fits into all this. The fifth Diatonic Chord in the Major Scale is a Dom7!
6-8-10-12 (A-C-E-G): A Minor 7th
7-9-11-13 (B-D-F-A): B Half Diminished, AKA The Minor 7th Flat 5th.
The Half Diminished Chord is a new one, CLICK HERE to read all about it.
Of course, you are welcome to extend these chords further into 9th territory and beyond, and the results will still be Diatonic.
Now, if you take some time to play around with Diatonic Chords, you will find that while they all sound relatively good together, you can't necessarily play them in any order and come up with a really compelling chord progression.
Once you have a solid handle on Major Diatonics, you can CLICK HERE to dive into the slightly more nuanced world of Minor Diatonics.
If you made it this far, congrats! This was perhaps the most important lesson you'll ever have in learning to write songs.
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