Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

Lead-sheet symbols (also known as “lead-sheet notation” and “lead-sheet chord symbols”) are often used as shorthand for chords in popular music and jazz. These symbols allow a guitarist or pianist to choose how to “voice” the chords, i.e., how they want to arrange the notes.

Lead-sheet symbols for triads communicate the root and quality of a chord.

Here is a musical example with lead-sheet symbols and guitar tablature.

As you can see in the example above, major triads are represented by an uppercase letter ($\text{A}$, $\text{E}$, and $\text{D}$) while minor triads are represented with the root in uppercase followed by a lowercase “m” (e.g., ${\text{F}}^{♯}\text{m}$). Diminished triads are represented by including the diminished symbol (${}^{\circ }$) after the chord root (e.g., ${\text{C}}^{\circ }$) while augmented triads are represented by including the augmented symbol after the root ($\text{C}+$).