How To Play Chopsticks On The Piano – From Beginner To More Advanced

Good morning. This is Duane. If you had to guess, what would you guess the most popular song is?  If someone asked me that question, I would probably guess Clair de Lune or Prelude in C-sharp minor or Moonlight Sonata, something like that or maybe Fur Elise, or some piece like that. In the pop vein, I know one of the most popular songs that’s played on the piano is White Christmas, but the most popular song, the most played song on the piano is none of those.

It’s Chopsticks.

That’s because not just concert artists, not just recording artists record it, but everybody plays it. I played it when I was probably three-years-old. I imagine my brother showed me how to do that.

Let’s go over two ways to play this or maybe three ways – how to play Chopsticks on the piano.  First, we’ll take a very … If you don’t know anything about the piano, then find the brand on your piano. Mine is Yamaha, but yours may say Steinway or something else.

Find the group of three keys not the group of two keys and go down to that white note and play the white note above it, and play that six times, one, two, three, four, five, six. Now, drop the bottom note, one, two, three, four, five, six. Now, six times on that, B and D. Now, that’s an octave C then you climb back to the middle.

There’s a middle part to it if you want to learn that. It’s a bridge. It goes like that. You can play at a single finger if you want. It starts on E. If you want to use two hands … Now, if you already play the piano, of course, then you could use thirds like I just did, but use better fingering than I showed a minute ago.

Now, that’s obvious. If you are a beginner, that’s the way you should start. If you’re a little more advanced, what you can do is simply match the chords in the right hand and there’s only two of them to the left hand. That would be a G seventh chord, so you’ll play a G seventh chord which is G, B, D, F and you could hit a low G.

You see what I’m doing? I’m playing a low note, two chords, low, two chords. That’s on G seventh. The other one is C, so I hit a low C. I could hit it there, I guess, then I’d come up and play the C chord. E, G, and C chord. G, C, and E, so I could go like this.

Then your chord on the middle part too. G seventh, C, G, C, G seventh, C, G seventh. Okay, so it’s just two chords, just the C chord and the G seventh chord. You create rhythm base by hitting a low note and then two of the chords. Again, I apologize for my throat. It’s been catching for some time.

Okay. A third way would be to re-harmonize the melody. Instead of using G seventh all the time you could ask yourself, in what other chord does this melody note fit? The melody note is G that it starts on, so you could start out with E-minor seventh or you could start out with D Minor seventh suspension like that.

Then next you play maybe D-flat seventh, back to C,  then A Minor. The middle part, of course, you could stick with that if you want or you could just do something like this. You could change the rhythm, you could do all kinds of things, but it’s a fun song to just fool around with starting from just two fingers like that, adding chords later on, and then adding chord substitutes by asking yourself, in what other chord does this melody note fit? If the chord is G, you know it fits in the G chord. If it’s in the C chord, it fits in the G Minor seventh chord. If it’s in the E-flat chord, lots of chords it fits in, so just ask your self that.

Okay. That’s it for today, just a little fun lesson on Chopsticks. We’ll see you again tomorrow with, I think, a more serious piano subject. See you then. Bye, bye for now. If you’re not already receiving my piano tips on a regular basis, please go to www.PlayPiano.com and sign up – it’s free!