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What Are The Three Most Important Chords In All Of Music?

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The Three Most Important Chords: I, IV and V

Good morning. This is Duane. Today we’re going to start a new series. I’m going to walk you through my series of news letters. There’s 39 or 50 of them or something like that and I’ll take one session for each. 1, because I’d like you to see these pages and 2, I will give you the address of these pages so you can go to them and learn in detail. This particular one is about the three most important chords in any key. When you get to that page, you can just click on that.

 
As you probably know, there’s thousands and thousands of different chords. Everything from basic chords to very complex chords. There are 3 main chords that you absolutely, positively have to know. The three most important chords in any key.  I’d taken piano lessons for 7 years, from the time I was 7 to the time I was 14 and I didn’t know this by the time I was 14 but a sax player friend of mine named Mike said, “Hey, in order to play the blues,” which we did a lot in high school, “you have to know the 3 primary chords, 1, 4, and 5.” I didn’t know those from Adam.

 
They’re Roman numerals, of course. The 1 chord, the 4 chords, IV means 4 and V of course means 5 in Roman numerals. In any key you play in, doesn’t matter whether you play in B flat or C or F or whatever, there’s just those 3 chords that are known as primary chords. There’s the chords that occur way, way more than any other chords. They’re family members of that particular key. They’re groups of notes built on the first note on the scale, the fourth note on the scale and the fifth note on the scale. That’s why we call them 1, 4 and 5 chords.  Here’s a picture of the C scale. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, simple. But the 1 chord starts there on C because it’s the first note on the scale. The 4 chord starts on F, the 4th note on the scale and the 5 chord starts on the fifth note of the scale.

 
Let’s take a look at the 1 chord. If I build a 1 chord on C, it looks like that. C, E and G, every other scale up from G. The 4 chord looks like that, F, A and C, every other scale note up from F, the 4. The 5 chord is every other scale note up from G, G, B and D. It says, “Please notice if you haven’t noticed already, those 3 chords contain all the notes of the scale.” “So what?” You may say. It’s very important because any tune, any melody in the key of C can be harmonized just by playing one of those 3 chords. In other words, any note that you play in that scale can be harmonized with just either the 1 chord, the 4 chord or the 5 chord because the 1 chord contains C, E and G. The 4 chord contains F, A and C and the 5 chord contains G, B and D.

 
If you’re playing chords in the left hand and the melody in the right hand, you can harmonize that just by matching those up. I want you to read this. It says, “Say you have 3 people in your family, your spouse, your child and you, on the same block a few houses down live you cousin and her family. At any given moment though, what are the most likely people to be in your house, the President?”  I guess it’s possible. Yasser no more. It’s possible but it’s not very likely. The most likely people to be in your house are 1, 4 and 5, the family members. The next most likely are the cousins and we’ll talk about that later.

 
Anyway, here’s the primary chords, if I can find if again, for all 12 of the major keys. When you go to this page, make sure and learn this carefully. The primary chords in the key of C are C, G and F. In the key of G, though, the primary chords are 1, 4, and 5, G, C and D. If you’re in the key of D, the 3 most used chords, you’ll want to use are D, G and A and so on through the 12 major chords. Do you have to know all those chords and all keys? No, certainly not. You can choose to play in one key or just a few keys. When you start out, I would advocate that you learn just one key and learn it pretty well. Learn those 3 chords and try to harmonize the melody using just those 3 chords.

 
That’s it for today. When you go to that page, by the way, at the bottom of the page, you’ll see a sign up sheet so you can sign up for these series of lessons and you ought to keep them on hand because they’re great reference material for you. Do sign that up. By the way, the address of this, I will put in the information box below this video so just look down below this video and you’ll see the address of that page. All you need to do is click on that link that I provide and you’ll go to that page and then bookmark it so you can get back to that page, of course. All right, thanks for being with me. I hope you enjoyed this little session and tomorrow we’ll take up the next one in this series. Bye bye for now.
Posted in Chords & chord progressions Tagged , , permalink

About Duane

Duane Shinn (that would be me) has good news for you if you want to play the piano. He (me) has little fat hands & stubby little fingers - not at all suited for playing the piano - more suited to making mud pies or some such. I am also fairly uncoordinated with just average musical ability - certainly not a great piano player. But I've learned a ton about music over the years and people tell me I'm pretty decent at explaining how music works & how to progress more rapidly on the piano. Over the years I have developed about 150 techniques for conquering the piano. Most professional pianists can do these techniques, but very few can explain them in a way people can understand. I specialize in making complex techniques simple. I invite you to watch a few of my free videos and see some of these for yourself before making any decision about taking any of my courses.

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