How to make any triad chord? Chord construction demystified!

A chord by definition is more than one note played together whether arpeggiated or strummed.  Now, here are the 4 basic forms of chords in their triad setting.  Triad means that the chord has 3 notes (the 1st or root, the 3rd, and the 5th).  Why?  Because these notes are analyzed in context to a major scale of 7 notes, thus the root, third, fifth, etc.  These numbers are relative to a scale of 7 notes.

Another piece of info will be to learn a bit on intervals.  The 2 intervals you need to remember in order to construct chords are m3 = minor thirds, and M3 = major thirds.

m3 = 3 half steps (on guitar, piano, bass, etc).
M3 = 4 half steps (on any instrument as well).

Now comes the simple part...how to construct the actual chords?  Remember there are 4 types of chords.  So, here they are along with their formulas, and an example of each in ANY C chord:

major chord = root + M3 + m3 (C + E + G)
minor chord = root + m3 + M3 (C + Eb + G)
diminished chord = root + m3 + m3 (C + Eb + Gb)
augmented chord = root + M3 + M3 (C + E + G#)

Have fun!