Piano Chords

Piano chords are the building blocks of virtually all types of piano music. In fact, some pianists believe that if you have a basic understanding of piano chords that you can play virtually anything on your level. You are less restricted in your selections of piano songs and piano pieces to play. Knowledge of piano chords will enable you to maximize your piano playing potential and enable you to learn the piano much more quickly.

There are several types of piano chords. It is important to learn the different types and understand their basic structure. Even though many times people don’t like memorization, if you take the time to memorize the chords it will help them to come naturally to you later in your piano playing. You will find that when you understand their basic structure, piano chords are not very difficult to commit to memory. Some of the primary piano chords are major, minor, chromatic, whole tone, octatonic, pentatonic, Lydian, locrian and dorian. You will also find diminished, augmented and even exotic scales such as Balinese, blues, dominant 7th and double harmonic.

One of the best ways to memorize chords is to understand their basic structure. Piano is made up of whole and half steps when playing the keys. Chords are several notes played together that are a combination of these whole and half steps with a particular starting note. Depending on the starting note can determine whether you will be playing in a minor key or a major key. Knowing which key you are in and if it is major or minor are extremely important for people that play the piano as an accompaniment for singing and other instruments. Understanding the primary structure of piano chords and basic memorization of them will help if you are going to switch keys to sound better with a particular instrument or to allow a singer to follow a voice range that is most comfortable for them. This means that you will be a more versatile pianist and have more social setting opportunities to play.

Whether you play the Blues or other types of piano music there is customarily a melody. You can use chords to create your own harmony if you know the melody of a particular piano piece and what key the piece is composed. People that hear well and understand chords can often pick out piano songs by ear and then add their own harmony based on their chord knowledge. Being able to play the piano some by ear enables you more freedom in your piano playing and the types of songs that you select.

Regardless of the type of piano music that you play, piano chords are very important to learning how to play the piano and to maximize your piano skills. The primary concepts of piano chords are not extremely complex and can be easily learned by virtually everyone. The key is not to let the idea that you are learning musical theory get you overwhelmed. Often people hear the words piano chords and feel a sense of dread and frustration. This does not have to be the case when learning piano chords. You can have fun learning them and using them in your piano playing.