Play Piano Using The Most-Used Chords
Play Piano Using The Most-Used Chords In Any Key!
One of the most important things that a piano player can know is the primary chords, the three major chords that are used in most every song. They are way more important than any other chords at all in any key. They are called the primary chords. I have a chart that I’d like to show you, and it slips right behind the keyboard. This chart is not for sale by the way. I just want to show you how it works here. It shows, if you line it up C to C. Put C on the C note, the next C on that note. Then it shows you all the notes of the I chord. All the notes of the I chord are in red. You can’t see that, but you’ll see it better in a minute. All the notes of the IV chord are in blue, and all the notes of the V or V7 chord are in green. Then it shows the secondary chords, the II chord, the III chord, and the VI chord. The II chord is in a brown, and the VI chord is in a silver, and the III chord is in a gold. So we can learn to play piano using the most-used chords in any key.
Those six chords will take you a long way in your piano playing. In fact, the first three chords are the primary chords, the main chords you need to know. You can’t live without those chords. I would just like to show you how those work. In any given key, there are three chords that are more used than any others, and they are based on the scale of that key. This chart has to do with the scale of C. So if I take the C scale and build a chord on the first degree of the scale, then that’s the C major chord. If I build a chord on the fourth degree of the scale, that’s called the IV chord. If I build a chord on the fifth grade of the scale, that’s called a V chord. It is traditional to add a seventh to the V chord. It’s called a dominant seventh. This is called the tonic. This is called the subdominant. This is called the dominant or the dominant seventh. Those are the three most important chords in the key of C.
What’s true in the key of C is true in every other key as well. In other words, if you figure out the scale of D, and I think you probably know the formula for a major scale. It’s whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. So if you play the D scale, you’ll see that the chord built on the first degree of the scale using the third and fifth as the other notes is the D chord. That’s the I chord. Four notes higher up the D scale, one, two, three, four, is the G chord. Five notes up higher is the A chord or the A7 chord. Those are the most important chords in the key of D: D, G, and A7. Far and away.
If you pick the key of F. Let’s play the scale of F. It goes like that based on whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. If I take the chord on the first note of the scale, it’s called the I chord. If I build a chord on the fourth degree of the scale, it’s known as a IV chord. If I build a chord on the fifth degree of the scale, it’s called a V chord or the V7 chord. Those are the three most chords in the key of F. If I’m going to play [Duane playing piano]. Almost anything you want to play in the key of F, you have those three chords. Now you may have a lot of others, but those are the basic three. So get acquainted with the I, IV, and V chords in all the keys that you want to play in. There are 12 possible major keys. If you want to play in all 12 keys, then you need to learn the three primary chords, the three main chords, the three family chords of every single key that you want to play in.
This chart, as I said, is not available for sale, but it’s available free in two courses that we have. One is the course called “How to Play Chord Piano.” That is for beginners or for people that play but don’t know chords. This chart comes free in that course. It also comes free in our crash course which is a year long course, and it is a wonderful course if I do say so myself because it takes you through all sight reading chording techniques and music theory and technical [inaudible 00:04:30], you know technique and things like that. You may want to take a look at those too. Anyway, if you want that chart, that’s how you get it. Thanks for this little time with me, and we will see you again soon. Bye-bye for now. [Duane playing piano]