Piano chords made easy once you know the basics. If you look online you see people making claims about I have the secret to piano chords made easy. You might think that they are just blowing some hot air and trying to sell you something.
Well, really piano chords are quit easy to learn. Once you know the basics of how they are formed anyone can start playing basic songs on the piano.
If you watch someone play the piano by ear they seem like they just know exactly where to place their fingers at the right time to make it sound beautiful. But what most people don’t know is that there is a lot of knowledge that those people use this basic information and embellish on it to make their chords sound amazing.
Starting Off With Piano Chords Made Easy
So, where do we start? If you have totally no knowledge about playing the piano, then I would suggest that you take a look at some of my more beginner lessons to give you some of the basics before you begin. It’s ok……. go ahead, we’ll be here when you get back. If you already know a little bit about piano chords then you are ready for piano chords made easy.
Also, before you start. If you need a refresher in piano scales, or how to build scales then you might need to check out my page on scales before you begin.
Building A Major Chord
A basic piano chord it built around three notes. These three notes are built of the 1st, 3rd, and 5th of a scale.
What that means is, there are 7 notes in every scale. You find the 1st note in the scale, the 3rd note, and the 5th note and you have a major chord. The major chord is the king of all chords and is used most often.
So say you want to find a C major chord. All you have to do is find those three notes in the C scale and you will get that chord.
The first note in the C scale is C, the third note is E, and the fifth note is G. Thats all there is to it. Build all major chords around the 1st, 3rd, and 5th and you can easily build a major chord.
Minor Chords
A minor chord is just as easy to find as a major chord.
To find this chord you need to find your major chord. So lets use C major as our example again.
C, E, G makes C major. Now, to make this a minor chord all you have to do is move the third note, the E, one half step to the left, which is known as the flat 3rd. (A half step is the very next note) So this C minor chord would be C, Eb, and G. So building minors are easy too. Find the major, and move the third note one note to left.
Playing Songs With These Chords
Now comes the fun part. You might be asking me: “How can I already be ready to play a song?”
Well, now that you can find a major and a minor chord you can pretty much play 90% of all the popular songs there are out there. To make my point I’ll show you.
Lets play Mary Had A Little Lamb. This song is made up of three chords: C major, F major, and G major. The chord progression is below along with an audio clip to help you play along. In the clip I’m playing the melody along with the chords so you can see how the melody fits in the song.
Just take some time first to find the notes to each of the three chords. Try and figure them out on your own first, and if you have trouble, look at the bottom of the chord chart to help you.
C F C
Mary had a little lamb
G
Little Lamb
C
Little Lamb
C F C
Mary had a little lamb
G C
Its fleece was white as snow
C Major – C, E, G
F Major – F, A, C
G Major – G, B, D
If you know the three notes that go along with a chord and you know the chords to the song you can play it. There is a lot more to piano chords made easy, but these are the basics. Take your time to learn all the major and minor chords and you will be off to learning tons of new songs.
Need more help learning chords? Learn almost every chord you’ll ever need with our Piano Chord Encyclopedia.
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