Major Chords On The Piano – The Key To Finding Other Chords

Good morning. This is Duane Shinn. Today I’d like to talk about how easy it is to find all the other chords once you know the major chords, so make sure you know ALL the major chords on the piano. The major chords you ought to think about as like home base, because once you know the major chords, all the major chords I think we’ve talked about. There’s only 12 of them and I just played them in those few seconds right there. Once you learn those, then minor is really easy to find. Diminish is easy to find. Augmented is easy to find. Sixth easy to find. Seventh easy to find. Major 7th, easy to find. Let’s take a look at why.

Let’s say you memorized the 12 major chords. There’s the C chord. Wherever you play it on the keyboard, it’s still the C chord. All those notes are C notes right here, because the C chord is made up of C, E, and G. The F chord is like that, F, A, C. G chord, G, B, D. The D chord has a black key in the middle, that’s a D major. E major has a black key in the middle. A major has a black key in the middle. D flat is like an Oreo cookie, black on the outside, white on the inside. D flat. E flat is too, it’s an Oreo. A flat is too, it’s an Oreo. G flat is all black. B is white, black, black, and B flat is just the opposite, black, white, white. White, black, black. Black, white, white. White, black, black. Black. Tunes have been built around that, by the way, about those 2 chords.

Anyway, let’s say you know those 12 major chords. Now I want to show you why it’s so easy to find the rest. If you know that’s a major chord, to make any minor chord, all you do is lower the 3rd. The 3rd is 1, 2, 3, the 3rd scale note. So you lower the 3rd a half step and you’ve got C minor. You can play minor chords. That’s F minor. Right? So you make any major chord, like F, you can make it minor by lowering the 3rd. G major, G minor. D major, D minor. You saw I just lowered the F sharp to F natural. E major, E minor. A major, A minor. D flat major, D flat minor. I’m lowering the 3rd a half step, even though it’s from white key to white key. E flat major, E flat minor. A flat major, a flat minor. G flat major, g flat minor. B major, B minor. B flat major, B flat minor You can easily find all the minor chords simply by lowering the 3rd a half step.

Now to make an augmented chord, what you do is you raise the 5th a half step. So that would be C major, and that’s C augmented, isn’t it? You’re playing the same root and third, but you’re changing the 5th to a half step higher. That’s C augmented. F major, F augmented. G major, G augmented. D major, D augmented. E major, go up a half step for the 5th, that’s E augmented. A major, A augmented. D flat major, D flat augmented. E flat major, E flat augmented. A flat major, A flat augmented. G flat major, G flat augmented. B major, B flat augmented. B flat major, B flat augmented.

So there you have, there’s 12 major chords and then 12 minor chords, that’s 24, and then you have 12 augmented chords, so that’s 36 so far. You know 36 chords already.

Then to make a diminished triad, you lower the 3rd and the 5th a half step. This is C major. You lower the 3rd and the 5th and that’s C diminished. F diminished, lower the 3rd and the 5th. G diminished, lower the 3rd and the 5th, ans so on. I won’t go through all the chords, but you get the idea.

So we’ve learned major, minor, augmented, and diminished. Now to make it a 6th chord, you simply take the 6th note of the scale and add it to the major chord. So that’s C 6th. The 6th is the 6th note of the scale, which happens to be a whole step above G. Not a half step, a whole step, because it’s the 6th note of the c scale. That’s F major, F 6th. G major, G 6th. D major, D 6th. E major, E 6th. A major, A 6th. D flat major, D flat 6th. E flat major, E flat 6th. A flat major, A flat 6th. G flat major, G flat 6th. B major, B 6th. B flat major, B 6th.

So if you can find the 6th, you can easily find the 7th. You go up a half step from the 6th. It’s not the 7th note of the scale, it’s a flat 7th note of the scale. Technically it’s known as a dominant 7th, but in pop music you just see it notated as C7. That’s C7th. What’s F 7th? What’s G 7th? What’s D 7th? What’s E 7th? A 7th? D flat 7th? E flat 7th? A flat 7th? G flat 7th? Sorry. B 7th. And B flat 7th. So a 6th is a whole step above the 5th. A 7th is a step and a half above the 5th.

Then finally, you can learn a major 7th real easily, because it’s the 7th note of the scale. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. But also notice it’s just a half step below the root an octave higher. So you just come down a half step from the root and you have it. That’s C major 7th. F major 7th. G major 7th. D major 7th. E major 7th. I have small hands that can barely reach that. A major 7th. D flat major 7th. E flat major 7th. A flat major 7th. G flat major 7th. B major 7th. B flat major 7th.

It’s very easy to learn those chords. You’ve got 12 major, 12 minor, 12 augmented, 12 diminished, 12 sixth, 12 seventh, and 12 major 7th. Let’s count the types. Major 1, minor is 2, augment is 3, diminish is 4, 6th is 5, 7, 8. Eight times 12 is, well whatever it is, you can find it easily, just by that simple expedient of doing what I just did. That allows you to use a lot of those sophisticated chords that you might not know otherwise. There’s a major 7th. All the complex chords after that are simply a matter of altering 1 or more notes of what we just went through.

Thanks for being with me. My point is to make sure you learn the major chords, because once you know the major chords the other chords are very easy to find. The more chords you know, the better, because you can make variety in your playing that way. Okay. Thanks for being with me, and if you haven’t already, sign up for our free piano tips. Be sure and do that. Go on over to PlayPiano.com and sign up. By the way, there’s some videos there at PlayPiano.com after you sign up. Just toggle down a bit and you’ll see a bunch of instructional videos. Okay, thank you, and we’ll see you tomorrow. Bye bye.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9qFh0gq22A&feature=youtu.be
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