Learning to Play the Piano With Chords
March 4, 2011Learning 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.
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