In Jeff Buckley’s ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’, DSus2 and C chords are followed by a rapid succession of Em9, Em, and Em7 – then transitioning into the daunting C#m7b5 and F#7#5. This is enough to throw most recreational pianists off. What are these complicated chords, and how are we supposed to learn them? And when we finally visualize them via chord charts, how do we tackle the fact that many popular songs have unusual chords, from an F-aug in Stevie Wonder’s ‘For Once in My Life’ to an Abm7b5 in The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’? The answer is easier than we think – all we need is a basic understanding of piano scales, and the fact that the theory behind these chords is much like simple mathematics – following, and never deviating from, set patterns. To understand these patterns, let us first consider the basic foundation of any piece played on the instrument – individual notes.
Every key on the piano, black or ivory, represents a single note. There are twelve unique notes, in order: C, C#, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G, Ab, A, Bb, and B. After the last B, the collection of notes starts again from C, and the pattern repeats itself.
You can play from one C to the next, higher C using a pinky finger and a thumb, with six white notes and seven black notes separating them. In doing this, you play a C octave. Similarly, you can play a D octave by playing a low D and a high D. Every key, and therefore every note, can be played as an octave. We can hence look at octaves as sets of the aforementioned repeating patterns, starting and ending on the same note.
The size of a piano, or the number/range of keys, depends on how many such octaves there are.
You can expand every note on a piano into a scale. Since there exist a number of unique notes, there are also a number of unique scales. A scale is a collection of related notes, played in ascending or descending order. Every scale consists of its own set of notes.
Think of scales like the unique, multifaceted personalities for every note – just like people, they have many characteristics, and sometimes they even overlap. A ‘C’ scale’s personality includes the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. This is different from an ‘Ab’ scale, whose personality includes the notes Ab, Bb, C, C#, Eb, F, G, and Ab. While they are different, a little bit of their personalities – like a singular C note or F note – overlap, as if they too are different people with a few common characteristics. There exist different types of scales, such as major, minor, blues, pentatonic, and so on. Today, we will focus on two scales – the majors and minors. However, if that feels like a bit much, you can also just focus on the major scales for now. The fingering patterns on the piano are also different for each of these 24 important scales.
Here are the piano scales and fingering patterns one should know and learn to be able to seamlessly play complicated chords. Note that in the corresponding fingering pattern, 1 = thumb, 2 = index finger, 3 = middle finger, 4 = ring finger, and 5 = little finger. L = left hand and R = right hand. Notice that the starting and ending notes of the scale are the same, just like in an octave. This note, on which the particular scale is based, is known as the root note.
Major chords: Let’s consider the C major scale. Within it, when we play the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes – which would here be C, E, and G, we get the C major chord. Now, the fascinating science that backs the piano is that no matter what root note you take – as long as you play the 1st, 3rd, and 5th note, you will get a major chord.
Let’s test this – if you start with D root note and you play the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the D scale (which would be D, F#, and A), you get the D major chord. Now, you can use the chart to play the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of any scale, starting from the root note, and you will be able to play the major chords for any note.
Minor chords: There are two ways we can go about forming minor chords. In the first method, we use the table for minor scales. Just like a major chord is the 1st, 3rd, and 5th note of a major scale, a minor chord is made up of the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the minor scale. So, if you start with an A minor root note and play the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes (which would here be A, C, and E), you get an A minor chord. Similarly, if you play a Bb minor root note and play the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the Bb minor scale (which would be Bb, C#, and F), you get the Bb minor chord. The minor scales are included in the appendix at the end of the article.
The second method is handy if you haven’t learnt the minor scales yet. You can play the 1st, ♭3rd, and 5th notes from the major scale. Note that a ♭means you are playing the note just lower than the note assigned in the scale. In this case, we can use the A major scale and play A, C (which is the ♭ of C#), and E, to arrive at an A minor chord, and we can use the Bb major scale and play Bb, C# (which is the ♭ of D), and F to play the Bb minor chord.
Other chords: Major and minor chords are awesome, and those are the ones we tend to learn first. There are, however, many more types of chords. Just like we have majors and minors, we also have augmented, diminished, 7ths, 9ths, and more. These chords add different, exciting flavors to songs. They all follow certain set structures just like major and minor chords do. For example, while a major chord includes the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of a scale, a major 6th chord includes the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 6th notes of a scale. Similarly, a major 7th chord includes the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th notes of a scale.
Below in the table are other chord patterns derived from scales, presented in a similar manner. Note that every time a ♭symbol appears, you are supposed to play one note below the usual assigned note in the scale (for example, ♭ of a C will be B, ♭ of a C# will be C, ♭ of a D will be C#, ♭ of an Eb will be D, and so on). Every time a ♯ symbol appears, you are supposed to play one note above the usual assigned note in the scale (for example, ♯ of a C will be C#, ♯ of a C# will be D, ♯ of a D will be Eb, ♯ of an Eb will be E, and so on.) If you have difficulty figuring this out, another table is attached below the chord pattern table.
Ps. Confused about how there are only 8 chords in the scale, but 9th, 11th, and 13th notes mentioned? Simply keep counting at the end of the major scale. So, a C9 chord would be made up of C, E, G, Bb, and D. And the daunting C13♭9♭5th chord (pronounced ‘C thirteenth flat ninth flat fifth’, yikes!) – would be made up of the notes C, E, F, B♭, C#, F, and A
How many chords can we play, exactly, using this method? Since this article shows you how to play 28 different kinds of chords, for 12 unique notes, you should be able to play at the very least 336 unique chords. The actual number of chords in a piano, however, when you consider the exotic ones, jazzy ones, inversions, and more, is definitely more than a thousand – and in fact, virtually, limitless.