How to Read and Write Chord Symbols
You're going to learn to read any chord symbol, to make sense of a chord chart, and to name what you just played in the piano roll yourself.
Throughout this part, you've come across lots of symbols: Am, Cmaj7, B°, Fsus4. They form a small international language, the same in MIDI packs, on chord websites, in plugins and on pop or jazz sheet music. Once you can read it, any chord chart becomes a recipe you can play right away. And once you can write it, you can note down your own loops so you can find them again or pass them on.
A chord symbol reads from left to right
A chord symbol always reads in the same order. It starts with a letter, with a sharp or flat if there is one: that's the root. Next comes the quality of the triad: nothing at all for major, an “m” for minor, a ° for diminished, a + for augmented. Then come the additions: the seventh, the extensions, the suspended or added notes. Finally, there may be a slash followed by a note: that's the bass.
| Symbol | Read as | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| C | C major | C E G |
| Cm (or Cmin, C-) | C minor | C E♭ G |
| C° (or Cdim) | C diminished | C E♭ G♭ |
| C+ (or Caug) | C augmented | C E G♯ |
| Csus2 | C sus two | C D G |
| Csus4 | C sus four | C F G |
| C5 | C five, or power chord | C G |
| Cmaj7 (or CM7, CΔ) | C major seventh | C E G B |
| C7 | C seventh | C E G B♭ |
| Cm7 | C minor seventh | C E♭ G B♭ |
| Cm7♭5 (or Cø) | C half-diminished | C E♭ G♭ B♭ |
| C°7 (or Cdim7) | C diminished seventh | C E♭ G♭ B𝄫 |
| Cadd9 | C add nine | C E G D |
| C/E | C over E | E in the bass, then C E G |
Three traps come up often. The first: a 7 on its own never means a major seventh. C7 contains B♭; to get B, you have to write maj7. The second: a lowercase “m” means minor, while the uppercase “M” in CM7 means major. When in doubt, the spelled-out forms, min and maj, avoid any confusion. The third: a number that comes right after the letter, as in E5 or A9, refers to a note of the chord counted from the root, never to an octave.
The slash: choosing the bass
A chord with a slash, like C/E, is read “C over E”: you play the C major chord, and the bass plays E. It's how you write an inversion when it matters for the music, that is, when the bass isn't playing the root. So C/E is C major in first inversion, and C/G is C major in second inversion.
The note after the slash doesn't have to belong to the chord. F/G, for example, asks for an F major chord over a bass on G: an open, suspended sound that's fairly common in pop and gospel. Am/G puts a G under A minor, which amounts to an Am7 with its seventh in the bass. Listen to a bass line walking down under slash chords.
You heard it: on top, only two chords alternate, but the bass walks down step by step and makes it feel as if the harmony moves forward every bar. The slash lets you write that movement down precisely, where a plain “C, C, Am, Am” would make it disappear.
Roman numerals and numbers
Symbols like Am or G7 tell you which notes to play. Roman numerals, which you discovered with the chords of a key, tell you something else: the chord's place in the key. They follow the same quality conventions, uppercase for major, lowercase for minor, ° for diminished, ø for half-diminished, and you add 7, maj7 or 9 just as in chord symbols. In C major, G7 is written V7, Dm7 is written ii7 and Fmaj7 is written IVmaj7.
Reading a chord chart
A chord chart is the simplest way to write down a loop. Each box stands for one bar. A single chord in a box lasts the whole bar; two chords in a box share it, usually two beats each. The % sign in a box means “same as the previous bar.”
| Bar 1 | Bar 2 | Bar 3 | Bar 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Am7 | % | Fmaj7 | G Em7 |
Read it out loud: Am7 for two bars, Fmaj7 for one bar, then G and Em7, two beats each. In your piano roll, that gives you the next figure.
Notice that in the last bar, Em7 keeps the three notes of G and simply adds E3 underneath: E, G, B and D make an Em7, with its root in the bass. That's the voice leading from the lesson on voicings, applied to a chord chart.
Naming what you played
That leaves the reverse operation, the most useful one in the studio: you found a chord by ear, by trial and error, and you want to know what it's called. Here's a four-step method.
- Note the lowest note: that's the bass, which may end up after a slash.
- Gather all the notes regardless of octave, and remove the duplicates.
- Find the order in which those notes stack up in thirds: the bottom note of that stack is the root.
- Measure the third, the fifth and the seventh from the root to find the quality, then add the slash if the bass isn't the root.
Let's take an example. You played E3, C4 and G4. The bass is E. The notes are C, E and G, which stack up in thirds from C: it's a C major chord. Since the bass is E, you write C/E. Another example: F3, C4, E4 and A4. The notes F, A, C and E stack up from F, with a major third and a major seventh: it's Fmaj7, in root position.
Now practice with a piano roll that names the chords for you. First enter the examples from the lesson, then your own chords, and check that you come up with the same name it does.
Empty bar: click the grid to place some notes.
Empty bar: click the grid to place some notes.
Empty bar: click the grid to place some notes.
Empty bar: click the grid to place some notes.
Click a cell to add or remove a one-beat note; click a note name on the left to hear it. Each bar is analyzed as soon as you change a note.
Name these three chords, giving the full symbol, with a slash if needed, then the Roman numeral in C major. From the lowest note to the highest, the first contains D3, A3, C4 and F4; the second, B2, G3 and D4; the third, B3, D4, F4 and A4.
You now have the whole vocabulary of chords. The next part puts it to work to understand what makes a chord progression move, starting with tension and resolution.