The material presented here assumes that you know how to play the song and only wondering what chords to play in what part of the song. I am also assuming that you know the concepts of scales and chords.
Any song goes through certain notes of a scale. Chords can be considered (roughly) as an averaging of the notes. Chords capture the underlying pattern of the song.
The steps involved in finding the chords of a song are :
- Find the scale of the song
- Use the circle of fifths to determine probable chords
- Try out the probable chords using some popular chord sequences as a guideline. If you are able to cover the entire song satisfactorily with these chords your job is done! Else you should use the more rigorous method given below.
- Study the notes of the song. If a note is present in one of the probable
chords determined in 2 above then that chord is to be played around that note.
- If you encounter a note which is not present in the scale , probably you have to raise or lower the middle notes of one of the probable chords to determine the appropriate chord.What it effectively means is that you you might have to try a major(minor) chord for a probable minor(major) chord. ( Don't worry this will become clearer when we see an example)
- If all of the above fails which means that the song contains notes which are neither in the scale nor obtained by raising the middle notes of the probable chords then you have to do some trial and error.
First simply play the major chord corresponding to the note. e.g. you have encountered the note "D#" while playing a song in "F Major", then try playing "D# Major" chord. If that doesn't work , try "D# Minor" chord.
If even this doesn't work then one by one try all the chords( Major and Minor) of which the note is a member.
If you know the notes of all the scales by heart then by just looking at the notes you can determine the scale of the song. If you haven't memorised the notes yet , then here are a few short cuts which might be of help:
- A rule of thumb is that every mukhda and antara in a song generally end on the note corresponding to the scale . i.e. If the antara of the song ends on the note say "C" , it is quite likely that the song is in the scale of either "C Major" or "C Minor". Which of the two can be determined by examining other notes used in the song. If the song uses only the natural notes then most probably the scale is "C Major". On the other hand if there are some D#s thrown in between then the song might be in "C Minor".
- If the above rule doesn't yield the scale of the song then consider the chord of which the ending note is a member. For the case above , the note "C" is a member of the chord "F Major" and also of "G# Major" and "A Minor". As in <1> above you need to consider other notes of the song to determine the scale
Ok , so you have figured out the scale of the song. Now we can determine the probable chords for this song.The circle of fiths shown below is a good tool to do this.(I suggest you take a printout of the circle of fifths and keep it with you while you are learning to play chords.)
Say the scale is "D Minor". Look at the circle of fifths. The "D Minor" scale is indicated by the symbol "Dm". Just above "Dm" there is "F" which stands for "F Major". Including "F" and "Dm" there are following symbols in the immediate vicinity of "Dm" : F , C, Bb, Am, Gm, Dm. Very simply , these six chords are the probable chords in this song (For that matter for ANY song in the scale of Dm)!
As you know notes of every single song are completely unique. However it is quite possible that two different songs have exactly the same chord sequence. Even then the chords of each song must be determined afresh.Given below are some common and popular chord sequences. Please use them as very rough guidelines .
Major Scale Chord Sequences
- F Bb C F
- F C Bb F
Minor Scale Chord Sequences
- Am G C Am
- Am G F Am