African American Christian Wedding Songs : Understanding Piano Chords

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Piano chords are easy to understand: take one piano note (key) and then stack others on top of it. Imagine you have a stack of three books, each book representing a note of the chord. Stack them on top of each other, and you have a chord. The trick is the subtle mathematical distance relationship between the book/notes in the chord.

Chords (three piano keys played at the same time, in its simplest form) are the building blocks of all of music, the very DNA that governs the sounds to which we listen.

Here's a way to visualize a chord. Below is a C chord, consisting of the piano keys C, E and G.

G
E
C

C is on the bottom, and G is on the top. That's all it is, a stack of three things: books, notes, anything. Here it just happens to be notes, or piano keys.

Once you understand that simple three-note form, it is easy to get an idea of the inner workings of chords.

Think of the Periodic Table of the Elements. In one sense, it represents chemical entities that cannot be reduced further without destroying their essential nature.

It is the same with chords.

The "elements" are the major chords, and all other forms of chords are created by ADDING TO or CHANGING the three basic notes of the chord.

There are four main types or families of chords.

The MAJOR chord sounds happy. That is the first form of chord.

Starting with a major chord, move the middle note down and it sounds sad, as a MINOR chord. That is the second form.

Starting with a major chord, move the top note up and it sounds unstable, haunting and spooky, as in an AUGMENTED chord. This is the third form.

Starting with a major chord, move the top two notes down, and it sounds downright scary and dangerous, as in a DIMINISHED chord. This is the fourth form.

All we have done is change the relationships between the notes: move a note up, down, or move several notes.

Imagine that you can add fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh notes to the original three notes, and you will get some idea of the complexity of chord construction. But the sounds are easily understood emotionally by even a child: chords produce feelings.

This is a little difficult to visualize, especially if you are not fluent at reading music.

There is a way to understand chords without reading music, and it involves numbering the piano keys so even a child can see the construction easily.

Chords are easy to understand by listening: each chord gives you a feeling.

But chords are quite complex unless you number the piano keys to see inside their peculiar "biology" of sound.

Here's a link to a virtual online piano on which you can try all the types of piano chords without a knowledge of reading music, using Piano By Number: http://www.pianoiseasy2.com/dictionaryC.html