Chords are combinations of notes (usually black and white keys) which, when played together, create unique sounds and harmonies. Chords also allow us to craft melodies, improvise music, and construct songs.
Major chords are composed of the first, third and fifth intervals in a major scale arranged as three triads arranged as one unit – usually written as either C/G with slashes through or the suffix “m or min”.
Root
Learning piano chords requires knowing how to identify their roots. A chord’s roots is its lowest note, which may correspond with odd-numbered intervals on its scale or simply be its second or third note depending on its structure.
Major chords consist of three notes: root, third and fifth. Usually the third will be three half steps (or frets) above its base note in scale – for instance if your root was C and your third fret was E it would make an inversion with its root C being used as the third fret of E being four half steps higher up from it in the scale.
Add a seventh to your major chords for added flavor and depth, but make sure that you understand how its presence impacts chord quality before adding one. A seventh will change a major chord into a minor one by lowering its third note by half step – known as inversion.
Third
The third chord in a major scale consists of four semitones (half steps) above its root note and serves as its centerpiece note, giving each chord its unique sound and character.
A major chord can be built using three basic building blocks – tonic, second interval and fifth interval – arranged in many different ways to produce various types of chords.
A Dominant seventh chord takes a major triad and adds the seventh degree of the major scale, hence its name; this chord can also be abbreviated as Maj7 or CM7. Variations on this theme include Major sixth chords – which take a major third and add the sixth note above it to create what’s known as 6/9 chord – while Major ninth chords take advantage of adding ninth degree into them and are sometimes written as Maj9 (CM9) chords.
Fifth
A fifth chord consists of the 1st and 5th notes from a major scale, making up of one note each on both. At first this may seem confusing but with practice you’ll quickly be able to locate and identify these chords anywhere along your fretboard.
The next chord in our sequence is a V chord, which can either be major or minor depending on which scale it falls under. If its leading tone falls a semitone below the tonic then its V chord will be minor while otherwise, its major counterpart would appear instead.
Once you understand major chords, there are various combinations to try out. A C maj 7 could be an interesting choice to start off with; this power chord type can change its sound depending on the rhythm played with it and even change shape according to which chord it was played alongside.
Dominant
As opposed to minor chords, which tend to sound dismal and melancholic, dominant chords create a feeling of arrival or home by creating tension that resolves with each new chord; providing music with its natural cadence.
A typical dominant chord can be created by adding a seventh note to a major triad. For example, taking the C major triad and adding B flat as an example, the result would be C7 (with pluses or minuses to alter pitch). Furthermore, this seventh can also be altered enharmonically with scale notes, making reading much simpler such as with A7#5 or C7#5.
Extended dominant chords provide another method of playing dominating chords, adding extra tones above the root, third, and fifth at various scale levels; for instance, the bII7 chord adds extra notes above its root tone until reaching second degree chord resolution.