I’m confused, the C scale is made up of C, D, E, F, G, B, and C again, right? And the C chord is made up of 1st (C), 3rd (E) and 5th (G). But didn’t we say in a previous lesson that major chords are formed on the 1st, 4th, and 5th? While the minors on the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th minor?
A major chord is 1, 3, 5, and a minor chord is a 1, b3, 5. So C major is C, E, G and C minor is C, Eb, G
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Dave
I think also you are getting chord construction a little confused with the diatonic chords of a scale. For those yes The major chords take their root note from the 1 4 5 and the minor chords from 2 3 6 (the 7 being diminished we we normal don’t talk about 
)
So in the Major C scale the notes are as you say
C D E F G A B C so the diatonic chords would be
C Dm Em F G Am Bdim
Each of those chords are then built from the 1st 3rd and 5th interval of the parents scale.
So the notes in the C major chord is C(1) E(3) G(5).
To keep things simple for now, lets look at the other 2 major chords F & G.
The F Major scale is F G A Bb C D E
So the 1 3 5 in the F Major chord are F A C.
The G Major scale is G A B C D E F#
So the 1 3 5 in the G Major chord is G B D
As you can see F A C & G B D all come from that original C Major scale. Things get a little different when we come to the minor chords, so I’ll leave it there for now. But if you have followed this so far I’ll happily cover their construction later.
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Ah, I’d missed the source of the confusion. Great answer.
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@HutDave @TheMadman_tobyjenner
Toby almost has it correct. The chords in a scale(key) come from stacked 3rds. Staying with the C major scale. C D E F G A B the 1st chord comes from the 1 3 5 intervals, the 2nd chord comes from the D F A the 2 4 6, the 3rd chord comes from the 3 5 7 E G B ect. If you look at the parent scale of the D chord the notes are D E F# G A B C# the 1 3 5 of the D major scale are D F# A but the notes in the 2nd chord are D F A the second note F(the 3rd of the scale) is flattened to a flat 3rd. This is why the second chord in the Key of C is Dm and not D. I’ll let you figure out the rest of the chords using the same formula
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I stand corrected sensei. 
Why do I always make things more complicated - bad 
You explained the Major chords correctly, I just filled in the minor chords.
This has been a great response to @HutDave. Thanks to both of you @stitch and @TheMadman_tobyjenner! I hadn’t made the connection between the ii chord and the parent scale 
. This might not have been pointed out if TheMadman hadn’t made a wee error EDIT: omission, not error. 
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Thank Judi, I was getting to where @stitch / Rick had posted but going around the block a couple or three times first. Taking the direct route is often quickest,
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Toby didn’t make an error he is correct in his explanation of the Major chords he just left out why the minor chords are minor. I’m just happy some one learnt something useful today. 
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Hope I’m not being pedantic, but I think the above is an error, in the context of harmonizing the C major scale. When building the F chord for the C major scale, you don’t use notes from F major, but rather notes from C major.
A major chord will be a major chord no matter what. Whether it’s diatonic to the given key or not is another matter. The F major triad will always have the notes F, A and C. When you learn chords, you don’t have to go back to the C major scale every time but check the root note of the desired chord and apply the relevant major/minor/augmented/diminished/etc formula.
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This thread is about harmonizing the C major scale. To do that you stack thirds starting on different notes of the C major scale.
John I was attempting to establish the principles of 1 3 5 making a major chords, as in what the OP posted.
When I got to D as in Why Dm ? I would have taken D F# A from the D Major scale back to the C Major scale and said “Houston we have a problem, there’s no F# here !!” “Ah but there is an F and by using the F from the C Major scale we arrive at the Dm”. Wash rinse repeat for Em and Am.
Like I said going round the house to arrive at the same answer from the 1 3 5 perspective first. Feel free to be what ever you wish to be, every bit of information should help the OP be it in different ways.
You’re spiting hairs John and Toby’s answer Dave’s original question about being confused about chord construction on chords in a Key.
my cat do that
It doesn’t all become clearer here, hopefully a new student will understand it all a bit later 
Good luck all
I think we’re all talking about the same thing one way or another, but it’s definitely not about the C major scale and its diatonic chords only. The last question was about it, but not the whole thread. 
In addition to my previous post, what about sus chords? Those are neither major nor minor. Let’s say you play a Dsus2 in an otherwise diatonic chord progression in C major. If you’d like to analyse the Dsus2 chord, you need to check the D major scale to see what makes it suspended and how: the note E since that is the 2nd degree of the D major scale. Yes, E happens to be part of the C major scale as well so you can solo over it in the key of C, but still the major scale of the root note of the chord determines its quality.
@Richard_close2u could you remove from post 22 HutDave’s to post 40 and start a new thread. This thread is about Active Listening and has gone way off track
Thank You
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Thx, I should choose my words more accurately. I’ve fixed my response.