“Rainbow Piano Chords” – Chords That Bring Color To Your Piano Songs

Good morning, this is Duane, and today, I’d like to talk about creating rainbow piano chords. You know what a rainbow is. When you see it in the sky, it’s a bunch of colors, all the primary colors created by light going through a prism. You see this wonderful display of colors across the sky.

Now, we can do the same thing in music if we apply color tones to our normal chords. In other words, a normal chord is a triad, right? If I play Somewhere Over The Rainbow just using the normal triads, it would sound like that which is fine, but we can make it so much more interesting by putting rainbow chords in it. In other words, applying the colors that are available to us, two chords.

One of the tools of creating rainbow chords. Well, there’s a 6th chord – if I’m playing the C chord, I can add a 6th. If I’m playing a C chord, I could add a major 7th. I could add a 7th. I could add a flat 5th. I could add a 9th. I could add a major 7th and a 9th or a dominant 7th or a 9th. I can add an 11th. I can add a 13th and so on. There’s a lot of tools, but they’re  extended chords. They extend beyond the chord itself beyond the triad.

Let me just play through Over The Rainbow since I started that and I’ll put in a few color tones, in other words rainbow chords and create that rainbow effect of colors.

Ouch – sorry – that was terrible. Obviously you move there but you get the idea in there.

Hopefully, aside from the goof, that was more colorful than the first time through and it comes from adding those rainbow chords. The color tones made out of 6ths, major 7ths, 9ths, 11ths and so on. Obviously, this is not an instructional on how to do that, but I just want you to know that you can do that. There’s many courses around that teach you how to add color tones and so on. If you’ll color your chords with rainbow chords, you’ll find they’re a lot more interesting and exciting.

That’s my little tip for today, so thanks for being with me and if you enjoy this sort of thing, come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for our series of videos and instructional materials. Bye-bye for now.

***For lots more good stuff on piano playing come on over to my website at https://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips – “Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions!”

Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

You’ll learn piano chords galore and how to apply them when you play piano – major chords, minor chords, augmented chords, diminished chords, 6th chords, 7th chords, 9th chords, 11th chords, 13th chords, suspensions, alterations and more. Chords are the “missing link” in most piano lessons and you can learn them all easily. Learn piano playing and music theory at the same time – it will make your progress faster and you will understand music like you never have before.

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJCI2jxrIq8&feature=youtu.be