How to Play the Piano (or Keyboard) Like a Pro: Lesson 2 - Chords and More Chords

We now come to the heart of the method I will be showing you. It's called the "chord method" and as you'll soon see it simplifies things a lot. You won't have to read pages of complex music, but you'll be playing as if you are. The first step in this method is to learn a few simple chords, where a chord is a group of several notes played together. We'll start with the simplest chord, namely two notes played together. It forms a dyad, and the most important dyad is the third. When you play middle C and the E above it on the piano, you are playing a third, and it is very important in music, so it's a good idea to get used to playing thirds. Play C and E, then D and F, and E and G, and so on up the keyboard. Stick to white notes as first, but then try a few black note thirds, such as F-sharp and A-sharp. Practise playing them all over the piano until you get used to them.

If you add another note you get a triad.  Begin with C-E-G; play it with fingers 1-3-5. This is a triad in C, and it's referred to as the root position of the C major chord. Now, move up to G and play the triad   G-B-D. This is a G major chord, and again it is the root position. In the same way, play F-A-C; it is the root position of F major.

In the last lesson we analyzed scales in terms of tones (T) and half tones (h). Let's do the same thing here. Looking at the C major chord C-E-G we see that there are four half tones between C and E, and three half tones between  E and G (count them in the diagram). This means that our basic major chord is made up of:

• A key note (C).
• A note 4 half tones above it (E).
• A second note 3 half tones further up (G).

What is important about this is that all triads are made up in the same way, so it means you can easily figure out the basic triad for any key. Try it for D, E and A, but be careful; they'll have some black notes in them. Incidentally, the above "formula" can be abbreviated as R-4-3, where R stands for root note.

I'd like to add something useful to this that will be helpful later on. In the case of C-E-G, add the upper C (we refer to it as C'). The chord will then have four notes, namely C-E-G-C'. People with small hands may have a problem playing this chord, but you should try, as it will be very helpful later on. Also, go to G-B-D and add G' to get G-B-D-G'; similarly for F you will get F-A-C-F'.

Inversions

Let's go back to the  C major chord C-E-G. I mentioned that this is the root position of the C major chord. Consider the upper two notes in this chord; play them with C' so that you get E-G-C'. If you listen carefully to this chord you will find it is harmonious, and sounds similar to C-E-G. Indeed, it has the same notes; the only difference is that it has C' instead of C. It is referred to as an inversion of the root position of C major. Similarly, you can go up to G-C'-E'; it is another inversion. Try playing these inversions up and down to familiarize yourself with them.

You can do the same thing for F and G. For F you will have the root position F-A-C, and the two inversions A-C-F' and C-F'-A'. I think you'll be able to figure out the inversions of G quite easily. And again, practise them up and down the keyboard several times until you are quite familiar with them.

As you'll see, we will be using these chords in both the right and left hand, so it's also a good idea to become familiar with them in the left hand. Go down to the octave below middle C and practise the inversions upward for C. Then do the same thing for F and G. Don't worry about memorizing them; they'll come naturally to you once you begin playing a few songs using them. And, indeed, you're
almost ready to do that, but first let's look at some other chords that will be useful.

Minor Chords

Songs with only major chords in them can be a bit boring. So let's look at what we can do to spice things up a little. If you've ever listened to someone playing a song on the piano I'm sure you've noticed that it sounds different in certain places; in other words, the chords sound different, and they certainly aren't all major chords. So, what can we do to make them different?  To answer this, let's look back at the root position of the C major chord, namely C-E-G. One way we can change it is to change the E into an E-flat; if we do this we get what is called C minor. We can write it as C-Eb-G, where I'm using b as a flat symbol (in practise it's a little different but b will do here). And again, the inversions are
Eb-G-C' and G-C'-Eb'.

We can make the root form of  F and G into minors in the same way. In the case of F we flat A, and for G we flat B, so we have F-Ab-C and G-Bb-D. The inversions in this case are Ab-C-F', C-F'-Ab' and Bb-D-G', D-G'-Bb'. Spend some time playing these chords on the piano so that you become familiar with them. Finally, note that in terms of half tones the minor scale has the root, 3h's and 4h's, or R-3-4.

Diminished Chords

Another important chord is referred to as the diminished chord. In this case we add a flat to the C minor chord; this gives C-Eb-Gb. Listen to the sound; it is quite different from that of the minor chord. And again, the inversions are Eb-Gb-C' and Gb-C'-Eb'. Applying these same changes to F we get F-Ab-Cb (actually, Cb is B), and its inversions are Ab-B- F' and B-F'-Ab'. And for G we have G-Bb-Db and its inversions. Practise each of these until you're completely familiar with them. You'll find that it doesn't take long. Finally, in terms of half tones, the diminished chord is R-3-3

Augmented Chords

I don't want to scare you with too many chords, but there are a few more. Don't worry, though, we're almost there, and you have already learned enough to play a large fraction of popular songs. The augmented chord is not used very often, but it has an interesting sound and is useful to know. To get it, go back to the C major chord, C-E-G. This time sharp the G so that you have C-E-G#. Try it on the piano; it sounds somewhat like a chord you would hear in a Russian folk dance, and indeed, that is one place you will find it.

In the same way for F you get F-A-C#, and for G, G-B-D#. By now the inversions should be obvious, so I won't bore you. For those of you who are interested, in terms of half tones this chord is R-4-4.

So you now know the major, minor, diminished and augmented chords for C, F, and G. The next step is to see how you use them in music, or what we call the "score" of a song. For this we have to look at sheet music.


Sheet Music

The best way to become familiar with sheet music is to take the score for any popular song and look it over. I'm sure you have one somewhere. The first thing you see is a simple arrangement of the song that is relatively easy to play, but this isn't what you are interested in. What you will be playing is much more complicated than this arrangement, but you won't have to read a lot of notes to do it. For the most part you can ignore the written  arrangement. What you are looking for is the single treble clef above it. Here you'll see the melody notes of the song, and what is nice about it is that it is a sequence of single notes, so they're not hard to read. And in the chord method this is all the notes you have to read.

Above these notes you will see letters such as C, G, F and so on. They will frequently be at the beginning of a bar, but they can occur anywhere within the bar. They are telling you what chord to play at that point. In the above case (after the first two notes) it is G, and G major chords should be played for the next two bars; at the end of those two bars you see the letter C. If nothing comes immediately after the C, it is assumed to be the major chord. In many cases, however, you will see other letters, and they are designating one of the other types of chords we discussed above. The usual designations are:

               Chord Type                        Symbol
                 Major                                  C (G, F, and so on)
                 Minor                                  Cmin
                 Diminished                         Cdim
                 Augmented                         Caug,   C+

In the above sample, try playing the chords for the notes. Begin by playing the first two notes as single (or octave), then play the G chord for B and so on. Play them down from the written notes. Don't worry about playing them all through from the beginning, just practise playing  them in any order.

At this point it is also useful to begin practising the chords in the left hand. Try them separately from the right hand. They don't have to be in the same position as the chords in the right hand, so play them in the root position initially, but also try the various inversions we learned. They should be played below middle C.

You may have thought I forgot to mention the stuff at the beginning of the clef. I didn't and I'll do it now. It tells you what key the song is in, and its timing. In the above case F is sharped so it's in the key of G (and all the F's throughout the song should be sharped). The 3/4 refers to the 3 quarter notes per bar, which is a waltz.

While we're talking about sheet music I'll mention what are called "fake books." Buying the sheet music for every song you want to play can get rather expensive, and in recent years there's the problem of finding it (single sheet music scores for individual pieces are no longer published for a large fraction of songs). The best way around this is fake books. They're not really fake; they give you the melody notes of a large number of songs and a listing of the chords to play along with them, and they're not very expensive. So it's a good idea to invest in one or two (they usually have hundreds of songs); they're available at most music stores.


Tetrads

I hate to make things even more complicated, but tetrads, which are chords with four notes in them are also very useful. You can do a lot with them and they make you sound a lot better. The major tetrad is the seventh; for it you add the note that is one tone (T) down from the upper key note. For the C major chord this is B flat, so C-seventh (C7) is C-E-G-Bb. Try it on the piano, and play its inversions. Similarly for F we have F7, which is F-A-C-Eb, and for G we have G7 as G-B-D-F.

Another tetrad that is quite useful is the sixth. In this case we add a note 1 1/2 tones down from the upper key note. For C major this is A, so we get C-E-G-A and it is written as C6; in the same way for F we have F-A-C-D, and for G, G-B-D-E. As it turns out, sixth chords are particularly versatile; they can be used in place of any major chord of the same key. For example, whenever, the C chord is called for, you can use C6.

Practise

This section is just to remind you of some of the things you should practise from this lesson.

1. Play and practise the inversions of all the major chords of C, F, and G.
2. Play and practise the inversions of the minor, diminished, augmented, and seventh chords of C, F, and G.
3. So far we haven't said anything about A and D chords, but they do appear in songs in the keys of C, F and G. Pick out the major, minor, diminished, augmented, and seventh of these two keys using the information I gave you earlier. It shouldn't be too difficult for you at this stage. (just in case you are having a problem I'll give you some of them: The major of A is A-C#-E and for D it is D-F#-A, and the minors are A-C-E and D-F-A.