Learn Piano Chords Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible

If you want to learn piano chords that sound smooth and professional, it's really a lot easier than most people think. Don't let the sheer number of chords, alterations, and voicings overwhelm you or stop you in your tracks. Once you learn a few simple fundamentals, you'll be able to play beautiful piano chords quickly and easily.

The Basics

Most of those beautiful, professional-sounding piano chords are simply variations of the basic major, minor, augmented, and diminished triads (3-note chords), or the dominant 7th chord (which is not a triad, but which has it's own unique "flavor"). Before you can play piano chords that sound like the pros, you absolutely must be able to quickly read and play the basic chords.

The easiest way to do this is to say and play these chords while trying to play them as quickly as possible, moving up and down the piano keyboard through all chord inversions. An inversion is when the root is somewhere other than the bottom of the chord. For example, C major is C - E - G in root position, but is E - G - C in 1st inversion and G - C - E in 2nd inversion. Playing and saying inversions is one of the fastest ways to learn piano chords quickly and easily.

But there's no need to memorize ALL the piano chords right away, when all you need to do is...

Start Working On One Song At A Time

When you were much younger, did your parents or teachers make sure you knew every word in the language before you started talking? Of course not! And why should it be any different when playing piano?

It shouldn't!

When you study chords for a single song, simply focus on those chords and nothing else. Remove all the alterations and first learn the basic chords - major, minor, diminished, augmented, 7th. Then, once you're able to play the song with those chords, start adding back in the alterations until you can play those smoothly.

Some chords may look complicated, but they are just simple chords in disguise. For example, chords that say either 9 or 13 WITHOUT a 'min' or 'm' before them are the same as 7th chords. m7 (min7), m9 (min9) and m13 (min13) have simple minor chords as their foundation.

After all, you really just want to play the song your working on, right? So why learn chords that you don't even need for the song?!

YOU Be The Judge

Don't let others tell you what's right or wrong with your chords or playing - it's music, after all, which is a very personal, creative thing for most people. Listen and talk to other pianists, try to find out what chords makes their styles unique, and use your own best judgment when playing chords. That will give you your own musical personality and help you set the mood that you want to set for yourself and your listeners.

However, that will require some experimentation time, too. Try playing the chords in different inversions. "Open up" the voicings by moving the bottom and/or top notes of the chords up/down an octave.

Using these tips, you can learn piano chords faster, more easily, and more enjoyably than you ever imagined.