Major Scale Chords – Guitar Keys of C,A,G,E,D
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Note: A PDF document for the Major Scale Chord Chart in this lesson can be found here.
In a previous post, I presented a Guitar Harmony Chart for twelve major keys. In teaching guitar I find that there are five keys that are far and away the most common. In fact, any one of these five might be used more than the remaining ones put together! These keys are C major, G major, D major, A major and E major. If we reorder the key note names we can call them the ‘CAGED’ keys – C,A,G,E and D.
The following chart shows the chords for the five most common guitar keys. Simply find the key you want to work with and then read left to right to get the chords in that key. The roman numerals at the top show the position and quality (major or minor) of each chord in key.
The above Major Scale Chord chart shows a major chord for ‘VII’ rather than the diminished chord indicated by the previous harmony chart. While technically out of key, in practice this is a common substitution for the diminished chord in a major key: go down a half-step from the diminished chord and play a major chord in its place. This is a ‘borrowed’ chord from the minor scale or Mixolydian mode starting on the same key note and is a very common substitution in rock and pop styles.
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8 Comments on “Major Scale Chords – Guitar Keys of C,A,G,E,D”
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Maybe I’m missing something, but why did you put a flat VII major chord instead of actually putting the diatonic VII diminished, which is actually correct? What you’ve put here is not the chords in a major scale, but rather the chords in Mixolydian mode which has a dominant function.
@Roberto: Right. If you read the text near the bottom of the post (below the chart) I describe what you point out. I have a chart of true diatonic progressions for twelve keys @ http://guitarteacher.com/2009/02/04/guitar-harmony-chart/
Maybe a stupid question, but I’m a beginner. Do you do a different tuning for the different keys or put a capo and what are the tunings or capo positions for such things. thanks
@Mike Jones – It is not a dumb question. Finding an ideal tuning or capo position for a tune is something that advanced guitarists could argue and have different opinions on.
Open strings allow easy access to the notes to which they are tuned. As such, many songs in ‘standard tuning’ tend to favor keys that include those notes (i.e. ‘C,A,G,E,D’). If you are playing in different keys and want easier access to those notes, that is when capos or alternate tunings can be helpful.
A resource on-site that might help is the Capo Transposition Chart lesson.
I hope that helps and thanks for asking!
Hey there,
Im still quite a beginner in alot of aspects of guitar playing. Im currently working on some soloing however Im having diffculty moving around the fretboard finding where certain keys are played. Is there a sheet like the one you have here showing what frets would/could be played in a certain key?
I am requesting the cords for the facelable or Do-Ray-Me of the guitar please?
@Anthony – If you mean solfege, just replace as follows:
C=Do
D=Re
E=Mi
F=Fa
G=So(Sol)
A=La
B=Si(Ti)