Ah, broken chords. The sound. The cascading pattern of chordal notes. It’s beautiful. There’s no doubt about it. And this technique is one of the easiest to learn. After all, all you need to do to create it is have a chord under your fingers and be able to “break it up.”

What do I mean by break it up? You’ve probably heard of solid chords. This is when all tones are heard at once. For example, if I finger a C Major triad and play all three keys at once, I’m playing a solid chord. But, if I break this chord up into it’s 3 notes and play them one at a time you get a broken chord.

Broken chords are used frequently in New Age piano music. There’s something about playing notes of a chord in broken style that’s very appealing. Maybe it’s because it makes the piano sound fuller. Or it could be that it just sounds lovely.

Now, let’s take a look at how we can easily create it.

In the lesson “Reflections in Water,” we have 4 open position chords. These chords are ideal for “breaking up” because they are so wide-spaced. Over two octaves of notes lay under your finger tips. Once we finger this chord position we are able to play the broken-chord style. How? By simply letting your fingers play around with the note possibilities! And there are many of them.

When you listen to me play this piece, you’ll notice that it’s nothing to write home about. That is, I’m not after a “sophisticated” sound here. I’m just gently playing around with the notes and using the element of time to create a calm ambiance. And it works! The notes float out into the air and music is created. Not by planning or trying to come up with material but by following a few simple guidelines and letting go of the need to control the outcome.

Need help figuring out piano chord? Check out our awesome piano chords chart.

So, you’re thinking about (or are already) playing piano using the chord approach. But, you’re lost in the sea of chord types.

There are minor piano chords, major piano chords, and diminished piano chords. There are 9th chords flat 5 chords and other chords I can’t even begin to describe to you.

The good news is you don’t need to learn piano chords this way. There’s a much easier way to learn them and it all has to do with something called the open position chord.

Those of you who have been reading my articles for some time know I’m a big fan of this chord structure. You also know that I like it because you use both hands right away to create a modern sounding seventh chord.

Now why is starting out with seventh chords so important? Because, this chord type is the foundation for ALL modern chords period.

By starting with this chord structure – and learning all the chords in all 12 keys, you have a foundation to build on.

This way it won’t confuse you. For example, in the Key of C Major we have 7 chords. These are: C Major 7, D minor 7, E minor 7, F Major 7, G7, A minor 7, and B diminished 7. The last chord (B diminished seven is rarely used) but is included for you anyway.

Once you learn these chords in the Key of C Major, you simply go down the circle of fifths. The next Key is F Major and so on.

By learning only seventh chords to start it makes it much easier to add on the extensions. For example, if I wanted to construct a C Major 9 chord, I simply add in the ninth (the d note) and that’s that.

The beautiful thing about the open position chord structure is that it’s like a skeleton. It spreads your fingers out over 2 octaves and “opens up” the chord so adding in notes is easy!

Need help figuring out piano chord? Check out our awesome piano chord charts.

Learning piano chords is, for most people, the first thing they do before embarking on the ABRSM or Trinity exams.

Learning piano chords helps people understand more about the geography and feel of the piano, and in the meantime they can at least play some music that has some melody and meaning to it. This article explains piano chords more in-depth, and gives a few examples of different chord changes, and you can try them yourself.

We will take the most basic piano chord of C Major. No fancy stuff, just plain C major. There are always three instances of a piano chord: these are called the root position chord, the first inversion chord, and the second inversion chord. The root position chord of C Major consists of C, E and G (in order from lowest to highest note) We will place our thumb on C, third finger on E, and pinky finger on G. Now with the first inversion chord, we slide our fingers up so we are on E, G, and C (in order). Now our thumb is on E, and our third finger is on G, and our pinky finger is on C- note that this is not the same C as the previous chord, this is the C an octave higher- sometimes called, “High C”. If you play the root position and first inversion chord, you will notice the melody difference. There is also the second inversion chord. We again, slide our fingers up, so we are on G, C and E (in order as well). Our thumb is now on G, our third finger on “High C”, and our pinky finger on “High E”. You should see the progression from root position to second inversion, and how in sounds. Now when you see a piece of music asking you not just for the C major chord, but for its first or second inversions, you will know how to find out easily. This method of “stepping up” also applies to all other chords.

Another example I will give is G Major. The G Major root position chords are G, B, D (in order from lowest to highest note). The first inversion of a chord is a “step up”, so a step up would make it B, D, G (lowest to highest)- and second inversion would be D, B, G (lowest to highest as well). All other chords use this method too, even if they are fancier ones like augmented or diminished chords.

I hope this article has been educational for your understanding of piano chords, and learnt a bit about how they work too. Best of luck on your music journey!

Need help figuring out piano chord? Check out our awesome piano chord chart.

Learning the chord progressions used in piano music can make the difference between having to play note for note like the sheet music is written and having the ability to understand the chord base and knowing where the next notes can be played to make the music you play your own. When learning to play the piano in the traditional sense, you learn one note at a time. You first learn where middle C is located and then you add more notes from there.

The learning you receive allows you to see the note on a piece of sheet music and then be able to transform in your mind where that note relates to the piano keyboard and where you need to press a key to hear that note. What you are not learning is the idea that piano chords have a certain pattern and in order to hear an “A” chord you can only press certain keys and if you press any other, then it is not an “A” chord or does not belong in the “A” chord family and that these chords are repeated over and over again in each octave.

Learning piano in the traditional fashion, one note at at time, has made it difficult for some to learn how to play piano. When learning piano, if you can understand the chord structure and how they work in relation to the piece of music you are playing, you will enhance your knowledge in a very short time frame and be able to understand the piano and the way it works differently than when being trained in the traditional method. You start to understand flow and why the fingers end up on certain keys and not others, you start seeing the patterns.

Human minds learn best by being shown patterns so learning chord music is more natural than learning note for note. Just learning the piano chords is not the answer to playing piano in a day, or in twenty four hours like some books would like you to believe. It takes practice in order to become proficient at anything and piano is no different, but it does not have to be complicated. Once you start down the path of learning to play the piano, the music you get your fingers to play will hopefully be an inspiration to continue to practice and get better.

Practicing is one of the joys of learning anything and being able to be good at it. I can remember crying at the piano begging my mother to let me get away from the piano. My mother made me take lessons at five years old. I can still remember banging my head on the keys wanting to get away. I really did not appreciate the ability I had been forced to learn until much later in life, but the piano really made an impact on me when I learned the piano chords.

Need help figuring out piano chord? Check out our awesome piano chord chart.

Learning piano chords can help you in all your piano playing. For many people piano chords are the quickest and easiest way to play and the simplest way to embellish my playing.

If you have no illusions of grandeur and you just want to play your favorite tunes on the piano chords can get you there fast using piano chords.

Chords, chords, chords.. I love them! And now when I’m playing some difficult piano piece I can actually look at my hands and see the chords I’m playing even though they are not notated that way on my music. Mostly now I think in terms of chords rather than individual notes.

It all started when I was first learning to play the piano. As an adult mind you. My sister, who had taken piano lessons as a child, mentioned to me that I might look into chords. She herself did not know how to play them but knew enough that I might accelerate my playing with piano chords.

Boy was she right. Using a child’s piano technique book no less I had the basics of playing piano chords down in a few weeks and was asked play for our small church! Nervous as I was the piano chords kept me on track.

Now hearing all this you might want to get started on piano chords so here are a few tips.

* It would help if you also knew a little music theory like how your scales are made but once you get that down you can really go places with chords. * Your hands tend to memorize chord positions so if at first you don’t succeed keep at it. * There are so many kinds of chords and ways of forming them that you may get a bit discouraged after learning the basic triad (three note) chords and even a few four note. Don’t give up. * After learning a new chord find places in your music to use it and become familiar with the effect it has on your songs.

I could reinvent the wheel here and give you the theory on creating scales and chords but there are plenty of free piano lesson sites on the internet that do a very good job of that. You might have a challenge in choosing the right one but if you would like to know specifically about chords I suggest you put that into your search also.

There is a whole world of chords out there and I encourage you to look into them. It can really excel and excite your playing.

Need help figuring out piano chord? Check out our awesome piano chord charts.

First off if you are going to learn piano by ear using chords you need to learn your scales. Scales on the piano is the actual foundation to playing the piano with chords. Because chords are made up of those scales. Like the notes in the scale is going to tell you what chords you need to be playing when you are playing a song.

Scales form chords so you need to understand them and practice them. Find a good place that will teach you the formula for scales and how to form them. You can have access to this information for free, try to find free videos but also something that is going to write and tell you how to form them. Its is very simple you just need to practice scales in all 12 keys.

The second tip to learn to play piano by chords is to start to learn how to form chords. After you learn scales it is very easy to figure out how to form chords using the scale. There is 2 main chords you should learn how to form, and there are 2 secondary chords you should learn. If you are just starting the last two you shouldn’t worry to much about because you really need to master the first to. The 4 are first major.

Major are the primary number one chords. They are the main chords that all other chords lead to.

Second is Minor these are used very often but are more like passing chords to get to your final destination, which is the major.

The third is diminished, These chords are based off the 7th tone of a scale. And they are not used as much, it is more for when you get advanced and you can use them to add alot of flavor to your piano playing.

The fourth chord is the augmented and I don’t use this to much. It is not totally necessary to know but it is a good tool to throw in if you want.

Need help figuring out piano chord? Check out our awesome piano chord chart.