The Ear Training Lab

To play this game you need to know:

All 12 note names including sharps and flats in order to name the root note (in root position chords this is always the lowest / first note).

Then either the 'sound' of major and minor chords, or knowledge of how they are built - ideally both. To hone your ability to recognise the 'sound' of major and minor tonalities check out the 'Major Or Minor? Triads' game, and the structure of Major and Minor chords is detailed here, below:

What are Major and Minor Triads?

Triads are three-note chords, and the most common of these are major and minor triads - they form the harmonic basis of the vast majority of all Western music, so correctly identifying them is an incredibly useful, fundamental skill.

Both chord types begin from a root note, and then follow specific formulas up to the next two notes.

Major and Minor Triad Formulas

To create a major or minor triad we can begin on any note, and we call this the 'root' note. We then follow a specific formula travelling up in pitch to the second note in the chord, and to the third note in the chord. The note we begin on, the root, is the note the chord is named after, and the formula we follow is the tonality the chord is named after. Ie if we begin on the note 'C' and follow the 'major triad' formula we will make a C Major chord! Similarly, if we start on the note Bb and follow the 'minor triad' formula we will make a Bb minor chord.

The major formula looks like this:

1st note (+ major 3rd) 2nd note (+ minor 3rd) 3rd note.
Or
1st note (+4 semitones) 2 (+3 semitones) 3
Or
X (+4) Y (+3) Z

And the minor formula looks like this:

1st note (+ minor 3rd) 2nd note (+ major 3rd) 3rd note.
Or
1st note (+3 semitones) 2 (+4 semitones) 3
Or
X (+3) Y (+4) Z

Let's apply both formulas beginning from the note C:

C Major = C (+4) E (+3) G

C Minor = C (+3) Eb (+4) G

And here are two diagrams showing both chords being created, with an animation travelling up from the root note and following each different formula to the 2nd and 3rd notes of the chords. Press 'Play Audio' under an animation to trigger it from the start with the audio.

We can apply the formulas to any of the other notes on the piano to make all the other major and minor triads. For example:

As you can see here, where chords have the same root note, it is only the middle note that changes, they each share the same third note. Hint* We do not refer to notes within a chord by the number in which they sequentially appear, ie in C Major, which is the notes C, E and G we do not refer to E, which is sequentially the second note of the chord, as the 2nd. Instead we refer to each note via it's scale degree number relative to the root.

You can use these formulas and the method of building chords shown above to identify the tonality of the chords in this game!