Scale Harmony for Guitar
July 28th, 2019In this video we’ll take a look at harmonizing a C major scale on the guitar. It’s quite simple to do. First figure out the notes of the C major scale (C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C). On piano this is all seven of the white keys.
Next you’re going to build a 7th chord for each note in the scale using only the notes from the scale. You build a 7th chord by using every other note.
For example starting on the 1st degree of the scale, which is C in this case, you would use the 1st, 3rd, 5th & 7th degrees of the scale C-E-G-B (Cmaj7).
Repeat the process on the remaining notes: D-F-A-C (Dm7). When you run out of notes you just continue using the same order. So the third group of notes would be E-G-B-D (Em7).
This is the first step toward understanding the seven modes of the major scale.