Take Your Protein Pills & Put Your Helmet On

You’ve probably already noticed how some groups of notes sound great together, while others just don’t. Here’s why... There are relationships between notes. Some notes are well-matched, some are unstable. The quicker you get to know which ones make beautiful music, you’ll do just that. All music, from nursery rhymes to complex jazz, can be boiled down to three common groups of notes we call chords. To be even more precise they are triad chords, reflecting the fact they are made up of three notes.

Major chords: Sound happy. Minor chords: Sad. Diminished chords: Dark and edgy.

All that’s needed to play these chords is a simple formula.

Cover the table and say the three formulas back to yourself. This is another one of those instructions that’s easy to gloss over. Don’t!

Now make a C major chord using the R, 4, 3 formula:

C E G R 4 3

Turn it into a C minor chord, noticing how the E simply moves down a semitone:

C Eb G R 3 4

Finally, the C diminished chord. This time the G moves down one semitone:

C Eb Gb R 3 3

See how only one note changes as you progress from major, to minor, to diminished. Whatever your root note, this is always the case. The shape your hand makes feels slightly different for different major, minor and diminished chords (so you can hit the black notes required) but the fact is all major, minor and diminished chords are constructed using the same formula - a formula that only changes by one note each time.

When you play chords in really low registers they often sound muddy, like a noise rather than something more harmonious. In the higher registers chords can sound too shrill. Take a moment to experiment and find registers that sound satisfying. Use either hand. Both hands perhaps.

Time to choose: Select a root note and create its major chord, then its minor chord, then its diminished chord. Then reverse back through the minor, ending on the major. Repeat this a few times to learn the three forms of several chords.

How many major chords are there? There are twelve in total, one for each note of the piano. How many minor chords do you think there are? Again, there are twelve in total. Getting to know your chords is a crucial step in developing your piano playing.

When you’re playing in a key, like you’re going to for your composition, you need to know which chords belong to that key. Not all chords belong to every key. Here’s how to work out which chords belong. Play the major scale of the key you’ve decided on for your composition. For each note there is a corresponding chord. These are the chords that belong to your key:

Notice UPPERCASE is used for major chords and lowercase for minor. It’s a useful convention to help you take in the chord type more quickly. So is using Roman numerals:

UPPERCASE Roman numerals are for major chords. Lowercase for minor, with a small m. A small o indicates that the chord is diminished.

Example: C major chords

Add the lowercase m’s and a small o to the notes of your major key table on your worksheet. This transforms the notes into the correct chords that belong to your key. Use the bottom row to help you.

Time to choose: Select one chord from your major key e.g. I, iim, iiim.

Time to choose: When your time is up choose another chord to improvise with for one minute. You can repeat this as many times as you like.