PIANO CHORDS BASICS

Wouldn’t you like to listen to songs on the radio and then be able to follow with your piano what you hear on the radio? The key to doing this is to learn to play the piano by chords - learning to play the piano using the chord method.

There are a lot of chords out there and a lot of variations thereof. But the basic chords that you will find in every type of music are the major and minor chords. These are also known as major and minor triads, due to the fact that they consist of three notes each.

The key to learning piano chords is to start with the fundamentals – from first principles, which is – learn first major and minor piano scales. You see once you know how to play major and minor scales it becomes easy to learn piano chords.

There are 12 major scales on the piano, but the principle to forming them is the same for each key and each key will consist of 7 unique notes. For example, in the key of Cmajor the scale will be: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C these major scales sound the same as when you are singing “do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.

Now, for every chord that exists, there is a formula to it. For major chords the formula is: 1-3-5 and for a minor chord is: 1-b3-5(the “b3” just means that you flatten the third note. Let’s say we want to form a C major chord, what you do is take the major scale of C and the convert it to numbers, that is, C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C=1-2-3-4-5-6-7. Now C major chord=1-3-5=C-E-G. Congratulations you have just learned a C major chord. This C-E-G just means that these are the notes that you will press down with your hand on the piano to play the chord. Note also that there are various ways to play any chords. If a chord has 3 notes, it means that it can be played in 3 different ways and if it has four notes, then it can be played 4 different ways. The chord we have just formed has 3 notes; hence it can be played four different ways, i.e. C-E-G, E-C-G and C-G-E. The method of playing these chords like this is called chord inversions.

Basically to learn piano chords, you start learning piano scales then chords then progressions (songs). Once you begin to learn and practice, forming piano chords will be second nature to you, you will eventually play them without thinking. With you chords you can harmonise melodies to you favourite songs using chord inversions. When using chords to play songs will make your songs sound fuller.