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piano chords?

Q. does anyone by any chance have a big picture or PDF file or something that has all the piano chords or alot of the nice basic and advanced chords do yall? ive looked all over the internet and i cant find anything. ten points goes to the first person who can get me these please. if you need to, email me files to alexdra9015@yahoo.com

thanx and god bless

A. Mark Levine's book Jazz Piano is the only place where all of the way modern jazz chords are voiced is explained. I don't think you could ever right them down in one big picture, there are too many.

It is better to understand them the way Levine breaks it down, for example, two handed chord voicings in fourths, voicings based on upper partials, etc.

Original Question

How do you play piano chords??!!?
Q. I'm a beginner and teaching myself how to play Keyboard/Piano. I've borrowed so many books on the subject but can't figure out piano chords! My understanding is you play 3 notes at once - but its still confusing when looking at people play them on YouTube. Some music have just symbols like E, Dm, etc and lyrics??

Also, I'm trying to play this keyboard version of Hillsong's "This Is Our God" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1jZ1Ux9XOU). The chords listing is:

Intro-verse: E - G#m - C#m - A
Chorus:B - E/G# - A - F#mB/D# - E/G# - A
Instrumental - bridge:E - B - F#m - C#m - A - E (also in video description)

But I can't seem to get around what the left and right hand plays. Plus the video is too fast and unclear to work out the notes :(

Please could someone help me work out what notes to play/how to play them?
Basically, the user gave a list of chord names and I don't know what the left and right hand plays - also on some he doesn't hold 3 down, but alternates between a few!

Thanks

A. To play a piano chord, you need to find out which scale the chord belongs to. For example C chord would belong to the C major scale and Cmin chord would belong to the c minor scale. Lets use C chord as an example. We start off by playing the C note on the keyboard. Then, we miss a white not, but play the next one. We end up having one white note in between the notes we are playing. You should end up playing an E on a C major chord. Then we miss the next note after E, but play the one after that, G. That is a C or C major chord. However, when it comes to other chords we need to take in the key signature of the scale. C minor has an Eb in the key signature, so instead of playing C E G we play C Eb G. I know that probably made no sense so check out this very helpful website. http://www.8notes.com/piano_chord_chart/
I think you would benefit from piano lessons. A tutor can help you play the song and work out the chords. Hope I helped with my long-winded explanation!

Original Question

Can someone explain to me what a chord is?
Q. Ok, so I'm taking music AP theory in High School next year, because I really enjoy music, but I don't know a lot about it. I play piano and trumpet, I know that different instruments have different keys that they're in and stuff like that lol. I wanna know what a chord is. The only thing I know is that a chord is a few notes played at the same time to make a chord. I google'd it but I didn't understand it very well. Can someone explain to me in a simple way what a chord is? Like what's a major, minor and stuff like that? I hear my band director say that sometimes.

A. a chord is three or more notes at the same time.

"normal" chords are made by stacking thirds.

a third is the distance you get when you skip one note of a scale
like A to C, or B to D

a three note chord is called a "triad"
it contains two stacked thirds,
so if you built one on A it would have the notes A C E
if you built it starting on G it would have the notes G B D

you could have lots of those notes and they could be in any order.
so BDDGDBGBDBGDBGBDBGBDBG would still be called a G chord because if you look for the stack of thirds, its just GBD still

to find the quality of a chord (major/minor), you need to look at the quality of the thirds inside it

a third with two whole steps in it is a major third
a third with a whole step and a half step in it is a minor third
(theres other kinds, but thats all you need to figure out chords)

a triad where the lower third is major and the upper third is minor is a major chord
a triad where the lower third is minor and the upper third is major is a minor chord
a triad where both thirds are minor is diminished
a triad where both thirds are major is augmented

examples

A C E is A minor
A to C is a minor third (because A to B is a whole step and B to C is a half step)
C to E is a major third (because C to D and D to E are both whole steps)
so the minor third is on the bottom and the major third is on the top. minor triad

if you wanted to make A major, you would just need to raise the C to a C# because then the bottom third would get bigger and the top third would get smaller.
so A C# E is A major

if you wanted to make A diminished, you would leave the bottom third minor, but lower E to Eb to make the top third also minor
so A C Eb is A diminished

for A augmented, you would need the C# like in major, but you would also need to raise the E to E# so both thirds would be major.
so A augmented is A C# E#
(no you may not spell that A C# F!!! you have to call it E#)

augmented chords are not common, they dont show up naturally in major keys

there are also 4 note chords called 7th chords.
heres patterns for them:

Major 7th chord = Maj 3rd, min 3rd, Maj third
Dominant 7th chord = Maj 3rd, min 3rd, min 3rd
minor 7th chord = min 3rd, maj 3rd, min 3rd
half diminished 7th chord = min 3rd, min 3rd maj 3rd
fully diminished 7th chord = min 3rd, min 3rd, min 3rd

---

edit for waynes comment.
at the point where i said an A chord has the notes A C E i was only talking about note letter names, i mentioned the accidentals later in the part about quality.

i did it in that order because it helps avoid enharmonic misspellings.
counting up by half steps works to play the chord, but i've noticed that students who learn it that way first make more enharmonic errors...
..like spelling Db diminished as Db E G because they landed on the notes E and G when they counted up by half steps. but if they first know that any chord starting on a D HAS to include the letter names D F A, they will have to work out that its Db Fb Abb

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