Piano Chords: What They Are, Why You Need Them

Sooner or later, even if you as a musician play only a solo instrument or sing, you'll encounter chord structures, symbols, or notations on your music. And if you're planning to play piano, chords are the foundation for accompaniment and harmony that support the melodic line of whatever piece you play; they're a vital part of learning to play your instrument from the very beginning.

So what's a Chord?

Put in their simplest form, chords are any combination of three notes, played at the same time. If you sit down at the piano and play middle C, D, and the E above it, technically, you're playing a "chord." Probably it won't sound like a chord to your ears--it may just sound like mush!--but in the strict sense, that's all a "chord" in its abstract form is. The reason it doesn't sound like a "real chord" to our ears is because of many factors, the acoustics of how each pitch vibrates in combination with the others among them. So it's not likely that any chord you see written in most Western music will consist of C, D, and E played together.

What are you more likely to see?

Chords that are made up of scale tones in any given key, separated by intervals.

And Now, a Brief Interval for...Intervals

"Intervals" are what we call the distances between two pitches in a given scale. We refer to them by numbers and names based on what "step" they are in that scale. From "1", or the root or starting point ("do") of the scale, we measure each note's distance, and that represents its interval.

In C Major, these intervals look like:

C-C# = 1/2 step upward = minor 2nd

C-D = 1 whole step upward = major 2nd (1-2, or do-re)

C-D#/Eb = 1-1/2 steps = minor 3rd

C-E = 2 whole steps = major 3rd (1-3, or do-mi)

C-E#/F = 2-1/2 steps = perfect 4th (1-4, or do-fa)

C-F#/Gb = 3 whole steps = augmented 4th or "tritone"

C-G = 3-1/2 steps = perfect 5th (1-5, or do-so)

C-G#/Ab = 4 whole steps = minor 6th

C-A = 4-1/2 steps = major 6th (1-6, or do-la)

C-A#/Bb = 5 whole steps = minor 7th

C-B/Cb = 5-1/2 steps = major 7th (1-7, or do-ti)

C-C = 6 whole steps = perfect octave (1-8, or do-do