How to Find Chords in a Key: The 7-Chord Pattern for Any Key

To find the chords in a key, build a three-note chord on each of the seven notes of the key’s scale. In every major key they come out in the same order: major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished, written as the Roman numerals I ii iii IV V vi vii°. So C major gives you C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am and Bdim. Minor keys run the same pattern starting from the sixth chord (i ii° III iv v VI VII), and songs in minor often swap the minor v for a major V.

How many chords are in a key?

Seven, counting the basic three-note chords. A key is built on a seven-note scale, and you can build one triad on each of those notes by stacking every other note of the scale: start on a note, skip one, take the next, skip one, take the next. Chords made only from the key’s own notes are called diatonic chords.

Take C major, whose scale is C D E F G A B:

The scale decides which chords are major or minor. A semitone (also called a half step) is the distance from one piano key to the very next one, black keys included. D F A comes out minor because F sits three semitones above D, where a major chord would need four (F#). B D F comes out diminished because both gaps are three semitones, so the top note lands on F, a semitone short of the F# that a major or minor chord on B would use.

Count them up and a major key has three major chords (I, IV, V), three minor chords (ii, iii, vi) and one diminished chord (vii°). Bdim is the odd one out: it sounds tense on its own, and plenty of songs never touch it. Songs also borrow chords from outside the key (a Bb in C major, say), but these seven always sound like they belong.

How to find the chords in a major key: I ii iii IV V vi vii°

The pattern holds in every major key because every major scale has the same shape of steps: whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half (a whole step is two semitones). Learn the pattern once and you have all twelve major keys.

To find the chords in any major key:

1. Spell the major scale. Start on the key’s note and use each letter once, adding sharps or flats to keep that step shape. F major is F G A Bb C D E: the fourth note is Bb, not A#, because A is already taken.
2. Lay the pattern over it. Major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished.
3. Write the chord names. The note alone for major, “m” for minor, “dim” for diminished.

Try it on G major. The scale is G A B C D E F#, so the chords are G, Am, Bm, C, D, Em and F#dim. F# is the key’s only sharp, so it is the only black key you will touch in these chords, and it turns up in three of them: Bm, D and F#dim.

D major has two sharps: D E F# G A B C#. Its chords are D, Em, F#m, G, A, Bm and C#dim. The diminished chord always sits a half step below the key’s name (F#dim in G, C#dim in D, Bdim in C), which makes a quick spelling check: Cdim in D major means a sharp went missing.

Two shortcuts speed this up. The three major chords sit on the key’s note and on the notes five and seven semitones above it (a fourth and a fifth up): G, C and D in G major; F, Bb and C in F major. And each of those major chords has a minor partner three semitones below it that is also in the key, so I pairs with vi, IV with ii, and V with iii. In C major that gives C and Am, F and Dm, G and Em, so knowing three chords gets you six.

How to find chords in a minor key (and why V is often major)

In a natural minor key the pattern runs minor, diminished, major, minor, minor, major, major: i ii° III iv v VI VII.

The shortcut is the relative major, the major key with the same notes. Count three semitones up from the minor key’s note: A minor pairs with C major, E minor with G major, D minor with F major. Then take the major key’s chords and start the list on its vi chord.

So A minor has the same white-key chords as C major, reordered: Am, Bdim, C, Dm, Em, F, G. E minor shares G major’s chords: Em, F#dim, G, Am, Bm, C, D.

Read a real chart in A minor, though, and the chord on E is often E major, with a G# in it. That G# comes from the harmonic minor scale, which raises the seventh note of natural minor by a half step. With G# in the scale, the chord on E becomes E G# B, and that G# sits a half step under A. A note a half step below home is called the leading tone, and it pulls hard. Em to Am sounds like a gentle shrug. E to Am sounds like an arrival.

The raised note changes two more chords:

The major V is the raised chord you will meet most. Caug is rare, and G#dim works as a tenser stand-in for E on the way back to Am. So in practice a minor key gives you eight chords: the seven natural ones plus the major V. In E minor, D becomes D# and Bm becomes B. In D minor, C becomes C# and Am becomes A.

Keep the minor v when you want a softer, older sound. Play Em to Am, then E to Am, and use whichever one suits the song.

Roman numeral chords explained

Roman numerals name a chord by its position in the key. I is the chord on the first note of the scale, V the chord on the fifth, and so on. The way the numeral is written tells you the chord type:

• Uppercase (I, IV, V): major
• Lowercase (ii, iii, vi): minor
• Lowercase with a small circle (vii°): diminished
• Uppercase with a plus (III+): augmented

A numeral progression works in every key. I V vi IV is C G Am F in C major, G D Em C in G major, and D A Bm G in D major. That is how a band can agree on “one, five, six, four” and play it in whatever key suits the singer, and it is how you move any progression to a new key: keep the numerals and swap in the new key’s chords. On the free online chord player, pick a key and the eight pads become its chords; play I V vi IV, change the key, and play the same pads again.

Minor-key progressions are usually counted from the minor chord, so i iv V in A minor is Am, Dm, E. Some charts count a minor song from its relative major instead, which turns that Am into a vi, so check which system a chart uses.

Stack one more every-other note on each chord and you get seventh chords, with numerals to match. In C major: Cmaj7 (Imaj7), Dm7 (ii7), Em7 (iii7), Fmaj7 (IVmaj7), G7 (V7), Am7 (vi7) and Bm7b5 (viiø7, the half-diminished chord). Only the V gets a plain 7, the dominant seventh, which is one more reason V leans so hard toward I.

Gelato Chord is built around this row of numerals. Its seven keys always play the I ii iii IV V vi vii° of the key you choose, each labeled with its chord name, so the V chord is always the fifth key, whatever key you pick.

Chords in every key: the full table

Here are the seven chords of all 24 keys. Each key also has its own page with 7th chords and playable progressions, listed on the chords in every key index.

Major keys: I ii iii IV V vi vii°

Minor keys: i ii° III iv v VI VII

Each minor key sits in the same row as its relative major, so A minor lines up with C major chord for chord. Eb minor looks different only because its partner, Gb major, is F# major spelled in flats.

A few spellings look odd at first. F# major has an E#dim because each letter appears once in a scale, so the note after D# has to be some kind of E (on a piano, E# is the F key). Eb minor has a Cb chord for the same reason, and Cb is the B key. Db major also goes by C# major, the same sounds spelled in sharps.