If you want to learn Piano Chords and scales, you might be surprised at how easy it is. While many claim that playing the guitar is easier than piano, playing chords on the piano is a lot simpler than on guitar. In fact, in order to play your first chord, all you have to do is place your hands on the piano. In whatever arrangement you have your hands in; you are playing some sort of chord, just not one that is very common.
Learn the Notes
To learn piano chords, you have to learn the notes too. This is very simple, if you know your alphabet. The first white note on most keyboards (except 88 key pianos) is called C major. If you have a full sized piano, your first note is A major. If you look at the piano, you will notice that there is a pattern that keeps repeating. This is of 7 white keys and 5 black keys. The first white note on the octave is C. The next is D, and it goes on E,F,G, and then A,B. At that point it repeats again. As you move from the left to the right, you will notice that although each of the 12 notes repeat, the pitch keeps increasing; meaning they get ‘higher’.
The black keys are a little harder to learn. They are notes exactly like the other notes, but they have a different shape and color on the piano. They are given names corresponding to their ‘neighbor keys’. The black note that is above C major is called C sharp. Sharp means ‘higher’. And so on, D sharp is the black note above D, there is none above E, then is F#,G#, and A# (‘#’ being the musical notation symbol for sharp). They are also given another name, according to the note before them, which is ‘flat’ or lower. That means that the note before D is D Flat. The note before E is E flat, and so on. The symbol for flat looks like a ‘b’, and most people write E flat as Eb.
Playing the Chords
Now that you have learnt the names for all the notes, you can then move onto chords. A chord simply means a group of notes. There are hundreds of possible combinations. Here are the most common chords. The C major chord (or ‘C’) is a very easy chord to play. It consists of three notes; C-E-G. This is known as a triad (tri=3). You should play this chord using your thumb, middle finger and pinky, which is the ideal position for most triads.
Other common chords are
G- G-B-D
F- F-A-C
A- A-C#-E
D- D-F#-A
E- E-G#-B
B- B-Eb-Gb
In order to form minor chords, you will need to flatten (lower) the middle note by one. In the case of the C chord, the middle note is E. C minor will be C-Eb-G. You can do this to any major chord to make it a minor. Once you have these chords down, you should also learn the different scales, as well as the more complex chords, such as G# (G#-C-D#). With the few chords that you do know, you can play many well known songs, using chord listing sites such as Ultimateguitar.com. Practice really does make perfect, so keep at it till the results show.
