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How to Convert Music Chords

Chords are combinations of musical notes that form the fabric of most songs. Sometimes you may need to convert the chords in a song so that it better suits your vocal range or your instrument-playing abilities. This is called changing the "key" of the song. You can convert the chords within a song to a different set of chords by a process of counting intervals between notes and changing the chords according to the number of intervals present.

Instructions

    • 1

      Isolate the first chord in a song. It may be marked with a letter name such as "C" or "G," or it may simply appear as a stack of notes.

    • 2

      Change that chord to any other chord. The chords in music are named after the notes in the musical alphabet, which are A, A#/Bb, B, C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab. If you want the song to be higher in pitch, move up, or to the right of the present chord. For instance, you could move up from A to C. If you want the song to be lower in pitch, move down, or to the left. If the chord is written as a series of notes, you must move each note the same amount of space up or down, alternating between lines and spaces. If you are uncertain where notes are located on the staff lines, consult a diagram (see Resource section).

    • 3

      Count the number of notes between the original chord and the new chord. For instance, if you moved from a D chord to a G chord, you went up five half steps (D#, E, F, F#, G).

    • 4

      Change every other chord in the song with the same number of notes up or down that you changed of the first chord. For instance, if you changed from a D to a G chord, you would move each chord in the song up five half steps; a G chord would become a C chord, an A chord would become a D chord, and so on. If you're constructing the chords out of individual stacked notes, you use the same exact pattern to change each note in the song.

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