>> [MUSIC] As songwriters, you can definitely write some beautiful songs by writing just a melody, but eventually, those melodies are going to have to find chords. We're going to talk about triads to start with, but a triad is just three notes and in the key of C major, you would build a chord off of each scale degree in the major scale. Major scale in the key of C major is just C, D, E, F, G, A, B and then back to C. So you can build your chords off of each one of those notes and a chord is three notes or more, but we're going to deal with triads for now. The first chord in C major is a C major chord, and that is built off of a major third and then a minor third. The next chord, you just go up to the second degree of the major scale, which would be D, and you build a triad that way, and that would be with a minor third and then a major third. Our next chord will be built off the next scale degree, which should be E. E, up a minor third, up a major third, we have E minor triad. The next one would be an F major triad built on the F note, which is the fourth degree of the scale, up a major third, up a minor third, and we'll go to our G major chord, which would be built on the G, which is the fifth scale degree in the key of C major. Up a major third, up a minor third, and you've got a G chord. Let's go up to the sixth-degree because we need our A minor chord. It's the saddest of all chords. We'll start out with the A minor and we'll go up a minor third and up a major third, and then you have your A minor chord. I we go up to the last note, the seventh degree of the major scale, we have B. We go up a minor third and then another minor third, and we have B diminished. It would be a really good practice to go up and down the scale, just going back and forth between these chords just to get used to them but if you're a piano player by any chance, you can see that my hand really doesn't change the shape very much. It can be pretty easy if you don't lift your hand and then go back and reinvent the wheel every time. So just [MUSIC]. It's pretty easy when you keep your hand in the same shape. That's just a little tip to practice so that you don't have to think too hard every time you really memorize these chords, but these are the chords, you're going to write thousands of songs with. So they're really important to start here.