What are chords in music, hearing every one
A chord is three or more notes sounding at the same time. What gives a chord its name and its colour is not the notes themselves but the distances between them: the same distances, built on any note, make the same kind of chord — and moving a single note by one semitone turns major into minor. It is the chords, more than the melody, that make a piece of music sound bright, dark or tense. Below, each of those ideas is a toy: press it, listen, and see which key moved before you read a word about it.
Scroll and play — every chord on this page makes sound when you touch it.
Three notes at once: where the word chord comes from
Press ▶ and listen: first C on its own, then E, then G — and at the end all three together. One note alone is just a note. Two notes make an interval, the distance between them. Three or more sounding together make a chord, and what you heard last is the best-known chord there is: C major.
Notice what changes when the three arrive together: they stop being three sounds and become one, with a colour of its own. That blend is what the word chord names — not the notes, but the sound they make by agreeing. A chord can have three, four or more notes; on this page you will hear three-note chords, the triads, and four-note ones, the seventh chords.
Press ▶ and hear C, E and G come in one at a time before they sound together.
Third on third: a triad is two intervals stacked
Hear the thirds and follow the two arcs: from C to E is a major third, four semitones; from E to G, a minor third, three. That is what a triad is — one third on top of another, each starting where the previous one ended. The bottom note is called the root, and it names the chord: C major is the chord whose root is C.
If you came here from the intervals guide, you have already heard those two thirds separately; here they sound stacked, and the chord is the sum. Counting up from the root, the other two notes are the third and the fifth — C, E, G: the third and fifth letters from C. That is why people say "the third of the chord" and "the fifth of the chord": they are the degrees, counted from the bottom.
Hear the thirds one at a time and read the name on each arc: major third below, minor third above.
Major and minor: the middle note decides
Press Compare and hear C major turn into C minor. Only one key moved — the middle one, E, which dropped a semitone to E flat — and the whole chord changed colour. The third decides: a major third at the bottom (four semitones) makes a major chord; a minor third at the bottom (three) makes a minor chord. The root and the fifth stay exactly where they were.
Many people hear major as brighter or happier and minor as darker or sadder — a useful first clue, not a rule: a minor chord can sound sweet, and a major one solemn, depending on the music around it. What is worth training is hearing the distance: major is 4 + 3 semitones, minor is 3 + 4. The same two intervals, in the opposite order.
Press Compare and hear major and minor one after the other: the only key that moves is the middle one.
The fifth that shrinks or stretches: the four triads
Major and minor share the same fifth: seven semitones above the root, the perfect fifth. The other two triads are born when that fifth changes size. Shrink the fifth of the minor chord by a semitone and you get the diminished triad — 3 + 3, a diminished fifth, which is the tritone from the intervals guide. Stretch the fifth of the major chord by a semitone and you get the augmented triad — 4 + 4, an augmented fifth.
Hear the four side by side: major, minor, diminished, augmented. The first two sound stable, as if they could stay put; the last two sound tense, as if they wanted to go somewhere. None of them is wrong — music uses all four, and the diminished and augmented chords exist precisely to create the tension the other two resolve. This is the whole family of the game's first three levels.
Pick one of the four triads and listen: the fifth is the key that moves inward or outward.
The seventh: a fourth note, one more third on top
Hear the triad, then the fourth note that comes in above it: one more third, and the triad becomes a seventh chord — so called because the new note is the seventh counted from the root. On a C major triad, two sevenths are possible: B, a major seventh, gives C major seventh; B flat, a minor seventh, gives C seven, known as the dominant seventh. A minor triad with a minor seventh gives C minor seventh.
The fourth note brings more colour and a little more tension, and the size of the seventh sets the character: a major seventh tends to sound softer and suspended; a minor seventh on a major triad — the dominant — tends to sound like a chord that asks for what comes next, which is what music uses to come back home. The minor seventh chord sounds like minor with more room in it. The family also has the half-diminished and the diminished seventh, which the game introduces at the same level.
Hear the triad first, then the same triad with its seventh, and switch between the major and the minor seventh.
On the staff: the snowman
On the page a chord shows up as a column of noteheads, all at the same point in the bar, one above the other. In root position — root at the bottom, as everywhere on this page — a triad has a shape you can spot from across the room: the three noteheads sit either all on lines or all in spaces, stacked straight up, like a snowman.
It is the same rule as in the intervals guide, applied twice: a third has both its notes on lines or both in spaces, and a triad is a third on a third. Add the seventh and one more notehead joins under the same rule, so the snowman gets four balls. The staff tells you which notes are there; whether the third is major or minor, only the accidentals and the key signature say — and the ear confirms.
Both columns are on screen at once: on the left the noteheads all sit on lines, on the right all in spaces. Press “With the 7th (4)” and the rule still holds, now with four.
Explore: any chord, from any root
Now all of it at once: choose the root, the chord type, and whether the notes sound together or as an arpeggio — one at a time, piling up until the whole chord is ringing. The root lights up in indigo, the other notes in violet, and beside them appear the name and the chord symbol. They are the same colours the game uses to reveal the answer.
The chord symbol is the short way of writing a chord: a letter for the root (with ♯ for a sharp) and a suffix for the type. Major takes no suffix at all: C is C major. Cm is C minor, C° is diminished, C+ is augmented, C7 is the dominant seventh, Cmaj7 is major seventh, Cm7 is minor seventh. Change only the root and notice: the type sounds the same from any key — a chord is the relationship between its notes, not the place they sit.
Choose the root and the chord, hear it together and as an arpeggio, then change only the root to hear that the type stays the same.
So, what now?
Chords are not learned by memorising the chord-symbol table: they are learned by hearing a chord, naming it and finding out straight away whether that was the one — many times over, in short sittings. That is what the chords game does, level by level: it starts with major and minor, adds diminished and augmented, introduces the sus chords, moves into the seventh chords and ends with ninths and extensions.
And if you want the complete table — every chord, with inversions, extensions and the chords of every key — a good harmony book has it in its first pages, and this page is no substitute for that. It exists so that when you open the book, every line of the table already has a sound in your head.
Frequently asked questions
What is a chord?
A chord is a group of three or more notes sounding at the same time. The most common kind is the triad, three notes stacked in thirds — C, E, G, for instance — and the bottom one, the root, names the chord. What defines the chord's type (major, minor, diminished, augmented) is the distance between the notes, not the notes themselves: the same distances built on any root make the same type.
What is the difference between a major and a minor chord?
A single note: the middle one, the third. In a major chord the third sits four semitones above the root (C–E); in a minor chord, three (C–E♭). The root and the fifth are the same in both. One semitone of difference, and the chord changes colour — major usually sounds brighter and minor darker, a useful clue for starting to listen, not a rule.
What do chord symbols mean (C, Cm, C7)?
A chord symbol is the chord written in code: the letter is the root and whatever follows is the type. A letter on its own is a major chord — C is C major. Cm is C minor, C° is C diminished, C+ is C augmented, C7 is C dominant seventh, Cmaj7 is C major seventh, Cm7 is C minor seventh. A ♯ or ♭ after the letter changes the root: F♯m is F sharp minor.
What is a seventh chord?
It is a triad plus a fourth note, a third above the fifth — the seventh counted from the root. On a major triad, a major seventh (C, E, G, B) gives the major seventh chord, Cmaj7; a minor seventh (C, E, G, B♭) gives the dominant seventh, C7, the one that most asks for what comes next. On a minor triad, a minor seventh gives the minor seventh chord, Cm7. There are also the half-diminished (Cm7(♭5)) and the diminished seventh (C°7).
What about inversions, sus2/sus4 and ninth chords?
They are the next step. An inversion is the same chord with a different note at the bottom — the third or the fifth instead of the root — which changes its shape on the staff without changing its name. Sus2 and sus4 replace the third with a second or a fourth, so the chord is neither major nor minor. Ninths, elevenths and thirteenths are further thirds stacked above the seventh. Every chord on this page is in root position; the chords game introduces the sus chords at level 4 and ninths and extensions from level 8.
How do you train your ear to recognise chords?
By hearing a chord, naming it and checking straight away, many times over — starting with two clearly different types, major and minor, and adding one at a time: diminished, augmented, then the seventh chords. Hearing the chord as an arpeggio too, note by note, helps you find the middle third; singing the root helps you fix the rest on top of it. Short daily sessions pay more than one long session a week.