The chord of E Major

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Part-E Time

Chords have characteristics. Personalities, almost. Master composer Schubert even wrote a directory to explain this!

In it, E Major is described as ‘Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E Major.’

French composer Charpentier had a slightly different take on it, proclaiming E Major to be ‘quarrelsome and boisterous’.

Whether joyous or quarrelsome, both composers agree that E Major is ready to rock!

There are many ways to use E Major in your productions – it can lead the progression in an adrenaline-fuelled banger, or it can add fervour to an otherwise melancholy song.

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E’s are good

E Major is used in a whopping 44% of the songs analyzed in Hook Theory! That’s one seriously popular chord. From party bangers to laments of lost love, E Major is a versatile chord that can add energy and passion to your progression.

Let’s analyze E Major. Like all tonal chords, it’s generic form is a triad – or three notes played simultaneously – and it starts with it’s own root note, which is, of course, E.

The magic number

Every triad starts with the root note and ends with a perfect fifth – five whole notes up from the root. The middle note is really important as it decides whether the chord is Minor or Major. Check out this simple chart below:

E Chord Root (AKA ‘Tonic’) Interval 1 Interval 2
Major E G# B
Minor E G B
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The chart shows us the simple difference between E Major and E Minor. It also tells us that E Major consists of three notes: E, G# and B.

Relatively speaking

Every Major chord has a relative Minor chord that complements it. If you’ve ever seen the Mixed in Key Harmonic Mixing Wheel (AKA the ‘Camelot’ Wheel) you’ll be familiar with the way chords ‘connect’ based on their position on the wheel.

CamelotWheel

The outer ring has the Major chords, the inner ring has Minors. Look at the top of the wheel. 12B = E Major, and is positioned next to 12A = D Flat Minor. These are ‘relative’ chords – very useful when writing chord progressions as you know they’ll sound ‘correct’ even when played on top of one another.

Minimize the Leap

When playing E Major, you can change the way it’s played and play either of the triad notes at the bottom. Check out the video example below, where you can see and hear the difference between the three ways of playing the same chord. The sound is almost the same and the pitch is identical. These are sometimes referred to as inversions.

These inversions are scored in different ways:

First Inversion

Bottom Middle Fifth
G# B E

Second Inversion

Bottom Middle Fifth
B E G#
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Why invert?

Inverting chords gives musicians different ways of playing the same chord in different positions on the keyboard – minimizing the distance between chords. That’s where the term ‘Minimize the leap’ originates – something you can easily replicate in Captain Chords.

Flavors

Flavors and Suspended Chords

We can make E Major more complex and interesting by adding additional notes. It’s like adding spice to your chord – so be careful not to overdo it.

These additional notes come from the overall diatonic scale of the note, which takes a bit of time to learn.

Each one adds its own flavor, which is why they are sometimes referred to as flavors. It’s super simple to add these flavors in our Captain Chords software – you just select the flavor you want and audition it live within your composition.

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The diatonic scale of E Major

Flavor:

Root Third Fifth 6th 7th 9th 11th 13th
E G# B C# D# F# A C#

Suspended:

Root Third Suspended 2nd Suspended 4th Fifth
E G F# A B

There are fewer potential suspended notes, since they fit in between the root and fifth. There are two options, in fact, which makes sense if you think about it: 1 is taken by the root note, E. 3 is taken by the first interval, and 5 is taken by the perfect fifth. This leaves just 2 and 4 as possible destinations for our suspended notes.

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