Generally, we avoid working with diminished chords on this site, just because it can be very tricky to make them sound good and they’re pretty rare in popular songs. There is one chord that stands out above, and that’s the vii°. So the iii in the key of C major represents the E minor chord. The iii, on the other hand, is lowercase. Let’s look at the chords in the C major key again as an example: Each symbol in this notation tells you two things: (1) the distance of that chord from the root note of the key (the scale degree) and (2) the type of chord that it is (major, minor, diminished, etc.). Roman numeral chord notation combines the idea of scale degrees with the idea of chord scales. In the key of C major, the chord scale is as follows:Įach of these chords results from forming a triad on a scale degree using only notes from the scale. We just saw, for example, that in the key of C major, the triad (3-note chord) starting on C is major and the triad starting on E is minor. Chord scales and Roman numeral notationĮvery key has a distinctive sequence of chords, which make up what’s called a “chord scale”. And E is minor here because picking notes from the C major scale in this way starting from E forms a minor chord. The important point is that C is major here because picking notes from the C major scale in this way starting from C forms a major chord. And the E minor chord is made up of the notes E, G, and B. For example, the C major chord is made up of the notes C, E, and G. Starting from a note, you skip notes to get a set of 3. We say E is the 3rd scale degree of C major, for example, because it is in the 3rd position in the scale.Įach note in a scale can form the basis for a chord in that scale. For example, in the key of C major, we have the following notes (with Arabic numerals representing scale degrees): C - D - E - F - G - A - B A scale degree is the position of a note relative to the root note of a scale. Roman (lower): i - ii - iii - iv - v - vi - viiīefore we can talk about representing chords by number, we need to consider “scale degrees”. Roman (upper): I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII If you’re rusty on your Roman numerals, here’s a quick refresher of the ones we’ll use.

Since I use this notation throughout the site, this post will also serve as a reference for regular readers. Let’s look at how this notation works and how it can be useful for a songwriter. You might run across this convention in books, articles, and songwriting apps. A common convention for representing chords is to use upper- and lowercase Roman numerals↗ (opens in a new tab) (e.g.

E flat major roman numerals