Q. My piano teacher is making me memorize all major and minor chords on the piano by sound. So next week, wednesday to be exact, he will test me to see if I know all 24 chords by sound. Any ideas as to how I can do this?
A. Try this... Start with a minor chord. Play the block form of the chord (all three pitches at the same time) and speak the quality of chord out loud. Then play the same minor chord in the broken form. Do this slowly and sing each pitch you play from root to third to fifth. You can use "la" or sing the names of the pitches (C - E flat - G), etc. Repeat this process with each major chord. Either way, speaking and singing while you play will help your brain reinforce what your ear is hearing and your fingers are feeling. It might seem a bit strange at first, but the more senses you involve (sight, hearing, touch, singing, etc) the better your chances of memorizing these chords. Hope this helps!
How do you write the piano chords for left hand ?
Q. Hello, I m a beginner ... I just figure out the notes for right hands, by listening to a song. Now how can I add chords for the left hand, and make it sound properly ? I guess the left hand chords must have the same key signature as the right hand , ... but how do I know if the chord is A or B or C ? ...
the time signature of the song is 4/4.
Thank for your time :)
A. Yes, you're right about the chords with the same key signature. There are two ways you can approach this.
1) You can start by figuring out the bass notes of the song to get the chords then afterwards, figure out the quality of the chords based on the bass notes that you've gotten (major or minor, augmented or diminished, suspended, extended, altered, borrowed etc). You would need to know some basic harmony or chord theory for this.
2)You could also look at the key the song is in and figure out the chord progressions from there (assuming that the key doesn't change in the song). If you feel that a chord at a certain place sound be a major chord, then you have narrowed down your guess to 3 possible chords. If you feel it should be a minor chord somewhere, then you narrowed it down to the other 3. If it's anything in between like a slash chord or suspended chord or any chord that sounds strange like altered chords, diminished or augmented, then you could leave them out first and come back to them later on.
The reason for this is that most songs are in a major key. The chords that you can derived from a major key are quite set in stone. There will always be 3 major chords, 3 minor chords and one diminished chord, total of 7 chords (7 notes in a key, ie in C major, there's C, D, E, F, G, A and B). So if your song is in C major, then you'd have either the following chords to choose from:
C major
D minor
E minor
F major
G major
A minor
B diminished
The same applies to all of the other keys. Take a shot at any of these chords while you play along to the song and see which ones fit best.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
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
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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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Title : Memorizing piano chords?
Description : Q. My piano teacher is making me memorize all major and minor chords on the piano by sound. So next week, wednesday to be exact, he will t...