How to Play Piano Chords

Chords are collections of three or more notes that have a particular sound quality. Composers use chords to complement melodic ideas, and help shape the dramatic direction of the music. How to play piano chords becomes an important part of our musical studies. We can practice them as separate exercises along with other exercises like scales, improving our technique. We can also practice them to help our understanding of music theory, and improvisation.

As a simple approach on how to play piano chords, start with the tonic major and minor triads of the scales you already know. To begin with, use three note voicings. Learn each triad hands separately first in block form, but in all inversions across two octaves. Standard fingering for the right-hand in order of root, first, and second inversion respectively are:

1-3-5, 1-2-5, and 1-3-5.

For the left-hand use:

5-3-1, 5-3-1, 5-2-1.

After learning these triads hands separately, practice them hands together. Use a metronome to keep your tempo at a slow and steady pace.

To vary your practice, play the chords in a broken form as well as block form. For example a C major triad across one octave would be:

C-E-G, E-G-C, G-C-E, C-E-G

You simply follow the fingerings you used playing block chords.

Once you have built some confidence in how to play piano chords, practice them as arpeggios with thumb under and finger over techniques. I still remember when I first started practicing arpeggios, how fascinated I was in how fast I could cover the full range of the keyboard. For a two octave arpeggio, the C major triad would look like:

C-E-G-C-E-G-C-G-E-C-G-E-C

The standard fingerings are as follows:

Right-Hand

1-2-3 1-2-3-5-3-2 1-3-2 1

Left-Hand:

5-3-2 1-3-2 1-2-3 1-2 3 5

You will find that while practicing these arpeggios you will naturally fall playing into a triplet pattern.

You can also play block and broken triads using a four-note voicing for each inversion. The lowest note is doubled at the octave. We will again use a C major triad as an example, but you can apply these fingerings to any major or minor triad:

Pitches C E G C E G C E G C E G

Left Hand 5 3 2 1 5 4 2 1 5 3 2 1

Right Hand 1 2 3 5 1 2 4 5 1 2 3 5

Learning how to play piano chords like triads with the above ideas in mind will probably keep you occupied for a while. After you have them down, they really only take a few minutes to play through. You can then use these exercises to practice specific techniques. First of all simply learn to play them without looking at the keyboard and with a metronome. When you have fully learned the chords, practice them with different divisions of the beat: eighths, triplets, and sixteenths. Also play with different articulations, especially legato and staccato. You may find chords and arpeggios helpful in developing your pedal technique as well.

The core of your chords and arpeggio exercises will be major and minor triads, dominant seventh chords, and diminished seventh chords. Once you have mastered the triads for the scales you are practicing, move onto dominant seventh chords, and the finally diminished sevenths belonging to your minor keys. If you are studying jazz improvisation you will probably want to eventually add in other chord types.

The following table lists the major and minor keys up to two sharps and flats with their respective tonic triads, dominant sevenths and diminished seventh chords:

I hope this article has given you a good starting place on how to play piano chords.