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Writer's pictureBrenda

Chords


Chords are the basis of all songs, the gems of learning how to play music fast and fun! They are our quickest and most thorough route to learning how to play a song and understand how the whole song is put together. It helps us sing along too with any song of our choice. Once you understand chords, it's easier to see where the tune comes from and also how to create your own tune. This is because the notes of the tune will be guided by the notes used within the chords.


A chord is played when three notes on the piano are played together at once. It is like 3 birds all singing together, it will sound like a lovely harmony of 3 notes. On the piano, chords usually skip a notes in their shape, such as playing C, E, G, we don’t play the D, F in between. This pattern can be seen anywhere we play a chord on the piano. So this is handy to remember as our hand and muscle memory remember the shape of the chords over time and practice. Advanced chords would also include a 4th note, so our hands grow strong with practice of 3 note chords to one day being able to do nice jazzy 4 note chords! Our left hand pops on the same note one octave below as the first note in the right hand. An octave can be used in advanced playing. Like an octopus has 8 legs, and an octagon is 8 notes apart, an octave is 8 notes apart, anywhere on the piano, such as C to C, D to D etc. So while playing the left hand we let it mirror the right hand. C chord will have a C note in the left hand, G chord will have a G, and so on and so forth...


Chords are the foundation of all songs. Most pop songs we hear are made of 4-8 chords in total, some only have 3 chords in the whole song! What happens is the chords are cleverly repeated or looped. The verses of a song would have one set of chords and repeat these sounds. The chorus of a song would do the same thing... have different set of about 4 chords and repeat them by looping the 4 chords. For example Ed Sheeran's song Photograph has the chord patterns... C, Am, G, F and then Am, F, C, G. In the chord world, there are such things as minor and major chords. Am here stands for A minor, whereas major chords have a blank no 'm'. We will learn more about the secrets of the world of chords, minor and major chords and more, in more blog posts to come!




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