What Are The Basic Piano Chords I Really Need To Know?
What Are The Basic Piano Chords I Really Need To Know?
Lots of people know a few chords, but aren’t sure just how many chords they need to know to cover the basics in an average song — in other words, enough to “get along.”
Sure, they would like to know how to play 9th chords and suspended 7th chords and chords built on the church modes, such as Dorian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian, and so forth, but they could live without ever knowing those — they just want to know enough chords to get by in a playing situation, from accompanying a singer at a musical to playing with a worship group at church to playing for Girl Scouts.
Well, I have good news for them. There are only so many basic piano chords – 12 major chords, 12 minor chords, 12 augmented chords, and 12 diminished chords. That makes 48. Then each one can be turned upside down (inverted) 3 times. Three times 48 is 144. These are the basic 12 dozen chords a person needs to know to get along. It would sure be helpful to know how to add a 7th to a chord, but not absolutely necessary (even though it’s as simple as pie!).
The second part of the good news is that these 12 dozen chords can be learned much more quickly than most people suppose — it shouldn’t take over an hour of concentrated practice to get somewhat of a handle on these 144 chords. Here’s why:
Once a person learns the 12 major chords, all there is to finding minor and augmented chords is to move just one note from the major chord! And all there is to finding diminished chords is to move 2 notes from the major chord.
Three of the major chords are a triad (a triad is a 3-note chord) made of all white keys:
C MAJOR CHORD is C E G
F MAJOR CHORD is F A C
G MAJOR CHORD is G B D
To make a minor chords out of these, all you do is lower the 3rd (the middle note of the triad) 1/2 step to the left. So:
C Minor chord is C Eb G
F Minor chord is F Ab C
G Minor chord is G Bb D
To make augmented chords out of the major chords, all you do is raise the 5th (the top note of the triad) 1/2 step to the right. So:
C Augmented chord is C E G#
F Augmented chord is F A C#
G Augmented chord is G B D#
To make diminished chords out of the major chords, all you do is lower both the 3rd and the 5th 1/2 step to the left. So:
C Diminished chord is C Eb Gb
F Diminished chord is F Ab Cb (Cb is the same key as B)
G Diminished chord is G Bb Db
There we have 12 chords already, and we’ve only spent maybe 2 minutes! Turn these 12 upside down and you suddenly have 36 chords at your disposal.
I urge you to go to your piano right now and try out what we’ve just done. If you would like some specific help as you do this, click on the picture below.