How to Harmonize a Scale • Blues Guitar Institute https://www.bluesguitarinstitute.

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Have you ever wondered why some

chords just seem to be made for each
other?

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It’s no accident that G, C and D sound

like they were born to be together. The
reason for their nice little relationship
lies locked inside harmony. You could
focus a lifetime of study on harmony.
But, I like to know just enough music
theory to become a better guitarist.

Knowing how to harmonize a scale and

really internalizing that knowledge will
help you get better and help you
understand why certain chords sound
great when played together in a
progression.

WHAT LEARNING
HOW TO
HARMONIZE A
SCALE CAN DO FOR
YOU
Harmonizing a scale is the bedrock of
chord theory. It sets the rules that are
held to almost unbreakable standards.
Most chord progressions in songs you
hear in your favorite songs have their
foundation rooted in the harmonized
major scale.

OK, so it’s important. But you may be

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asking yourself “what will this do for

me?”

By the way, I hope you are asking

yourself that. I don’t think you should
spend time learning anything that won’t
help you improve your guitar playing.
There is no merit in knowing music
theory just to know it.

The benefits of knowing this little piece

of music theory are tremendous. For
me, learning how to harmonize a scale
helped me

know the key of a song,

know the correct chords for any
given key, and
learn songs by ear more quickly.

USE THESE 4 STEPS

TO HARMONIZE A
SCALE
Let’s harmonize the C Major scale
together. When you break this down
into small sequential steps,
harmonizing a scale is really not that
difficult. The key is to learn how to do
it so well that eventually skip straight
to the answer without going through the

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steps. To get to that point takes

practice. I find that building this from
the ground up on paper is a great way
to practice harmonizing a scale.

Here’s how to do that.

STEP 1 – START WITH THE

SCALE
Write the notes of the C major scale on
a sheet of paper from left to right. Like
this:

C D E F G A B

STEP 2 – REWRITE THE

SCALE
Directly under that, write the scale
again. This time, instead of starting
with the first note in the scale, start
with the second note. You will end up
with this:

C D E F G A B
D E F G A B C

You just added the second harmony to

the C Major scale.

STEP 3 – REPEAT

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BEGINNING WITH EACH

NOTE IN THE SCALE
Continue the pattern from Step 2 with
each of the remaining notes in the C
Major scale. You will end up with this:

C D E F G A B
D E F G A B C
E F G A B C D
F G A B C D E
G A B C D E F
A B C D E F G
B C D E F G A

You should end up with a grid or chart

like this with a total of seven rows and
seven columns of notes.

STEP 4 – NUMBER EACH

SEQUENCE
Simply number each row of notes from
1 to 7, like this:

1. C D E F G A B
2. D E F G A B C
3. E F G A B C D
4. F G A B C D E
5. G A B C D E F
6. A B C D E F G
7. B C D E F G A

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You now have a harmonized scale and

you can clearly see each layer of
harmony for the C Major scale. This
little chart is incredibly powerful and
we will build on this in several ways as
we study chords and scales.

PUT THIS INTO

ACTION
If you aren’t too familiar with Interval
Theory, or just need a review, check out
this quick guide to intervals.

Also check out this video from Andrew

at Creative Guitar Studio for a great
explanation of intervals. One of the
best theory teachers around. It will
come in super handy as we start to
squeeze some use out of the harmony
chart we just created.

So, back to our harmony chart…

We can use the chart to tell us what

chords will fit nicely in the key of C
Major.

To do this, we only need to focus on

line 1, line 3 and line 5. Since the root,
third and fifth are so important, let’s

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highlight them in our chart to really

focus on those intervals.

1. C D E F G A B
2. D E F G A B C
3. E F G A B C D
4. F G A B C D E
5. G A B C D E F
6. A B C D E F G
7. B C D E F G A

Now look at the columns in the chart,

(from top to bottom). If you select the
notes in the 1st, 3rd and 5th rows from
the first column you get the notes C, E
and G. These are the notes to a C
Major chord. So, a C chord sounds
good in the key of….C.

Well that makes sense!!

Now let’s move to the second column.

If you pull out the notes from the all-
important 1st, 3rd and 5th harmony
lines you have D, F and A. These are
the notes to a D minor chord. So, what
does that tell us?

If you want to play a D chord in the key

of C, try a D minor chord. It should fit
nicely with any other chords in the key.

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If you move through the columns from

left to right, the chords you derive will
be:

C Major, D Minor, E Minor, F

Major, G Major, A Minor, B
Diminished

Using this harmonized scale chart

will help you identify the chords that
belong to the key.

These chords are engineered to sound

good together. So if you are writing a
song in C, build your progressions from
these chords. If you are trying to figure
out a song in C, chances are that the
chords will be one of these. Knowing
this helps you focus on just a
few relevant chords rather than an
infinite number of possibilities.

PRACTICE
HARMONIZING A
SCALE
Since we looked at this with the C
Major scale, take a minute and go
through the 4 steps using the A Major
scale. When you can derive each of the
chords belonging to a given key, take a

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minute and congratulate yourself. This

is no small accomplishment!

Spend some time really getting inside

this. Knowing how to harmonize a
scale is the jumping off point for
practically all chord theory.

USE THE
HARMONIZED
SCALE
Take the A Major scale chart and pull
out the chords just like we did with the
C Major chords. From this group,
write a quick progression and put this
theory to use!

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