Q. How do you play piano chords. I'm given a paper with things like: Am7, Gsus, Fmaj9 and I have to idea how to play things like these. Any help?
A. http://www.pianoworld.com/fun/vpc/piano_chords.htm
Use this website.
Using Am7 as an example, first you must pick the root:
Root: A
Then the chord:
Chord: Minor 7th (Am7)
And it will show you on the piano image above how to play the chord.
It will also show you the various scales of each key, but you wouldn't need to worry about that section when you just want the chord shape.
Hope this helped
How do you play piano music off of chord sheets.?
Q. I need to learn how to play the piano using chord sheet music, not the regular sheet music. I already know how to play regular but I'm unsure of how to play when you get chords like: Am7, Gsus, G/B, or Fmaj9
How do you change from using regular notes to chord sheet music?
A. you just play the normal chords...like gmajor or minor to a minor 7th...go back and forth....just know all the chords and then you can switch back and forth.
G lydian scale instead of G major scale over a Gmaj7 chord?
Q. That sharpened 4th (C#) makes A LOT of difference. Can someone explain to me why that is. Whenever I play g major scale over the gmaj7 chord I always avoid that c, unless I sharpen it. Odd since the 4th step usually sounds nice over the I chord. But when you add the F# (7th) in the chord then it sounds TERRIBLE. F# and C don't go along well in this context it seems even though it's IN key. F# has c as it's b5 interval, you'd think they'd would be pleasing to the ear and not dissonant.
A. If you look at the triads involved, forgetting about the major 7th for the moment,
C is a sus4 against a G root.
For example
Gsus = GCD
The sus4 wants to resolve down to the major third (B.) For example,
Gsus resolves to Gmaj = GBD
To hear this, play the following chord progression on a piano.
Gmaj Cmai Dmaj Gsus
Notice how you feel like the G sus leaves you hanging, waiting for resolution? That's because the sus4 is a mild dissonance; it adds tension, does not resolve.
To hear the resolution, play the following chord progression on a piano.
Gmaj Cmai Dmaj Gsus Gmaj
Ahhh... the C resolves down to B , no dissonance, no tension, complete resolution.
This is true whether you add the major 7th (F#) or not.
For example, here's the same two things with major 7ths added:
Gmaj7 Cmai7 D7 Gâsus // feels incomplete, waiting for resolution
Gmaj7 Cmai7 D7 Gâsus Gâ // sus4 resolves to third of the G chord
BTW the triangle notation (â) is short for "major 7th" ; i.e. Gâ = Gmaj7. So Gâsus has a sus 4 (C) instead of a third, and it also has a major 7th (F#).
Now lets listen to what happens when you use a #11 instead of a sus 4. Firstly a sus chord ****HAS NO THIRD****. This is ***IMPORTANT*** to understand. There isn't a clash between B and C in a REAL G sus chord because there IS NO B.
Now, an 11 chord is a different beast. First off, the fact that you name a tone "11" instead of "sus 4" means two things:
- there's a seventh of some sort. Its NOT a triad. By definition, the eleventh scale degree appears above the seventh, so the presence of an 11th implies the presence of the seventh. Your voicing of the chord can in fact place the eleventh below the seventh, or leave out the seventh entirely, but the FUNCTION of the chord implies that seventh. The function of the chord is defined by the context in which it appears. In other words, if you play just a handful of notes in the right way, you can cause the listener to hear a much bigger harmony.
- because its an 11 and not a sus 4, you CAN have a third. But you don't have to. Again, context in which the chord sounds will determine what harmony the listener hears.
Now that we know the difference between an 11 and a sus4, we can talk about what a major7sharp11 is. The proof is in the hearing. Returning to our piano, play the following example again:
Gmaj7 Cmai7 D7 Gâsus // feels incomplete, waiting for resolution
Now lets swap a #11 in for the sus4:
Gmaj7 Cmai7 D7 Gâ#11 // resolves! In a nice, jazzy, ethereal, loose sort of way...
This is sort of the long way to get to the point that although diatonic harmony considers the tritone to be an unstable, dissonant interval that demands resolution, 20th century harmony considers the #11 to be just another harmonic color, rather than actual dissonance. Part of this is because the major second interval between the third of the chord and the #4 (which is a #11 voiced down an octave) is less dissonant than the minor second interval that would occur between a sus4 and a major third (which never happens because a sus4 HAS NO THIRD!!!)
The way you voice the chord can make a huge difference as to whether you hear clashing dissonance or interesting colors. Try the following Gâ#11 voicings, bottom to top, as written:
G F# B C# (for example, there's a major 7th between the root and the next note up)
G C# F# B (here the #11 is actually voiced below the 7th but you hear a #11, not a sus, and the third is a m7 up from the #11 so you don't hear a M2 clash)
This nice-sounding use of a major 7 sharp 11 as a point of resolution comes from Lydian modal harmony. In Lydian mode, the I chord is a â9#11. For example, if you use the key of C major to generate chords in F Lydian mode, you get the following F chord:
F A C E G B = Fâ9#11
Our IV chord isn't really where we expect it to be, but we can still do a lot of "normal" Ionian chord progressions that wind up on Iâ#11, so we can in fact see that this major 7 sharp 11 is a fully-functional tonic chord in Lydian mode.
So that's why you can get away with swapping in a â#11 in place of pretty much any â chord ... you're temporarily substituting the Lydian tonic chord for a garden-variety â chord. Note that you are NOT playing modally or playing in Lydian mode. You're just doing a fancy (and cool) substitution of a chord that you've borrowed from another key.
OK, i've probably gone on too long :-) Hope this helps.
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Title : Help With Piano Chords?
Description : Q. How do you play piano chords. I'm given a paper with things like: Am7, Gsus, Fmaj9 and I have to idea how to play things like these....