In this lesson we’re going to take a deeper look at the D major scale, which is another commonly used scale in popular music. We’ll take a look at the notes, intervals, scale positions and chords that make up the key of D major.

In a previous lesson, we looked at how to build chords from the major scale, which is an important concept when it comes to understanding diatonic harmony. In this lesson we’re going to go through the process of building minor scale chords, which follows the same process as the major scale.

In previous lessons we’ve explored both major triads and minor triads, which are two of the most commonly used triads. In this lesson we round out the triads of the major scale with a look at diminished triads.

Seventh chords are chords that include the root plus the 3rd, 5th, and 7th intervals above the root. Another way to think about it is a seventh chord is a triad plus a 7th interval.

Slash chords are chords in which a note other than the root note is in the bass position. You might think this sounds very similar to chord inversions and you’d be right.

The circle of fifths is an invaluable tool that reveals important relationships between pitches and organizes them in a way that’s very useful to understanding diatonic harmony.

If you’ve been exposed to at least a bit of guitar theory, you’ve most likely heard of the CAGED system. It’s a system that allows you to visualize the guitar fretboard by using common major chord shapes.

In this lesson we’re going to take a look at how to read scale diagrams. Scale diagrams are used all throughout this site to visually represent scale shapes and patterns on the guitar.

In this lesson we’re going to dive into the ever popular C major scale. This scale is very common and is used as the key center of countless songs. It’s happy sounding scale and typically one of the first scales guitar players learn.