Monday, September 5, 2011

What is a chord?

So far in your journey to become a musician I'm sure you have heard of a chord along the way. Put into words, a chord is a collection of notes played simultaneously. I don't like just wording things out so take a look at your piano.
A fragment of it probably looks something like this, right? Well think of each individual key being a different note. (This picture only labels the white keys, but the black keys are notes too! They are your sharps and flats.) If you were to press any group of notes together at the same time, you would be playing a chord! For example, playing a C, E, and a G together at the same time is known as a C chord. There are tons and tons of different chords out there to be learned and mastered. Try learning a different chord everyday, comment and tell me what you learn and any questions you may have!

God Bless


  1. Hi, thanks for starting this blog. It's actually very informative. I recently started "fiddling" with the piano. I have a question, how do you know which cords to play along with each individual note? For example, I can play "As the deer pants" with individual notes but I don't know how to incorporate the chords. I can play chords but that's only because I go on youtube and learn the songs from there. I want to actually understand what I'm playing, could you help me? Thanks in advance for your response. :)

  2. Hello Set Apart Girl (or Riana =), today is actually my birthday, but I received an email and I was so excited that anyone had actually took the time to read/visit this blog I had to respond promptly lol. Your question is somewhat difficult to answer when playing by ear however maybe I can share a few tips that could spark a thought in you. So when trying to incorporate chords when you only know the basic one-note melody a couple tricks can come into play. First, when playing a chord, the last note played in the chord is usually your melodic note. In other words, it's the note that is naturally heard the most and works best when trying to "voice" a song using chords. Additionally, learning the bass line of a song makes learning the subsequent chords MUCH easier. That is a whole new lesson in itself. Hopefully something I said will help you in your future "fiddling". Any other questions, please feel free to ask me! God Bless

    P.S. - Your blogs are a blessing, please be encouraged to continue writing and updating in them in spite of your busy schedule =)


What do you think?