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Thirds in Music—Major 3rd, Minor 3rd Intervals—Make Up Chords
As you’ve discovered, chords consist of "3rd” intervals stacked atop each other. In any diatonic scale, if you select any note as a starting point, you will always get an interval of a 3rd simply by skipping one note of the diatonic scale.
For example, in the key of C major, if you start on the note D and skip to the note F, you get an interval of a minor 3rd (three semitones). If you start on F and skip to A, you get an interval of a major 3rd (four semitones). Remember, even though one interval is a major 3rd and the other is a minor 3rd, both are still considered to be 3rds.”
Everywhere along the scale, skipping one note gets you an interval of either a major 3rd or a minor 3rd.
So, any triad will consist of ...
- A root note, which can be any note of the scale, plus
- The 3rd note up from the root (skipping over the 2nd note), plus
- The 5th note up from the root (skipping over the 4th note).