Please.

 Stop. I’m answering this question solely because the 36 foregoing answers

by all-too-charitable and well-meaning guitar players appear to have largely declined
to administer the metaphorical “slap upside the the head” that you, the querent, so
richly deserve. Just where do you get off asking serious people a silly question like
this? Give me a break. (…as in the Van Halen song, “One break comin’ up!”)
Anyway, as no one who knows me personally could categorize me as a “serious”, or
even particularly good, guitarist, I’m perfectly willing to attempt to give you “what
for” without running afoul of Quora’s niceness policy if I can be so constrained.

The disingenuous fatuousness of this question offends me on several levels, practical,

theoretical, esthetic and personal. You might as well ask something like, “How can I
become a fabulously successful movie director without studying film or even watching
a lot of movies?”  Are you serious? There are many ways to say what must be done in
the musician’s idiom and other subcultures, like, “payin’ your dues”, “learning the
ropes” and “gettin’ in the groove”. These expressions all convey the same idea: You
can’t get good at anything without doing the fundamental groundwork of
learning the basic skills of your craft.

So, do you get it now? Do you want to know what will be the end result of
stubbornly resisting all knowledge of scales and chords? You will never be any
good. You will always  suck as a guitar player. Any notion of virtuosity will be
delusional. The only people who will ever think that you can even play marginally
well will be those who are as ignorant and undiscerning as you are. Your “music” will
be nothing more than the pathetically grating cacophony cranked out by obnoxious
buskers. Anyone with a shred of musicality will wince, cringe and quicken their pace
as they hasten to escape the torture of hearing you play. It may sound harsh to say
this, but the cold, sharp reality of your future as a guitarist is the only remedy to your
unfathomable ignorance.

Just to reveal how little you know, it behooves me to point out that you seem to
think that understanding scales and playing chords are somehow two different skills.
This may come as a shock to you, but chords are nothing more than combinations of
notes in scales. Got that? The two ideas are inextricably bound together. What do
you think that great guitarists are thinking about as their fingers fly over the
fingerboard in a solo? Did you think it was just random notes that they think
magically sound good when played in close proximity to each other? Is it all just trial
and error? Hmmm?

I’m not going to try to explain what’s really going on to someone who is capable of
assuming that learning and playing chords and scales is unnecessary. I know it’s not
and so does everyone else who has played guitar for more than a few weeks. If you
can’t accept that, further discussion is pointless. You might as well stop reading now,
get rid of that $100-dollar guitar your aunt gave you for your birthday and go back
to listening to mindless drivel on your audio streaming app. There is no hope for
you. Begone!

On the other hand, if you are a novice, an aspiring guitar player who is overwhelmed
by the lugubrious and totally unnecessary complexity of conventional guitar
instruction, I hear you. Here’s the short advice. Do and learn these things and you will
eventually be able to call yourself a guitar player, but only if you persist. (“Uh, excuse
me, sir. I’m a stranger to New York. How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” The answer from
an old man in a tuxedo carrying an instrument case: “Practice,  practice, practice!”)
Start at the top of this list and don’t bother with anything further down until you feel
comfortable executing the skills at the step you are on.

 Learn to keep time. Even if all you can do at first is sound a single note
on your guitar or beat on the back with your hand, learn to do that before
worrying about what notes or chords you must play.
 Learn chords. You can play a rudimentary accompaniment for a vocalist
by strumming sequences of chords, but only if you can do that with some
kind of basic, steady rhythm.
 As you play the chords and sing or accompany a vocalist, play the notes
in the chord individually. This if often referred to as “outlining a chord”.
Most of the time, these notes are notes in the scale of the key that the song
is set. When they are not, the are what is technically referred to as
“accidentals”. They are not “accidents”; they are being played for a reason.
You can’t understand what is going on until you start learning the theory
behind these constructs.
 Playing notes in a scale isn’t just about “do, re, mi…” You don’t have to
always play the notes in ascending and descending order the way they
teach you. What’s important to learn is not the same as on a piano. That is,
it’s more important for a guitarist to understand scalar intervals than to
know exactly what note is being sounded. This means that you can put off
learning conventional staff notation until you have a solid understanding of
scales and intervals. But, the sooner you learn to “read music”, the sooner
scales and intervals will make sense to you. Tablature can show you what to
do, but it does little to reveal the structure of music bound up in the
construction of your instrument. Do you have any idea why the strings are
tuned the way they are? Why are banjos, mandolins and violins tuned
differently? Without scales, none of this can ever make any sense to you.
So, learn it or get rid of that guitar right now.
 Scales are sequences of notes ascending or descending in pitch between
two notes whose sonic frequency has an exact ratio of 1:2. That is, the
higher-pitched note has exactly twice the oscillating frequency of the
lower-pitched note. This is why A220, the note sounded at 220Hz, and
 A440, the note sounded at 440Hz, are both called “A”. Musically speaking,
they are the same note. Musicians call this range of frequencies an “octave”.
This is an important concept.
 Musicologists define any scale as the two notes bounding the octave and
the set of other notes defined between them. What gives a scale its
particular sound is the ratios of intervening notes’ frequencies to the “tonic”
(the base note) and to each other. This “distance” between notes is referred
to as a “musical interval”.
 The musical intervals of Western (world, not cowboy) music are locked
into twelve evenly-spaced logarithmic intervals between the octave notes.
This means that the frequency of each tone has a ratio to the next tone of
1:1.0594630943592952645618252949463 (or, 1 to the 12th root of 2). If you
take that second number in the ratio and multiply it by itself eleven times in
succession, you’ll get 2. You don’t have to memorize that number; just
know what it is and why it exists. The 12 notes in that range from one note
to the next octave are called the “Western diatonic scale”. That means
“twelve-tone” scale.
 To make things easy and allow people to play music together, musicians
decided to construct instruments that could only play notes in this 12-tone
scheme. (It’s 13 if you count both the tonic and the octave above, but that’s
also the first note of the scale for the octave above, so you don’t need to
count it twice.) Pianos and all keyboard instruments use the same
arrangement of the 12 tones with 7 white keys and 5 black keys per octave.
(Occasionally, you’ll see the colors swapped, or different colors used, but
this doesn’t change the notes sounded in any way.) Guitars and other
fretted instruments sound the same 12 notes, too, but all the fret positions
usually look the same except for ornamentation which serves as a visual
reference.
 The distance between adjacent notes in any scale is the ratio of the sonic
frequency of one note to the other. This is called a “scalar interval”. Since
we have restricted ourselves to 12 tones per octave, these scalar intervals
can conveniently be described using the number of “half-steps” between
the two notes. The interval between adjacent keys on a keyboard or fret
positions on a stringed instrument is one “half-step” or “half-tone”. It’s
called a “half-step” or “half-tone” because most of the notes in any scale
are separated by two of these “half” things, so the “step” between them is
considered a “whole” step or tone. Got it?
 So, what is a scale, then? As I said before, it’s any number of other notes
bounded by an octave. That number, “any”, ranges from zero to 11. The
“do, re, mi” scale with which they have been inculcating you since infancy
has 6 intermediary tones. Since there are 11 to choose from, it means to
play that scale, the tonic and the 6 other tones, you have to skip 5 of the
 tones available. Knowing which half-tones to play and which to skip defines
playing a scale. If you don’t want to learn this, then don’t. However, if you
don’t, then you won’t be able to do anything but play random notes
without having any idea of why you are playing them. It’s up to you.
 There are other other scales besides “do, re, mi”, which musicologists call
the “Ionian scale”. They differ in the number of intermediary tones, but
more importantly, they are characterized by varying the number of
intervening half-tones between adjacent notes of the scale. The most
common of these scales also contain exactly 7 tones. You can play these
scales quite easily on a keyboard instrument by starting on any of the 7
white keys in an octave and playing adjacent white keys to the same key in
the next octave up or down the keyboard. You can do this on a guitar, too,
but you have to know which fret positions to skip as you go along. If there
is a black key between a white key and the next white key, you advance by
two fret positions. If there is no intervening black key, you advance by only
one fret position. (Uh, oh. We’re deep into music theory now! You had best
stop reading if you don’t want to know about scales and chords! I suspect,
though, that by now even a mildly inquisitive person will be hooked.)
 What other scales are there? There are only a handful in common use. If
you start on A and play only the white keys, you’ll be play a minor scale,
known classically as the “Aeolian scale”. There are a couple of variants on
this scale, but they are commonly discussed together as “minor scales”.
 There are also “pentatonic scales”. Literate folks know that “penta-” is a
prefix derived from the Greek word for “five”, so a pentatonic scale must be
one that contains only five tones. On a piano, you can play all the
pentatonic scales in Western music by starting and ending on any black
key, and playing only black keys. If you start on E♭, you’re playing the
African one that is the basis of blues and a large body of other modern
music. If you learn how to play sequences of notes in this scale, you are
playing a blues solo. If you learn how to do this, less sophisticated people
will think you are a hotshot, but you really don’t have to be one to pull this
off. The trick is to pick the correct tonic and stick to the scale. This note is
the same as the “key” that blues musicians refer to as the key of the song.
Be warned that two of the five notes in your pentatonic scale are not
consistent with the Ionian scale that everyone (including most non-
musicologist musicians) thinks they are playing in. These two rogue notes
are known as the “blue notes”. Don’t expect an explanation of the interplay
of all the notes used in blues from me here. You didn’t want to know about
scales and chords anyway, did you? If you’re getting lost, welcome to the
club. It only gets more complex as you go along.
 The only other pentatonic scale in common use is the Celtic one used in
Irish and Gaelic music and in most folk music forms in the United States.
 You can play this by starting on F♯ and using only the five black keys. A lot
of people think that it’s the same as “major” or Ionian mode, but there’s
more (or, to be precise, less) to it than that. This scale is confused with
“major” because it is consistent with it. That is, all five tones of this
pentatonic scale are the same as the Ionian scale with the same tonic.
However, since it’s pentatonic (five tones) and not heptatonic (seven tones),
you have to discard two tones. These are the the 4th and the 7th, both
tones that are a half-step away from another tone in the scale. For the
Ionian scale with a tonic of C, these are F and B. By the way, understanding
this scale is a “secret trick” for playing solos in major keys. If you stick to
notes in this scale, any sequence of notes sounds pretty good. More than
that, it tends to sound “totally authentic” to casual listeners who don’t
understand the idea of running a scale that is a subset of the scale used for
the accompaniment. This gag also works well for most North American
musical forms based on the common major scale. (Learn you “boxes” and
try it out. You’ll see what I mean.)
 Most Asian music uses pentatonic scales, I’m not sure which black key
they start on, or if they all use the same one. I’ll leave it a that. Such
discussion is beyond the scope of justifying the study of scales and chords
to aspiring guitar players.
 What about Indian and Middle Eastern music? Oh, boy. They don’t
adhere to the 12-tone scheme at all, using “third-tones” and “quarter-
tones”. Yikes. Have you ever taken a close look at a sitar? The frets are
movable and are not evenly spaced. This is why it sounds “weird” to
Western people. In Arab music, they like to use fretless stringed
instruments so they can play all those “in-between” notes in the context of
our diatonic scale. You can easily avoid these topics if you want, but if you
don’t familiarize yourself with them, you’ll never understand other things
like the Byzantine scale, which means that you won’t have any idea about
why you’re playing the notes you play in the melody line for “Misirlou”, and
you won’t have a clue about what chords to play to accompany it.
(Ignorance is bliss, eh?)
 So, what’s the connection between scales and chords other than the fact
that chords are combinations of different notes in a scale? Well, it’s a little
more complicated than that. Sometimes, a chord contains notes that are
usually skipped over when playing the scale. The standard musician’s
explanation of chord formation is “stacking thirds”. This has nothing to do
with three half steps or dividing anything into three parts. (Actually, it
usually is one or both of those things, but it’s not the reason for calling the
intervals “thirds”.) It has to with using every other note in a scale. So, why
isn’t it called “by twos” or something like that? The term “third” comes from
the distance between the first note in a scale and the third one. (In the past
 people always used one-based counting because they didn’t understand the
concept of zero as an ordinal index. This totally hoses the mathematics of
music theory.) In an Ionian or major scale, that’s four (not three!) half-steps.
Thus, four half-steps is called a “major third”. (I know. It’s really stupid, isn’t
it?) Similarly, the distance between the first and third notes in an Aeolian or
minor scale is exactly three half-steps. Confusingly, this is denoted a “minor
third”. Despite the arcane structure of this nomenclature, the ideas
conveyed are fairly simple. It helps to think about what a chord is and how
it is constructed rather than get wrapped around the axle with
nomenclature or musical notation. Just think about musical intervals as
points along that number line thing that they taught you in elementary
school.
 Right. So, we know that chords are made by skipping half-steps in our
12-tone or “chromatic” scale. That’s another name for looking at all 12
notes in an octave. This is not weird or unusual. You can’t play the Batman
theme without it. Back to “stacking thirds”. If you use the “every other note”
scheme, you can start anywhere in a scale and form a basic chord by
stacking thirds twice, yielding three notes, or as musicologists call it, a
“triad”. Using the Ionian scale, notes 1–3–5 are a major chord. It has a
certain sound that sounds the same as any other major triad because the
interval between the first and second notes of the triad is exactly four half-
steps (a major 3rd) and the interval between the second and the third notes
is exactly three half-steps (a minor 3rd). Now, what happens if you start
somewhere else? The 2–4–6 triad is also a major and a minor 3rd, but the
minor 3rd comes first. This triad sounds different; it’s a minor triad and thus
a “minor chord”. Got that? What makes it a major or minor chord is which
type of 3rd comes first. As I’ve said, it gets increasingly complicated. It may
be time to quit reading and go back to strumming the three chords in that
country song you’ve been practicing.
 Or, not. Have you wondered what it sounds like if both 3rds are major or
minor? There is only one all-minor-3rd triad in the Ionian or any of the six
other classical modes. The Ionian 7–2–4 is called a “diminished” chord.
(Note that once you go past 7, it wraps. That is, 8, an octave, is the same as
1.) This triad sounds creepy and weird to some people, especially if they
only like simplistic music. It isn’t used much in lowbrow music because it
doesn’t easily mesh with stock chord progressions and thereby requires
some sophisticated musical experience to make it sound “right”. But, you
probably don’t care about that because you don’t want to learn anything
about scales and chords anyway. Right?
 There is another triad which is constructed by stacking two major thirds.
You can only get two of the notes from the scale. The third note is a half-
tone higher than the note for which it is substituted, so the chord is called
 “augmented”. This is possibly the oddest sounding chord made by stacking
thirds. This triad has an unusual property in that it neatly divides an octave
into thirds. Thus, if you proceed upwards from the third note, or
downwards from the first note, you hit the octave of the note on the other
side of the three notes in your triad. By nature of this curious symmetry, if
you advance one major third at a time in either direction, you keep playing
what is essentially the same augmented chord at different pitches. The idea
that something could change, yet still be the same, blew the minds of pious
clerics. It was too much for their feeble minds to comprehend, so they
lashed out in anger by banning the use of this triad. Is your mind able to
deal with this concept? You can still quit reading, but as I promised, there is
still more complexity to be had.
 What happens when you include more than three notes in a chord? What
do you call it when you keep on stacking thirds from a scale so there are
four, five, six or even seven notes in the chord? Welcome to jazz and other
“weird” genres of music. There are names like “dominant 7th” (5–7–2–4),
“major 7th” (1–3–5–7), “9th” (5–7–2–4–6), “11th” (5–7–2–4–6–1) and finally
“13th” (5–7–2–4–6–1–3). That last one is a doozie. It’s all seven notes in the
scale. No one ever actually plays it because you’ve only got five digits on
one hand for playing it on a keyboard. There are only six strings on a guitar,
so you can’t do it there, either. In practice, people leave out at least one of
the notes. The resulting chord is really something else, but it is called a
“13th” because it’s got both the major 6th and dominant 7th notes if you
consider the root of the chord as “1”. If you do the sum 6+7=13, you might
think that this is related to the name “13th”, but it is not. It’s a coincidence.
 Oh, did I forget to mention the numbering system for notes in a chord?
When you’re talking about chords, you refer to the lowest note of the
chord, known as the “root”, as “1”, as if it were the tonic of an Ionian scale.
The other notes in the chord get numbers relative to the root. If the note is
at an interval a half-tone above or below where it would be in a major
scale, then some kind of modifier is used. If the 3rd is only three half-steps
up from the root, the whole chord is called “minor”. If the 5th (the third
note) is off by a half-step, it’s “diminished” or “augmented”. It’s interesting
that the default 7th is the 7th from the minor scale rather than the major
scale. The correct name of the chord is “dominant 7th”, but no one calls it
that, just “7th”, as in A7 or F♯7.
 This seems wrong, but it works out well enough because when you start
with the fifth note of the Ionian scale, that “7th” is really the 4th note of
that same scale. The 5th of the Ionian scale is called the “dominant”. Why it
has that name has to do with sharps and flats in standard staff
notation. But, hey, if you don’t even want to know about scales and chords,
why would you be curious about the arcane structure of musical
 notation? Parenthetically, when considering the scale of any tone’s
dominant, that is, the scale where the perfect 5th of a scale’s tone is the
root, the first tone is a perfect 4th in the dominant’s scale. Now it gets
kinky. The perfect 4th of a scale is called the “subdominant”. Got that? A
note’s dominant has that  note as its  subdominant. I would have thought
that it would be called the “submissive”, but such whimsical musings are
not germane. I’m not done yet, even though it’s late and I have to get up
early. Screw it.
 If you have stayed with me until now, you’re probably wondering what
happens when you exceed four notes and continue stacking thirds from
your Ionian scale. The next note in the sequence is “9” because 7+2=9. I
know I said that the numbering system wraps when you go past the octave
(note 8, which becomes another note 1). The “9th” is the same note as a
2nd in the octave above, but the higher number is used in the name of the
chord because you are adding notes, not using different notes in the same
octave. It took me several years to understand this, but it eventually sank in.
So, proceeding on, if you throw in a 4th, it’s an 11th chord and if you top it
off with a 6th, it’s the formidable 13th chord.
 The standard nomenclature for chord names uses one-character
abbreviations for the descriptive qualifier terms in chord names. The word
“minor” is ‘m’. The word “major” is ‘M’. (Yes, Unix geeks, it is case sensitive,
so you must always use capital letters to designate the names of individual
notes and in chord names with that note as its root.) The ‘m’ or ‘M’ is only
used for 7th chords, as in Em7 or CM7. The word “diminished”, when
referring to a chord formed by stacking two minor thirds, is indicated with a
degree sign (‘°’) or something that looks similar, like the masculine ordinal
symbol (‘º’). When qualifying a 5th, 9th or 13th, “diminished” becomes just
a minus sign (‘-’) before the number, as in “E-9”, which is said aloud as “E
diminished ninth”. The word “augmented” is shown as a ‘+’. By convention,
an augmented 5th chord is simply called “augmented”.
 Let’s not forget “sustained 4th” and “suspended 2nd”. The abbreviation
for both of these is “sus”. To make things worse, the sustained 4th is
abbreviated without the number, so Csus is written that way and said aloud
as “C sustained”. Since the abbreviation “sus” is also used for the
suspended second, you have to put the ‘2’ in, as in Csus2. Don’t blame me; I
didn’t make invent this nomenclature.  You may be wondering why these
notes are not called a “9th” or “11th”. They are “2nd” and “4th” because
they are used in lieu of a 3rd, not as extra notes tacked on after the initial
triad. I know. It’s crazy.
 There are other things in chord names that are just plain weird, but you
can eventually suss out if you apply basic music theory. Here’s one that I’m
still scratching my head about. A “minor 6th” chord, such as Gm6, starts
 with a regular minor triad composed of stacking a minor third and a major
third. A fourth tone is added, the 6th of a major  (Ionian) scale rather than
what one might expect, the 6th of a minor  (Aeolian) scale. It’s a minor
chord, right? Why don’t you use a minor 6th interval? After musing on that
for a while, I finally gave up and started using these minor 6th chords after I
learned what they are. This is a handy chord with three fairly convenient
fingering shapes, which makes it easy to play with other chords in any
vicinity on the neck. Cool. Even better, it’s just one tone shy of a 9th chord.
If you add the 4th (the subdominant) of the minor 6th chord’s root, you get
that 9th chord. The added fifth tone is the root of this newly-formed 9th
chord. Knowing this simplified some difficult fingering for me in a few
songs. What makes this “cheat” so seamless is that when a guitar player is
forced to discard one of the tones in a chord, the best one to chuck is the
root. So, for example, let’s say my lead sheet says I have to play a C9 chord,
but I’m having trouble with it in that spot. I can skip sounding the C and
play a Gm6 as a substitute chord. No one will notice.
 But, that still doesn’t address my confusion about what minor triad with
an added minor 6th is and what it’s called. Let’s keep digging with the
theory and consider “Em♭6”, which is the most reasonable name I can
think of for such a chord. There are four notes: E, G, B and C. If you play it, it
doesn’t sound “minor” at all. It’s sort of pleasant and gentle, like a major
7th or something. Wait a second here!  B and C are only a half-tone apart.
That’s the interval of a major 7th to the root. Without the B, it’s just C, E and
G, which is a major chord with C as the root. So, C, E, G and B is a C major
7th chord. Hah! That’s why the minor 6th chord uses a major  6th interval;
we don’t need a “minor minor 6th” chord because that combination of
intervals with a different tone as the root already has a name. Duh.
 The best epiphany I’ve had in applying music theory to guitar playing is
the use of substitute chords, such as using a minor 6th chord in lieu of a
9th chord in the preceding example. I use another one all the time because
the same combination of intervals has two names with different roots. For
example, a G6 has the same four notes as an Em7. I use them
interchangeably, depending on which one is most convenient. Sometimes, I
cheat by playing a minor 7th when a simple major triad chord is
inconvenient. When I’m supposed to play an E♭, which is infrequent, I
might use a Cm7 instead. Another one where playing four notes instead of
three seems to work well is substituting the minor 9th chord of the root’s
tone’s relative minor for the major 7th chord of that root. What? It sounds
complicated, but it’s easy enough to figure out on the fly. I never play a
GM7 because I can’t finger it anywhere on the low end of the neck. I can,
however, play an Em9 with two fingers, which means that I can use my
 index finger for barré  and use that same shape for minor 9th and major 7th
chords all up and down the neck. Sweet.
 The weirdest chord puzzle I’ve ever had to solve was how the play was a
dominant 7th with a diminished 9th. I don’t know if that’s the right name
for it, but it’s what I assumed it would be called as it was shown on the lead
sheet as “C7–9”. I didn’t know what to do with that except play a C7 and
work in a D♭, the diminished 9th tone4. It was possible to play it, and it
sounded right, but my fingering (X32323) was awkward. I noticed down at
the bottom that the author had his own fingering recipes for the chords.
His recipe for the chord only showed a fingering for four notes, not five.
When I tried his fingering, it sounded adequate, but not really as good a
the real chord, which I assumed he had also found difficult to play. When I
applied my favorite chord simplification method, throwing out the root, I
didn’t have to play the C any more. There was an easy way to play the four
remaining tones, and it sounded better to me than the other guy’s
fingering. So, I changed the C7–9 to Eº7 in my version of the song after I
figured out what chord I was playing.
 As with the nomenclature I’ve covered so far, I always wonder when I first
learn a term, “Why do they call it that?” I’ve always found that there
is some  reason, but not necessarily a good or even logical reason. It just is
what it is and you’ll have to learn it to communicate with other musicians.
Musicians are intuitive and don’t think like physicists or engineers.
Generally, they learn things by rote and accept them as they are. This
confounds analytical people, and makes it hard to understand what
musicians are talking about if you’re not one, but it works for them in doing
what they do.
If you want to find out about more stuff like this, you would be best advised to read
up on some real music theory once you have processed the information in this piece.
I’ve just scratched the surface, and have only dealt with a tiny fraction of the body of
knowledge with which I’ve been grappling with for so long. Don’t think you’ll be able
to get it all in a short period of time. I’ve been playing for a half century and I’m still
appalled at how little I actually know. But, if I practice regularly, I end up discovering
something brand new every day. Sweet.
 I have very little knowledge of music theory (enough to know what's the major scale and how
to find the major chord of a note) but I know a good number of chords by name and could
figure out the ones I don't know based on the patterns.

Meaning that even though I could give you the C suspended 4th chord, I still have no idea
what the name means.
I was once told that the names are based on the position of its notes on the major scale (like
themajor chord is the 1st, 3rd, and 5th), but a C7 has a Bb in it, while the 7th note of
the C major scale is B.
Can someone explain at least how the common names are defined?

chord-theory
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edited Aug 16 '13 at 12:00
asked Aug 16 '13 at 0:55

Gabe♦
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C7 actually has Bb in it (not A#). Yes, it's the same note, soundwise, but it comes from the 7th
note being flattened. 7th note = B, so 7th flat = Bb. – Tim Aug 16 '13 at 8:28
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7 Answers
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Let's take Tim's major scale as a starting point and build diagrams from there. This will get
heavy beyond 7 chords, but they're intermediate/advanced so I may need correcting by some
jazz experts!
taking 1 as the Root of the major scale, and each number representing the degree of the major
scale. so 1 3 5 = the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the major scale.

b=Flat, #=Sharp

Chord Formulas

Triads
Major: 1 3 5

Minor: 1 b3 5

diminished: 1 b3 b5
Augmented: 1 3 #5

sus2: 1 2 5

sus4: 1 4 5

7 Chords
7 or Dominant 7: 1 3 5 b7

maj7: 1 3 5 7

min7: 1 b3 5 b7

diminished 7: 1 b3 b5 bb7 (note that all 3 non root notes are diminished/flattened) half-
diminished 7: 1 b3 b5 b7 minor/major7: 1 b3 5 7

See also: Wiki on 7ths

5:1 5 (also known as a power chord)

6: 1 3 5 6

min6: 1 b3 5 6

add 9: 1 3 5 9

add 11: 1 3 5 11

add 13: 1 3 5 13

9: 1 3 5 b7 9

11: 1 3 5 b7 9 11 13

13: 1 3 5 b7 9 11 13

Beyond that is starts to get complicated

You can combine the names of the basic triads with the later chords to spell even more, for
example: augmented add 9 = 1 3 #5 9

and you can apply the naming of 7 chords to 9, 11 and 13 chords, for example Maj9 = 1 3 5 7
9 dim9 = 1 b3 b5 bb7 9 (note that 9 is not diminished!)

This gets a little tricky, but when naming tones with a 7 you do it per tone, for example
 7/6 = 1 3 5 6 b7 7/#9 = 1 3 5 b7 #9 7#9b13 = 1 3 5 b7 #9 11

Also, remember that 9, 11 and 13 can also be thought of as 2, 4 and 6, so 7/6 = 1 3 5 6 b7

could be writtten as 7 add 13: 1 3 5 b7 13

I'm going to hold it there, because to be honest those last 4 lines took about 2 hours of
research to confirm, because I know the theory but I'm not in a place where I use them
regularly yet.

Perhaps someone else could clarify how you would write a chord that's a diminished
triad, but with a 7, 9 etc on top, so 1 b3 b5 7, because I couldn't find anywhere
mentioning the theory and a chord namer just listed it as Cmb5 maj7.

On Sus chords the simple definition is that a sus chord is a chord with the 3rd moved to
either the 2nd or the 4th, but the full story gives a wide picture of where it came from and
how to use it.
A suspended chord is the modern result of what is called a ligature, originally it was when
you held on to a note from the previous chord and delayed it's resolution. In a sus 4 chord you
have a tension between the root and the 4th that traditionally would then resolve to the 3rd,
like so

Over time the sus chord became a chord in it's own right rather than as a passing chord. It's
still very common to resolve a sus chord, as in the ever popular D - D sus pattern on guitar
but it's also got a life of it's own in other places.
The default sus chord these days is a sus 4 chord, so when you see sus on it's own it means
sus 4, and sus2 will be named sus2.

Also, for a fantastic reference on chords and their use in progressions(especially for
guitarists) check out Ted Greene's Chord Chemistry
Hope that helps!

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edited Apr 17 '14 at 12:24
answered Aug 16 '13 at 12:37

Alexander Troup
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Given time, Csus4 will be known as C4, and Csus2 as C2.If they're'add 2' or 'add 4' write it.
Otherwise what else could they be? – Tim Aug 16 '13 at 21:08
 1
 It's pretty interesting how the diminished 7th is 4 diminished chords in one. I have a question
though. Why is the 7th flatted twice instead of once? – Caleb Sep 12 '13 at 3:14 
 This may be incorrect, but diminishing the 7th gives you 3 stacked minor 3rd intervals, it
also means that you not only have a b5 beween the 1 and b5, but also between the b3 and bb7,
(and the b5 and 1, and the bb7 and b3) meaning more tritones :D. More tritones = more
instability, more stability means the option of greater resolution! also, modulation is vastly easier
using dim7 chords – Alexander Troup Sep 12 '13 at 12:43
 The maj.7th is B (in key C), so to make it min. it gets flattened, making it Bb, and the
interval between C and Bb is now minor 7. When this interval is made even smaller (diminished),
the Bb gets moved one semitone lower, thus it's now called Bbb. Yes, it's found at the same
place on the instruments as you'd find A, but on the written music, because it started life as B, it
gets shown as a different sort of B - Bbb. – Tim Sep 14 '13 at 6:49
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7

One step at a time:

First off, most chords are built on a "triad"; a set of three pitches, with a predefined interval
between each of them, beginning at a specific note. This beginning point is called the "root"
of the chord, and it is the note for which the chord is named. This is not always the note on
the "bottom" of the chord; we'll explore that later.

For instance, a "C" chord will have, as its root note, a C. The chord's name and quality are the
same regardless of which octave, or how many, are present in the notes played.

Now, the triad, built on the root, will have predefined intervals between the three primary
notes of the chord, which when based on a particular root, will determine what those actual
notes are and what the resulting "quality" of the chord will be.

The most basic triad quality is "major". Major chords have, as their defining tonal
characteristic, a "happy" sound. The major triad is composed of the root, then the note a
"major third" (two "whole steps") above it, and then the perfect fifth (which is a "minor
third", a step and a half, above the second note of the triad). A C major triad (simply labelled
"C") is composed of the notes C, E, and G, which are, for the same reasons, the first, third
and fifth notes of the C Major scale.

The next most common is the "minor" triad. Minor chords have the same root and perfect
fifth, but the middle note, the third, is lowered by one half step. This makes the interval
between the root and the third a "minor third", meaning the interval between the third and
fifth is now "major" (because that is as I said the same note). Minor chords, compared to
major chords, are generally described as sounding "sadder". A C minor triad (labelled
"Cmin" or "Cm") would be composed of C, E b, and G.
After that, the last "natural" triad (composed of three notes, each separated by two "scale
degrees" from their neighbors) is the "diminished" triad. This occurs naturally in the major
scale when you take the seventh, second and fourth scale degrees as a triad; both of the
intervals between the three notes end up being minor, so not only is the third lowered by a
half-step, but so is the fifth. Diminished chords are generally described as sounding "dark" or
"sinister"; many of the cliche examples of organ music the bad guy would typically be
playing, like Bach's Toccata in D and the theme to Phantom of the Opera, have a lot of
diminished chords. A C diminished triad (Cdim) would be composed of C, E b and Gb.
There are other possible triads. The most common "altered" triad is the suspended triad.
Instead of using the third scale degree as the middle note, you use the fourth. This is a very
powerful chord, because it contains all three of the notes in a major key from which you can
form a major chord by using it as the root, and it also sounds like it "wants" to resolve to the
major triad. A C suspended triad (Csus, sometimes Csus4) is C, F and G

Beyond triads, many chords commonly used in modern music add additional notes to the
triad to form a four-note chord. The most common note to add is the seventh scale degree,
however it is typically lowered by a half-step to produce the "minor" or "dominant" seventh.
A C dominant seventh chord (notation varies; most commonly it's C 7) is C, E, G, Bb. The
dominant can also be added to the minor chord (forming a minor-minor seventh; Cm 7), so
that's C, Eb, G, Bb. The major seventh can also be added to either of these, forming the major-
major seventh (CMaj7; the use of "maj" here is different from the triad) or the minor-major
seventh (CMm7), C-Eb-G-B.
Lastly, the seventh, added to a diminished triad, forms a diminished chord. If you add the
dominant/minor seventh, the chord becomes "half-diminished" (C Ø7), C-Eb-Gb-Bb. The
major seventh is typically not added to a diminished chord (though if you're after a very
dissonant sound, this will certainly do the trick).
If you instead add the sixth (or the double-flatted seventh aka the "diminished seventh") to a
diminished triad, the chord becomes "fully-diminished" (C O7), C-Eb-Gb-A. Mathematically,
the fully-diminished chord is very important in music theory, because all of its notes have the
same 1.5-step interval, and because there are only three unique combinations of notes that
form a fully-diminished chord. C-Eb-Gb-A, Db(C#)-E-G-Bb(A#), and D-F-Ab(G#)-B. The
next higher diminished chord, formed by Eb-Gb-A-C, has the same notes as the first; you
may call it EbO7, but it's equivalent to the CO7 chord, it just has a different note on the bottom.
It is, as we call it, an "inversion".
An inversion is usually notated the same as the normal triad, but instead of the root note
being on the bottom, one of the other two are. The "first inversion" is formed by taking the
root note and playing it an octave higher, so the third is "in the bass". The second inversion is
formed by also playing the third an octave higher, so the fifth is in the bass. As I said, the
notation usually doesn't change, however if it is important that a particular note be in the
bass, it may be notated with a slash followed by the bass note: a first-inversion C major triad
might be notated C/E, while the second inversion would be C/G.

Inversions and other "alternate voicings" are extremely common in music, especially pop
music, for two reasons; first, because music in many forms is thought of as being formed by
the movement of independent "voices" up and down by individual scale degrees, and second,
because on many instruments, notably the guitar, it's difficult to play most chords with the
root note "in the bass". You instead usually play the combination of notes however you can.
In chords spanning multiple octaves, these defined inversions lose most of their meaning; you
typically just start on the bass note (or any note in the chord you can sound) and play every
note in the chord in every octave that you can until you're told by the sheet music to stop or
you run out of strings or keys.

The sixth has become a more common addition to triads with the popularity of jazz. A C6
chord is a major chord with the sixth added on, often in an inversion with the sixth in the
bass, where it forms a minor third under the root. Adding the second (also called the ninth) is
also seen sometimes, especially in guitar music (a common way to form the C chord in the
 key of G will keep the D note from the previous chord; this is called a Cadd9 or a "country
C").

Beyond this, most chord notation systems begin to break down, as representing "cluster"
chords and others not based on a typical triad requires basically spelling it out.

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edited Aug 30 '13 at 16:57
answered Aug 16 '13 at 17:00

KeithS
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Super answer - just one point - Co ,as a diminished chord, should read C-Eb-Gb-Bbb.The note A
would be a 6th, not found in a dim. chord. – Tim Aug 16 '13 at 20:56
 1
In this case, Bbb isn't A. It sounds the same, but will need to be written as a flattened Bb, thus
Bbb.You're right in that Gb key has an Ab in it and that's one reason why the note can't be called
A.The other is that as the note making the interval is already called Bb, when the interval is made
smaller by a semitone, that Bb is flattened again. If, like me you're a guitarist, then we'll call it A,
but we'll both be wrong !! – Tim Aug 17 '13 at 11:21
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B𝄫 sounds like A in equal temperament. It isn’t necessarily the same in just intonation or other
tunings. – Bradd Szonye Apr 18 '14 at 20:46
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6

All chords have the major scale (Ionian mode) as their starting point. They are based on the
root note of that scale, giving the chord name, e.g. C maj. has C as a base (and usually) bass
note. A basic chord will then follow notes 3 and 5 of that scale. E.g. C - E and G.

To make a chord minor, the 3rd. is flattened, as C - Eb - G. Chords which have a number
after them use that number note as well, as C6 = C-E-G-A. This is complicated by the fact
that there are 3 7ths and 3 9ths.The 7ths are Cmaj7 C-E-G-B., Cmin7 C-Eb-G-Bb and C
dominant 7 C-E-G-Bb. You can also find a Cmin/maj7th, played with C-Eb-G-B. The 9ths
are bigger versions of 7ths, in that they have the 9th note from the scale as well.

Sus chords are just what they say - the 3rd note is suspended and either a 2nd or 4th note
substituted instead. So they're neither maj. or min. If a chord has the 2nd or 4th as well, it's
called 'add 2', or 'add 4'.
This is just a basic answer, which obviously will translate into each and every key, once the
scale notes are known. Bear in mind that an altered note keeps its letter name; a flat 5 of C is
Gb, it can't be called (or written) F#, even if the sound is the same. That keeps chord names
easier to make sense of.

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edited Aug 16 '13 at 15:05
 shambulator
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answered Aug 16 '13 at 8:45

Tim
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The notes in a chord determine the name of the chord.

The root note of the chord will start the name of the chord(eg. C) and then every chord type
has it's formula which determines the notes in the chord. For eg. a Major chord has a formula
of 1-3-5 so the notes in a C-Major chord are C,E and G. Similarly the formula for a minor
chord is 1-b3-5 which means the notes in a C minor chord will be C,D# and G.

Here is a complete list of all the chord types and their formulae:-

http://www.smithfowler.org/music/Chord_Formulas.htm
I hope that helped

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answered Aug 16 '13 at 6:34

Rajeev Bhatia
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When a flattened note is used, it cannot be called sharp, so the D# will have to be called Eb. It's
the same sound, found in the same place, but in the written music has to be Eb. The 'Hendrix'
chord actually has the D#, along with a Bb, and because of this, it's called C7#9 : C-E-G is
C(maj.), Bb is dominant 7th, and D# is sharp 9th. – Tim Aug 16 '13 at 8:25
 @dfhwze - not sure if 'dim6' qualifies as a chord name! Certainly an interval. One of the
reasons that we (pedants?) use the 'correct' note names is that it helps understanding of what's
happening, technically. And for years, I thought the Bbb in Co was actually an A... – Tim May 9 '19
at 16:53
 @dfhwze - for me, there is no correct name for C Eb Gb A - although people like Mark
Levine may disagree - as it's not a 'recogised' spelling. Dim 6 seems like the 6th note (only) is
diminished, so on C, (Cdim6) would be C E G Abb - not making a lot of sense! – Tim May 9 '19 at
17:23
 @dfhwze - I understand what you say, but which specific names have I used that don't
reflect the actual use of other chords? – Tim May 9 '19 at 17:48
 @dfhwze - point is, it wouldn't have an A note written (on Co) - unless it was done by
someone who was ignorant/didn't care. So it would end up sounding like a dim7, but if it was
written with a dim6 note, some wouldn't mind/care anyway. – Tim May 9 '19 at 17:53
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The root of the chord, plus a hint at which basic chord tones and tensions are included. There
are basically five flavors of chords, so the chord names tend to reflect this fact:

Minor major dominant diminished minor-major

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answered Aug 20 '13 at 19:06

Michael Martinez
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From Howard Morgen's excellent course Fretboard Breakthrough at True Fire: The answer is
Context. What does the chord precede or follow?

Chords separated from their context can be based either on choosing the lowest tone as the
root, the third, the fifth or even seventh which could be inversions.

C E G = C Major triad or an Am7 first inversion? (w/o the root in this case)

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answered Oct 18 '13 at 21:07

kelly johnson
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One simple way to notate 7th chords is to put the quality of the chord then the quality of the
interval, then a 7. For example, a "dominant 7th" chord is a Mm7 chord; it has a major triad
with a minor 7th on top of it. A "major 7th" chord is a MM7, a "diminished 7th" is a dd7, a
"half diminished" is a dm7, an "augmented 7th" is aM7, and so on.

"How the common names are defined" varies from style to style. Your "sus 4" chord notation
is very much a jazz convention; in Baroque music when they first became very common they
were treated as a non-chord tone by later (say, after 1750) analysts. (Baroque composers
didn't much think of "chords" at all; they were much more concerned with how the voices
interacted as they moved, and did not think much at all about "harmony" per se. The rules
they used were the rules of counterpoint, which spend much more time addressing "where to
go from here" than "where we are now".