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| All Chords | C major | C minor | C# major | C# minor | D major | D minor | Eb major | D# minor | E major | E minor |
| F major | F minor | F# major | F# minor | G major | G minor | Ab major | Ab minor | A major | A minor |
| Bb major | Bb minor| B major | B minor |
The Bb major chord scale is a series of chords in the key of B flat major. You can use the B flat major chord scale to invoke emotions of love, hope and cheerfulness. In this article, we’ll going to extensively cover the B flat major chord scale, teaching you how to spell and build chords, play the B flat major scale and use it to build chord progressions.
Highly recommended: check out our Piano Chord Poster – there are over 120 chords on 1 sheet & it’s great for practice!
Contents
What Chords Are in The B Flat Major Scale?
Discover the Secrets to Crafting Stunning Chord Progressions
Say goodbye to boring chords and hello to professional-grade progressions with Building Blocks. Learn to craft smooth, engaging chord progressions with this award-winning course on voice leading and more. All in a familiar DAW environment.
To find the chords in the B flat major scale, you first need to know what notes create the B flat major scale. You can then use these notes to work everything else out using formulas (which we’ll guide you through later).
The Bb major scale consists of:
Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G, A
Now you know what the notes in the B flat major scale *like we mentioned above* you can use formulas to work out the sequence of chords and the quality of each chord. To use these, just plug them into any scale, note by note.
Below are the major & minor chord scale formulas:
- Major: major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished
- Minor: minor, diminished, major, minor, minor, major, major
Because the key is B flat major, you’ll use the major formula to find out the chords. This is: major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished. Plug this in note by note and it will tell you the quality of each chord in the scale.
Using the chord scale formula to work it out, the B flat major chord scale consists of:
- Bb major
- C minor
- D minor
- Eb major
- F major
- G minor
- A diminished
Those of you that know your chord shapes will be able to play the B flat major chord scale now. For those of you that don’t, don’t worry. We are going to show you exactly how to build each chord using chord spellings.
Discover the Secrets to Crafting Stunning Chord Progressions
Say goodbye to boring chords and hello to professional-grade progressions with Building Blocks. Learn to craft smooth, engaging chord progressions with this award-winning course on voice leading and more. All in a familiar DAW environment.
The most common chord spellings are:
- Major – 1, 3, 5
- Minor – 1, b3, 5
- Diminished – 1, b3, b5
- Augmented – 1, 3, #5
To find the chords, you just plug the correct spelling into the root note major scale of what you’re trying to find.
So, if we take the 3rd chord – it’s a C minor chord, so you take the minor spelling (1, b3, 5) listed above, but use the C major scale, because the root note of the chord is C.
Let’s do a quick chord construction to understand this better…
Take the C major scale, count the 1 note (C), then the 3 note and move it a semi-tone down (Eb), then the 5 note (G). Now you have your C minor chord.
You can use this rule for every other chord. However, you need to ensure you are always using the major scale of the note you’re trying to work out. Then, you need to use the major, minor, or diminished spellings depending on what the quality of the chord you’re trying to create is.
Chords In The Key of B flat Major
The chords above are in the B flat major scale. You can use these chords in whatever order you like to build chord progressions quickly and easily. The best way to do this is using the MIDI piano roll, especially if you’re a producer, because it speeds up the workflow of your piano chord creation.
The chords above are triads. These will produce very basic sounding chord progressions if you don’t know how to make them sound more professional.
If you want to sound a bit more professional, you can use more advanced techniques like – adding extensions, bass notes and inversions. We cover this extensively in our Piano Chord Poster PDF guide, which comes with every purchase of a poster.
What Notes Are in The Chords of The B Flat Major Scale?
Once you know the chords in the B flat major scale, you should understand how to play those chords and what notes make up each chord.
Here are the chords in the B flat major scale, with their respective notes:
- Bb major – Bb, D, F
- C minor – C, Eb, G
- D minor – D, F, A
- Eb major – Eb, G, Bb
- F major – F, A, C
- G minor – G, Bb, D
- A diminished – A, C, Eb
Discover the Secrets to Crafting Stunning Chord Progressions
Say goodbye to boring chords and hello to professional-grade progressions with Building Blocks. Learn to craft smooth, engaging chord progressions with this award-winning course on voice leading and more. All in a familiar DAW environment.
The A# Major Chord Scale & Its Chords
The A# major chord scale is the exact same as the B flat major chord scale. The notation will be written differently, and this is why we don’t use the A# major chord scale when writing music. This isn’t an issue if you’re a music producer, but it is if you’re a musician who reads music.
Notation wise, the A# major chord scale is simply too hard to write on musical score.
The notes in the A# major scale are as follows:
A#, B#, C##, D#, E#, F##, G##
If you notice those double sharps – this is what makes it difficult to read and write the notation.
Discover the Secrets to Crafting Stunning Chord Progressions
Say goodbye to boring chords and hello to professional-grade progressions with Building Blocks. Learn to craft smooth, engaging chord progressions with this award-winning course on voice leading and more. All in a familiar DAW environment.
If we were to write the A# major chord scale down, it would look like this:
- A# major
- B# minor
- C## minor
- D# major
- E# major
- F## minor
- G## diminished
Common Chord Progressions in B Flat Major
Common chord progressions are great to use as building blocks for your chord melody design. Think of them as pre-made chord blocks that already sound good together. You can plug these formulas into any scale and get a good-sounding chord progression right off the bat.
To do this you just have to match the roman numerals of the chord progression, with the roman numerals in your chord scale.
Anything with a 6, 7, 9 after it, is an extension chord, lowercase = minor, and uppercase = major.
Here’s a list of common chord progressions in B flat Major:
- I, V, vi, IV
- vi, ii, V7, I
- IV, I6, V
- I, iii, IV, V