http://www.pianobychords.com - Learn Piano By Chords!

1) Introduction
Welcome!
If you want to learn how to play piano the easy way then you have come to the right place!
Many classical teachers will stress the importance of musical theory and being able to read sheet music.
While this is indeed important if you are playing classical music, the casual rock and pop player will be able
to get by without these skills. I want to get you up and playing tunes from bands such as the Beatles,
Animals, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Red Hot Chillie Peppers and any other band you fancy, with as little effort
as possible. Most guitar players have little formal training, they tend to pick things up by ear and play songs
by chords, this is how I am aiming to teach you piano on this page.

Oscar Peterson, one of the Jazz piano greats.
While we will be keeping the musical theory to a minimum there will be some items that you will be
required to memorize. This is unavoidable however I aim to show you the building blocks of the various
chords and scales that will allow YOU to work out any chord you need on the spot. If you dont know what a
chord or a scale is, dont worry, everything will be explained. It is not as daunting as it sounds.
I have been searching the internet for a page such as the one you are reading now. Many pages claim to have
courses that you can purchase that will teach you how to "play piano by ear" or "learn the chord method",
this website contains the same information as those courses and whats best of all, its all FREE.
The most important thing you can do is make a commitment to learn the piano. This means putting in the
effort over the course of several weeks to learn and practise the theory taught on these pages.
As we progress in musical knowledge I will be getting you to apply your new found skills not by practising
boring technical excercises, but by applying your knowledge to play popular tunes. Every time I show you
something new, I will try to give you a tune which exploits that new skill so that you automatically get
practise with it!
You do not neccecarily need to have a piano at home, but some sort of keyboard instrument will be
required.This can be something as simple as a $100 keyboard bought from your local music store. I would
suggest a keyboard with at least 49 keys preferably full sized, anything smaller and you will be struggling to
use it as your piano skills get more advanced.

2) The Basics

On this page I am going to explain to you some of the fundamental pieces of knowledge that you must have
before you can play a piece of music. If you already know this stuff then feel free to skip ahead.
These will be divided into the following sections. If you dont already know this stuff then I have
some bad news, this is the stuff that *must* be memorized and learnt. Dont worry its fiarly simple
stuff and you will be playing your first song very soon!
The Keyboard - Note names and positions
Chords and Scales - What are they

The Keyboard
Ok the first thing you need to do is learn the names of the keys on the keyboard, this is not as difficult a task
as it sounds, there are only 12 unique keys on the keyboard. The musical alphabet goes from A
through to G, so every white key on any keyboard will take one of these letter names(forget about the
black keys for the moment).
Now if we look at the keyboard below all the unique white keys have their letters written under them. Notice
that the black keys come in a group of two followed by a group of three, this is what we can use to
identify the white keys. For example, the white key immedately to the left of a group of the two black
keys is called C. The white key in the middle of the two black keys is D, the white key to the left of
the three black keys group is F and so on. The note names repeat after every 8 white keys as can be
seen on the keyboard below. You only need to learn the positionsn and names of the seven unique
white keys, this allows you to name any white key on the keyboard.
So go on, learn the positions of the white keys now, spend a little while on it, its best to do it in front of a
real keyboard. Once you think you know them fairly well, try closing your eyes, pressing a white key
at random, opening your eyes and trying to name what key it is.

The unique white keys on a keyboard
Ok, I've focused on the white keys so far, and thats because the black keys are easy to learn once you know
your white keys. In fact the names of the black keys are based on the white keys near them. There are
only 5 unique black keys on the keyboard, these have been named and shown below.
I must explain to you what sharp and flat means before you can understand the black key names. Basically
sharpening a note means raising it to the next note immidately to the right of it. So if we find the F
key (its to the left of the three black keys) and sharpen it, the note immidiately to the right of it is a
black key and is called F sharp or F#. Similarly the note immidiately to the right of G is the black key
G# and so on.

The black keys on the keyboard in terms of sharps
One little thing I must explain before moving on is that each black key has two names, this is because of the
flat operator. The flat operator is the opposite of the sharp operator, instead of going up to the next
note above, you go down to the next note immidiately below. Lets look at the next graphic to see this
in action.

The black keys on the keyboard in terms of flats
So the black key immidiately below G becomes G flat or Gb, the black key below A becomes Ab and so on.
It is important to learn and remember both the names for each black key (the sharp and the flat name)
because both names are used in music.
This should be your next task, to learn both the names for each of the black keys on the keyboard. Spend a
little bit of time on this to get it right, because you are going to be using it all the time throughout this
webpage as well as any piece of music you may decide to play.

Chords and Scales
Ok, you've come this far, let me just explain a couple of terms used commonly by musicians all over the
world.
A chord is a group of notes played at the same time. Yes its that simple! Ok it gets a bit more complicated,
because the exact notes that are being played determine the type of chord. Common chords are
usually played with 2, 3, 4, 5 or indeed any number of notes that people can possibly play with their
hands. The chord is the basic building block of all modern rock and pop music. In a piece of music
the melody is usually based on the chord being played at that time, we'll see exactly how this works a
little later on.
A scale is basically a sequence of notes, it might be best to demonstrate with an example. The most popular
scale is the C Major scale, you can play this yourself right now. Start at the note C and play every
white note in succession until you get to the C above the one on which you started. You'll notice this
scale as you've no doubt heard it many times before.
Listen to this scale here [http://www.pianobychords.com/midi/cmajor.midi]
Now this is just one possible scale, there are hundreds of different types of musical scales, thankfully we will
only need to know a couple to be able to play rock and pop music.
Dont worry you're doing well, you almost know enough to play your first song!

3) Your first Piece
Excellent, you're doing fantastic so far! Now I am going to show you how to play your first piece of music,
Silent Night. I know, its a far cry from the Beatles but dont worry once you get these few basic
chords down you will be able to pick up a Beatles or any other song and play it.
I'm going to throw you in the deep end here, you need to work out the melody for Silent night by yourself by
EAR. This means listening to the piece and using trial and error to work out how the melody goes. Its
not that difficult and its the only way to learn a tune if you dont want to learn to read music.
Heres a midi of the melody of Silent Night to help you work it out.

Let me help you get underway, its all white keys and it starts on G. The first bit goes GAGE, the next bit is
DDBCCG. Ok thats all I'm going to help for the time being, you need to learn to pick up songs by ear
so you'll have to keep playing the rest of it and working out what notes it contains. Make sure to play
the melody with your right hand as we'll need the left hand in a minute to play some accompaniment.
Your first chords
Now that you've got the melody down you want to make it sound a bit more like a piano piece by adding
something with your left hand to it. That something is going to be chords. The reason I have chosen
Silent Night as your first piece is because it only contains three chords, and they are all of the same
type - Major.
Remember, a chord is just two or more notes played at the same time, for the purposes of this song we are
going to be using three note chords also known as triads.
So what are the chords you need to know? C Major, F Major and G Major, I will now show you how to play
each of these chords on the keyboard. To play the chord simply press the keys marked for the chord.
So to play C Major I would press C, E and G at the same time.
C Major

F Major

G Major

You should memorize the above chords because you'll need them when you try to play the song.
The next thing you need is a "chord sheet", this is a way of telling you where the chords come with respect
to the melody and lyrics. So If you look below I've included a chord sheet for Silent Night, now what
you need to do is play the melody which you picked out by ear earlier and the chords as specified by
the sheet below, together.
So to start you off, you would play the first note of the song (a G) with your right hand while at the same
time playing the C chord as given above with your left hand. Now simply keep holding the C chord
while you play the first line of the song. When the melody gets up to the section where the G chord is
simply play a G chord in your left hand and continue with the melody in the right. Continue this all
the way through until you can play the whole song with chords in your left and melody in your right
hand at the same time. You might want to print out the chord sheet below and take it over to your
piano or keyboard.
An example of playing Silent Night with chords and melody at the same time.

You'll notice on the example that I am moving the chords around a little bit. That means that i'll play the C
chord low down then next time play it higher up on the keyboard. You can try this once you're
comfortable with the chords as well, it makes the song a bit more interesting.

C
Silent night, holy night
G C
All is calm, All is bright
F C
Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child
F C
Holy Infant so Tender and mild,
G C
Sleep in heavenly peace,
C G C
Sleep in heavenly peace.
<Ending Riff>
C G C
And there you go! You're first piano song, that wasnt so difficult was it?


4) Whole/Half Tones
Great well now that you've got your first song down its time to do a tiny bit more theory, dont
worry I'll try to keep it short.
Now that you know three Major chords (C F and G), I'm going to give you a formula that will
allow you to work out any Major chord that you may need.
Whole Tones and Half Tones
Before I can give you the formula I just need to take a second to explain to you what a whole
tone is and what a half tone is.
A half tone is the smallest possible interval between two notes on the piano, so looking at the
keyboard below C to C# would be a half-tone, C# to D would be a half-tone, D to Eb
would be a half tone. Interestingly E to F and B to C are also half tones because they do
not have a black note separating them.

Now very simply, a whole tone is twice the width of the half tone interval(strange that, isnt it?).
So looking at the keyboard below we see some whole tones as being C to D, D to E, E to
F#, F# to Aflat, Aflat to Bflat and Bflat to C. There are of course more, A to B, B to C#
etc, these are all whole tones, once you get the idea of what a whole tone and a half tone
is you are ready to move on.



5) Common Chords
Ok congratulations on getting this far, you're almost ready to unlock a whole host of songs! You just need to
know a couple of the most common chord types and how to work them out then you'll be in business!
Once you work out the notes of the chords given below you would normally play the chord by pressing all
the notes of the chord at the same time. Every time you work out a new chord you should try this to
hear how the chord sounds.
The Major Chord
You've already seen three of these(C F and G) before, in Silent Night. Now I am going to give you the power
to work out any Major chord anywhere on the keyboard.
Say we wanted to work out the major chord G Major the process is as follows (its probably best to practise
this at the keyboard).
Find the note G on the keyboard this is known as the root note of the chord.

G major chord

Next count up 4 half tones from G to get you to B, this is the second note of your chord. Now count up 3 half
tones from B to get you to D. This is your G major chord G-B-D!
So the Major chord consists of the root note, a note 4 half tones above the root note, a note 3 half tones
above the middle note. Thats it! As soon as you read that you just learnt all the major chords on the
keyboard!
The Major chord consists of the an interval of 4 half tones followed by an interval of 3 half tones
Lets try another one, work out the A Major chord.
Find the root note, in this case A.
Count up 4 half tones from A to get C#.
Count up 3 half tones from C# to get E
And wolah! we have the A major chord, A - C# - E!
Want some more practise? Watch the video examples for how to work out C Major and E Major.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JaXkSATFZU&feature=youtu.be]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0hpOD_Gd30]
Ok you're almost there, two more chords to go.
The Minor Chord
The minor chord is another chord that is used commonly in many popular songs, it has a sadder more laid
back tone to it then the major chord.
The Minor chord cosists of an interval of 3 half tones followed by an interval of 4 half tones
What does this mean? Well the process is the same as the process to work out the major chord. Suppose we
wanted the G minor chord (commonly denoted as Gm) we would start by finding the root note, in
this case G. Now count up 3 half tones from G to get Bflat, now count up 4 half tones from Bflat to
get D and theres your Gm chord, G - Bflat - D!
I want you to convince yourself that the following minor chords are indeed correct, it will be easier to do this
if you have a keyboard in front of you.
Am = A C E
Cm = C Eflat G
Fm = F Aflat C
Excellent! One more chord to go then we can start looking at some tunes.
The 7th Chord
This is another very popular chord in music, it is known as the 7th chord or dominant 7th. It is usually
written on chord sheets as C7, D7, E7 etc, and it is very similar to the major chord.
The 7th chord consists of an interval of 4 half tones followed by an interval of 3 half tones followed by an
interval of 3 half tones
The 7th chord thus is comprised of four notes, not three like the previous chords.
I will walk you through the process of working out a 7th chord. Suppose we want E7, we find the root note -
E on the keyboard.
Now count up 4 half tones from E to get to G#
Now count up 3 half tones from G# to get you to B
Now count up 3 half tones from B to get you to D
So your E7 chord would consist of E - G# - B - D
Try to work out the following 7th chords
G7 = G B D F
A7 = A C# E G
E7 = E G# B D
Phew! That was a lot of information wasnt it? Well now that its done, you are ready to forge on and play
some tunes!
6) Fingering
I'll take a minute here to explain the basic fingering that you should be using with the three note and four
note chords taught on this site. Correct chord fingering is important as it will allow you to play chords easily
as well as change between different chords quickly.
Your Hand

Shown above is the left hand with each finger numbered. Remember the finger numbers as I will be using
them in this section. The right hand is similarly numbered.
Major and Minor Chord Fingering
Lets take the G major chord we learnt in the last section, it looks like this.

G major
Left Hand
The simplest fingering for a three note chord such as this with the left hand is 5-3-1, that is, pinky, middle
finger and thumb. The pinky would go on the G, the middle finger on the B and the thumb on the D. This
fingering can be used for all major and minor chords on the keyboard regardless of whether they have black
keys or not.
Right Hand
The same fingering reversed can be used for playing this chord with the right hand, 1-3-5. So in this case the
thumb goes on G, the middle finger on B and pinky on D.
Excercises
Try working out and playing these chords and playing with either hand to test out this fingering. You can
play each hand separately or play both hands together:
C Major
E Major - Notice that the fingering still works even though G# is a black key.
G Minor - B flat is a black key in this chord.
A flat Minor - This is a tricky one, its notes are A flat, B and E flat.
7th Chord Fingering
Remember from the common chords [http://www.pianobychords.com/commonchords.html] section
that 7th chords are four note chords, because of this we cannot use the 5-3-1 or 1-3-5 fingering used to play
major chords otherwise we'd have no fingers left to play the top note!
Lets take the G7 chord for our analysis, it looks like this.

G7 Chord
Does this make sense? If not try going over the common chords
[http://www.pianobychords.com/commonchords.html] section again.
Left Hand
The fingering for this chord with the left hand is 5-3-2-1. Pinky on G, middle finger on B, index finger on D
and thumb on F. If you have small hands this might be difficult to play.
Right Hand
The same fingering reversed can be used for the right hand, 1-2-3-5. Thumb on G, index on B, middle on D
and pinky on F#.
Excercises
Try out this new fingering on the following four note chords - G7,A7,B7.
These fingerings should work for all 4 note 7th chords on the keyboard. In the advanced chords
[http://www.pianobychords.com/advancedchords.html] section the major and minor 7th chords are
explained and these fingerings will work for those as well. Basically what you have just learnt is that two
basic fingerings will work for all major, minor, 7th, major 7th and minor 7th chords! Too easy isn't it?

7) Simple Tunes
You now have the knowledge needed to play some simple tunes, I think this would be a good time to let you
know about olga.net [http://www.olga.net/]. This is an excellent archive of guitar chord sheets, you
can use this to find the chords to just about any song you want to play.
Let It Be - The Beatles
Under The Bridge - Red Hot Chillie Peppers
More Simple Songs
Let it be
I think we'll start with a simple song, Let it be by the Beatles. We'll start off with the chord sheet download
and open that up first.
Take a moment to look through it, it only contains major and minor chords, which you know! So the first
step to playing this song would be to play through by simply playing the chords as I have done here.
Let it be Chords.mid
I am doing nothing more then playing the chords here with the occasional little run to transition between the
chords. Take your time to work out the chords as you go along, it will take a long time at first but believe me
you'll get much faster at it very quickly. Remember, look at the chord sheet, take a chord, work out how to
play the chord, repeat for every chord in the song(Theres not that many, only about 4 or 5). If you're having
trouble with this mabe you should go back over the common chords.
If you want to sing along to this song then it would be best to play these chords in your right hand and play a
bass note with your left hand. The bass note would be the same as the chord that you are playing, for
example on G you would play G major chord in your right hand with a low G note played with your left
hand. You could then sing the melody on top of this.
If you're like me and you cant sing, then you might want to play the chords in your left hand and try adding a
melody in your right hand. You might want to make it sound something like this.
Let it be chords plus melody. (Please excuse the playing I've only got a tiny midi keyboard with three
octaves and miniature keys)
You might want to try something a bit more interesting in the left hand, mabe playing the top two notes of
each chord together followed by the bottom note of the chord. It might sound like this.
Let it be chords with changing lefthand.
Try doing that with your left hand while playing the melody with your right hand and you'll have a decent
version of the song! Congrats, that makes two songs under your belt now!
Under the bridge
This is another good song that works well with nothing more then a few simple chords. Under the Bridge by
Red Hot Chillie Peppers. Take a minute to look over the chord sheet for this song, notice that the
chords are only given for one line of the verse and two lines of the chorus, this is because it is a very
repetetive song. Every line of the verse has the same chords as the first line, and the second two lines
of the chorus contain the same chords as the first two lines of the chorus. So really you only have
three lines to learn to learn the whole song!
Theres one chord in this song that you dont know yet, its the chord just at the end of the verse, an Emaj7(E
major 7th), the Major 7th chord is very similar to the major chord. For the moment I will just tell you
the Emaj7 has E G# B Eflat as its notes. Notice that this is different from the E7 chord which would
be E, G#, B, and D. If you must know how I worked out the Emaj7 chord you can have a read of the
advanced chords section.
Apart from this the song is pretty straight forward, you can start with simple chords in the left hand as we
did with Let it be, then practise the melody in the right hand. Once you are comfortable with both try
putting them together as I have done below. You should probably listen to the original song rather
then my dodgy version of it :)
Under the bridge.mid
If you wanted you could sing this one by playing the chords in the right hand while playing a single bass
note in the left hand just as for Let it be. The bass note would again be the same note as the chord
name, so with a B chord play the B note, an E chord play the E note, and sing the lyrics as you're
doing it. Another thing you could try is playing the chords with both hands, so you would play B
chord with your right hand while playing the same B chord with your left hand lower down on the
keyboard. Again you could sing on top of this.
You are now ready to try playing a whole host of popular songs armed with the three chords you know, the
Major, Minor and the 7th chord. Have a look around on olga [http://www.olga.net/], search for you're
favourite songs and if they contain chords you know, dont be afraid to give them a try. Remember,
take it slowly, work out how to play the particular chords the song is asking for, then learn the
melody, then put them together, and as always, dont be afraid to experiment!
Congratulations! You now know three songs! Have a look below for some more simple songs!
More Simple Songs
Well I've compiled a small list of songs here that I feel are easy enough for you to attempt at this stage, if
you dont like anything on here then feel free to head out on to the world wide web and find
something you do like. You'll notice in some of these chord sheets that the lyrics are only partly
given, this is because it gets the publishers of these chord sheets around copyright issues associated
with hosting the chord sheet. This means that you need to listen to the original song to work out
where the chord changes should happen. Check out Time Of Your Life to see what I mean.
Time Of Your Life - Greenday. Really a guitar song, but it doesnt hurt to try it on the piano.
Imagine - John Lennon. This is an excellent song to play on the piano, not too difficult but sounds quite nice.
Just watch out for the Cmaj7 chord. Cmaj7 would become C, E, G, B. Try it out and see how it
sounds. Be careful, this song has quite a few different chords, be sure to work them out correctly.
Hotel California - Eagles. This is an excellent song which sounds quite ok when played on the piano,
nothing too complicated in here, though again it does have quite a few chords so make sure to work
them out correctly.
Easy - Lionel Richie/Faith no more. Check out the midi for a cool way to play it, this midi wasnt created by
me. A lot of sharps in this song, still theres nothing here you dont know, its all majors and minors.
House of The Rising Sun - Animals. This song sounds great when played on a piano, if you've got a
keyboard that can simulate an organ sound its even better! The melodies quite simple and the chords
are great. Heres a way you can play the chords, though it will take a lot of work to get your left hand
to be able to do this. Theres nothing tricky here, i'm just playing the given chords but instead of
plonking them down at once, i'm breaking the chord up and playing each note separately. Learning to
play a melody on top of this with your right hand takes even more practise.
Sitting on the Dock of the Bay - Ottis Redding. A great slow tune to relax you after a hard days work. I
couldnt find a decent midi version of it so if you dont know how it goes you'll have to listen to the
original version(or find your own midi).
Continue on to the next section where i'll show you how to make your playing a bit more interesting even
with these simple chords.

8) Inversions
First things first, dont panic! This isnt as complicated as it sounds, its a simple technique that will make your
songs sound a lot better and also give you much more choice in choosing what to play when you see
a chord symbol.
Up until now you have been playing all your chords in what is known as root position, this means playing
the note with the same name as the chord as the lowest note of your chord.

C Major Chord
The C Major chord shown above is in root position because the C note is on the bottom, but hold on a
second, what if we dont play C at the bottom, but we play it at the top like this.

C Major Chord first inversion denoted as C/E
Notice that its still the same chord, C Major. It contains the same notes as your regular C Major chord, but
the root note (C) is now at the top. Try playing this and comparing the sound it makes with the
regular C Major chord, it sounds slightly different but has the same quality as the normal C major
chord. You can play this version of the chord almost anywhere you see a C chord specified. If they
specifically want you to play this version of the C chord then they would denote it as C/E. This
means "play me a C chord but use E as the bottom note".
How many such inversions are there for a particular chord? Well simple maths tells us that for a 3 note chord
there are three possible ways to play it. Either with the C on the bottom, the E on the bottom or the G
on the bottom. The third way to play the C chord is shown below, with G on the bottom.

C Major chord second inversion, denoted as C/G
For a four note chord such as C7 (C E G A#) there are four possible ways to play it. With either the C, E, G
or A# on the bottom. Try out each of the different ways of playing this chord and see how they
sound. It may take you a while to work out the chord in the new positions but believe me its well
worth the effort.
This applys to any chord you may care to come across, they can all be played inverted to give a slightly
different feel to the chord.
Well thats all there is to inversions, they are a simple yet powerful way of giving yourself much more
freedom when choosing what notes to play for a given chord.
Now what you need to do is go back to some of the songs you did on the previous pages and try to play them
using some inverted versions of the chords. Experiment with this, try different inversions on different
chords, play some chords in their root positions(the position you have always been playing them in)
while playing others in their inverted positions. You'll soon find that you can get a much nicer sound
by using the inverted versions of the chords at the right times. A good song to try this with first
would be Under the bridge. This song sounds good no matter what position you play the chords in.

9) Slash Chords
Well if you havent noticed by now, I'm trying to show you things in such as way as to allow you to pick up
any chord sheet and play the song on it. And no, slash chords are not the chords used solely by the
Guns'n'Roses guitarist Slash!
Don't worry, theres nothing tricky about this either. A slash chord will be denoted on a chord sheet as
something like A/E or Dm/C or E7/A. What this means is you play the chord specified on the left
hand side of the slash but below the chord you add the note specified on the right hand side of the
slash. The note on the right hand side may be part of the chord specified on the left hand side, or it
may be a completely unrelated note. All you have to do is play this note below the regular chord.
So to illustrate my point A/E would be A Major chord, with the E note played below it like so.

If you have been paying close attention on the last page and this one you would notice that this is infact the
second inversion of A(with an extra E added on top). If you dont understand this, dont worry, its just
a bit of unimportant musical theory.
Dm/C would be the Dminor chord played with a C below it like this.

And so on for any chord. Theres nothing tricky about this, it is very common on chord sheets and guitar
tabulature as a way of specifing the exact notes that should be played to get the same sound as the
performer was getting. So now when you see symbols like C/E or G7/A you will know exactly what
to do!

10) Advanced Chords
Dont be fooled by the title here, there is nothing more complicated about the chords I am about to show you
from the ones you already know. These chords are just different thats all. I'm showing you these
chords because they are also quite common in popular music and as such, come up quite often on
chord sheets you may find on the internet. Once you learn these, even more songs will open up to
you!
Major 7th
If you've been following the pages in order then you would already have come across the major 7th chord in
Under the bridge and Imagine. The major 7th chord is commonly denoted as Gmaj7, Amaj7, Bmaj7
etc. Its quite simple to play
The Major 7th consists of an interval of 4 half tones followed by an interval of 3 half tones followed by an
interval of 4 half tones.
Suppose we wanted to work out the Gmaj7 chord we would take the following steps

G major 7th chord
Find the root note G, count up 4 half tones to get B, count up 3 half tones to get D, count up 4 half tones to
get F#. Giving you the Gmaj7 chord.
Please take care to notice that the Gmaj7 is different from the G7 chord which has notes G B D and F. The
musical guru's who came up with this stuff are really out to confuse us!
Minor 7th
Just as the major 7th chord is very similar to the regular major chord, the minor 7th chord is very similar to
the regular minor chord. In a chord sheet the minor 7th chord would be denoted as Cm7 Gm7 Am7
etc.
The minor 7th chord consists of an interval of 3 half tones followed by an interval of 4 half tones followed
by an interval of 3 half tones.
So here are some minor 7th chords make sure you understand how to work out the notes they contain. The
process is exactly the same as every other chord, just follow the formula for the minor 7th chord.


C Minor 7th chord

G Minor 7th chord
Ok if you're getting confused by all these new chords then dont worry, in the next section you can review all
the chords you know to get them clear in your mind. Then you'll be ready to try out some tunes that
use these new chords!

11) Chord Revision
You might be getting a little confused with the five chords you now know, and its understandable, they all
have similar names and similar notes so its easy to get them confused. Look at the table below and
memorize it if you dont already know it to clear up any confusions about what notes belong to what
chords. In the following table, X denotes any letter of the musical alphabet(ie ABCDEF or G)
Chord Name Symbol
Chord Name Symbol Intervals (Count in half tones) No. Notes In Chord
XMajor X 4 followed by 3 3
X7th (Also known as dominant
7th)
X7 4 followed by 3 followed by 3 4
XMajor 7th Xmaj7 4 followed by 3 followed by 4 4
XMinor Xm 3 followed by 4 3
XMinor 7th Xm7 3 followed by 4 followed by 3 4
Please be careful to note the subtle differences between these chords, they are by far the most common
chords used in music so you will be required to work them out when you're playing a tune. For this
you need to know the intervals column which is probably best to memorize.
Heres a quick midi [http://www.pianobychords.com/midi/chordrunthrough.mid] where I play each of the
chords in a sequence so you can hear them. I will play each type of chord with a root note of C, so
it'll be C, C7, Cmaj7, Cm, Cm7. Notice the distinctive sound each type of chord has.
Ok you doing fantastic! Now move on to the next section and play some tunes using the new chords you've
just learnt!

12) Blues
I'm not a professional pianist but I have been messing around with blues and jazz so I thought I'd show you
how to play some very simple blues piano. Simple blues consists of only three chords, let's play in
the key of G. This makes our blues have the following chords.
G7 . . . | G7 . . . | G7 . . .| G7 . . .|
C7 . . . | C7 . . . | G7 . . .| G7 . . .|
D7 . . . | C7 . . . | G7 . . .| G7 . . .|
Just play 2 notes of each chord, the root and 7th. I.E
G7 = G + F
C7= C + Bb
D7 = D + C
So if you play it through it should be something like this:
Simple Blues Chords

Next you need a melody, blues is great because you simply mess around with the blues scale which
has 5 notes in it!:
G, Bb, C, C#, D, F

Try messing around till it sounds something like this:
Simple Blues Melody Improvisation

Now all thats left is to put them together into something like this!:
Simple Blues

Keep in mind all the 'right hand' stuff your hearing is made up of exactly those 5 notes above,
sometimes I might play more than one note at a time but never any notes other than those 5. The left
hand is only ever the root and 7th as I described above. The great thing is when you put it together it
sounds more complex than it really is! Timing is very important, and something I struggle with, you
have to get that 'swing' feel to make it work.
Bouncy Blues
Lets go through a few more ideas for what you can do with a Blues chord progression. Try playing the bass
line with your left hand as follows
Bouncy Blues Bass Line
This is what I'm playing to get this sound:
G7: G, G(one octave up), B,D..B,D
C7: C, C (one octave up), E,G..E,G
D7: D, D , F#, A.. F#, A
Now with your right hand noodle around the G pentatonic scale. G,A,B,D,E,G(up high). It's almost identical
to the blues scale, in fact you can play both interchangibly, or play mostly pentatonic and throw in the extra
notes from the blues scale (Bb, Db) here and there to 'blues up' your sound. I find the pentatonic is more of a
happy sound and the blues scale is, well more of a bluesy sound. This is very personal though, just play
around and see what feels right.
Put them together and you've got something like this!
Bouncy Blues
Classic Blues
Lets try a very classic sounding blues, the bass line should sound like this
Classic Blues Bass Line
Here's what we're doing with the left hand for bass
Left hand
G7: G+D G+D, E, E
C7: C+G C+G, A, A
D7: D+A D+A, B, B
Now play with the blues scale on your right to get this
Classic Blues
Walkin Blues
Here's an example of a walkin bass line style blues.
Walkin blues
This is a very simple walking bass line, basically walk up and down the notes of the chords.
G7: G, B, D, E, F, E, D,B
C7: C, E, G, A, Bb, A, G, E
D7: D, F#, A, D (You only sit on D7 for one bar so there isn't enough time to walk up and down)
With the right you can dab the chords on the off beat or improvise around the blues scale.


13) Jazz
Paper Moon
I want to show you how to play some basic Jazz piano. The beauty of Jazz is that it can be as simple or as
complex as you like, and just because it's simple doesn't mean it should sound bad. Lets take a look at the
song 'Paper Moon' made popular by Ella Fitzgerald, Sinatra and a host of others. By the end of this lesson
and with a bit of practise you should have it sounding like this:
Paper Moon Full
Here are the chords:
Paper Moon Chords

I wish I could sing because then I could show you how to sing along with this, basically hit the root note
with your left hand, and play the chord with your right hand and sing the melody over the top.
Since I can't sing, I'll show you how to do an instrumental version of this song. Let's start with the melody,
as with everything on this site you need to learn it by ear, I don't feel you need to be able to read music to
play jazz though it certainly does help. Have a listen to a proper version of this song so you get a full feel for
it, but the melody should go something like this:
Paper Moon Melody
It's a nice little tune, once you've learnt to play the melody you're pretty much half way there!
Now for the bass line, for the most part it's enough to just hit the root note, so on a G chord, play G, and E
chord play E etc. It should sound something like this:
Paper Moon Bass
Have a few goes until you're comfortable with the bass line, then put the two together to get a half decent
rendition like this:
Paper Moon Verse
To spice it up a bit you can add a little bit to the bassline, step to the root note from a half step above or
below the note adding a bit of swing then try playing that along with the melody like so:
Paper Moon Swingy

Now what you need is the bridge, the melody goes like this:
Paper Moon Bridge Melody
Have a look over the chord sheet again for the chords to the bridge:
Paper Moon Chords
Play the bass line in the same style as the verse until you get it sounding something like:
Paper Moon Bridge
Once you have the chorus down you can play the full song, it goes Verse-Verse-Bridge-Verse like this:
Paper Moon
This method of playing a single note bass line with the melody can work with quite a few jazz songs, though
not with all of them, in the next few weeks/months i'll show you a few other simple ways of constructing a
half decent sounding jazz song.


14) Guided Tunes
A - Happy Birthday
B - Imagine
A)
Lets learn how to play Happy birthday on the piano. It's a classic tune and one of the simplest tunes to
play, you can embellish it until it sounds as simple or complex as you want! I'll show you how to play it,
then give you a few ideas on how to make it more interesting
As usual you should work out the melody by ear but I'm feeling nice so I'll put the notes here just to
make it easy. The ^ sign means octave, so when you see G^ I mean the next octave (Higher) G note.
G G A G C B | G G A G D C | G G G^ E C B A | F F E C D C
The melody should sound like this!
Happy Birthday Melody
Now for the chords, ultra simple, only 3 chords are used, C, G and F. Have a look through the following
chord sheet
Happy Birthday Chord Sheet
With my left hand I am just playing straight 3 note chords, go back to my chord pages and have a
refresher if you've forgotten how to play these chords.
Happy Birthday Chords
Play through all the chords till you can change between them fluently, don't worry about timing until
you've got the chords fluent with your left hand.
Next, jump in and combine left hand and right hand parts, like this
Happy Birthday Chords and Melody
Now lets spice it up a bit, it's kind of waltzy so lets spruce up the left hand by playing the lowest note of
the chord on the 1st beat followed by the upper 2 notes of the chord on the 2 beats that follow. It's hard to
describe so just have a listen
Waltzy Birthday
If you've got that down and want to embellish a bit more you can play the low note of some of the chords
1 octave lower. For example with a C chord that just means find the next lowest C and play that C
followed by moving up to play the normal top 2 notes. Don't do it for every chord as it might be a bit
much, but just throw it in when you need a bit more kick. Something like this:
Waltzy Stride Birthday

B)
Here I am going to show you how to play Imagine by John Lennon on the piano. It is a song that is fairly
easy to play and that sounds great. Instantly recognizable, it'll add another song to your repertoire and
make you seem like you've been playing piano for years. Lets start as usual with a chord sheet, its quite
long so I'll link to it, download it and print it out.
Imagine Chord Sheet
To really do this song justice you need to sing along with it, so we're not going to learn the melody. We'll
learn a simple piano part that you'll be able to sing over to produce a surprisingly professional sounding
song.
Breaking this song down you'll notice there's a lot of repetition. Let's go through it.
Chords
There are 9 different chords used in the song, practice playing each of these chords until you are comfortable
with them. If this seems like a lot of chords forget about the G7 and E7 for now, in their place you can just play
normal G and E chords
C = C E G
Cmaj7 = C E G B
F = F A C
Am = A minor = A C E
Dm = D minor = D F A
G = G B D
G7 = G B D F
E = E G# B
E7 = E G# B D
Chords explained

Bass
For most of the bass line you're simply going to play the root note of each chord with your left hand. For a C or
Cmaj7 or C7 chord the root note is C, for a D or Dm or Dm7 chord the root note is D etc. There is one exception to
this rule and that is for the slash chords. Remember, a slash chord such as Am/E simply means play Am with an E
as the root note. When you see a slash chord in Imagine, simply take the part after the slash as your bass note to
be played with your left hand. Your bass line will sound like this:
Imagine bass
Right Hand
Now for the right hand, start by simply playing the chords as is until you are fluent with it. For the slash
chords forget about the part after the slash, you'll be playing that note with your left hand so Am/E just
becomes a regular Am for your right hand Dm/C = Dm etc.
Simple right hand verse
Simple right hand chorus
There's a little fill that we need to add at the end of the verse, the notes for the fill are A A# B, practice
playing it
Fill
Completed Imagine
Now join up that bass part with your right hand to get a workable version of Imagine!
Verse bass plus chords
Chorus bass plus chords
Now what we want to do is add a bit of colour to it.
Imagine is a great song to throw the sustain pedal in, that's the pedal on the right side. Use it all the way
through the song, make sure you release it and press it down every now and again otherwise it'll start
sounding too muddy. Next, with your right hand for the verse I want you to alternate between playing the
top 2 notes of each chord with the root note. Add it to the bass and you've got a decent sounding song.
Colourful Imagine verse
Colourful Imagine chorus
Ok now to complete it you need to practice singing along with it, I CAN NOT SING!! But to demonstrate
how YOU can sing along I will give it a go.
Imagine with terrible singing



15) Video Lessons
We Are Young
Hey! This is the first in my series of video lessons, as always, I can't sing but I'll do my best to show you
how to play some popular songs. Today we are looking at We Are Young.
First you'll need the chord sheet.
We Are Young Chords - We Are Young Chords
In We Are Young there are only 4 different parts, and each part has 4 chords, sounds like a lot? Well
trust me, it's not!! Luckily for us, the chords in each section are identical, each part simply has a different
rhythm, phrasing or order to the chords. So in total, to play this whole song we only need to learn 4
chords! We will go through those chords first then you can watch the videos below to see how to put
those chords together to create the song. The 4 chords we need to know are, F, Dm, Bb, C. You can
always review the common chords section
[http://www.pianobychords.com/commonchords.html] to learn how to work these chords out,
however I will show them here for you.
First we have F (also known as F major)

Next we have Dm (D minor)

Next we have Bb (B flat major, B flat is the black key. When you play this in the song, play the chord 1
octave down, this means, find the next lower B flat note to start the chord on, I couldn't show it as my
keyboard image below is not long enough, the B flat note at the left side of the keyboard is cut off)

Finally we have C (C major)


Which fingers to use? Well for chords F, Dm and C I like to use fingers 1,3 and 5 and for B flat I like to
use fingers 1-2 and 4. Please review the fingering
[http://www.pianobychords.com/fingering.html] lesson for more information. Play around with it
and see which one is comfortable for you.
Learn these chords, once you do, you will know all the chordrs to play We Are Young!
Video Lesson
I have broken this song down into its 4 distinct parts, so please watch the videos and enjoy learning it!
It's best to print out the chords [http://www.pianobychords.com/chordsheet/WeAreYoung.txt]
and keep them handy.
Part 1 [http://youtu.be/Yv4wVPs6pwk]
Part 2 [http://youtu.be/ez4vbLuST3E]
Part 3 [http://youtu.be/YChO1eLFKXk]
Part 4 [http://youtu.be/0i62fmpH-zM]

16) More Tunes
Now that you know most of the basic chords used in music a whole range of songs are open to you, i'll start
off by giving you some of my favorites.
Mabe I'm amazed - Paul Mcartney. This is a great song that uses all the chords we have learnt so far. It has a
little run which basically starts on D and goes upwards hitting every note along the way. Listen to the
midi to see what i mean. If you're learning this song, you really should learn by listening and copying
the original rather then the midi version of it.
Sunny Afternoon - Kinks. This is a good song which makes use of a lot of slash chords. Take your time to
work out the chords and the melody to try and get it sounding something like the midi(original is
better if you have it).
Road Trippin' - Chillie Peppers. Another good song with some cool slash chords. This is quite a good midi
of the song I feel it captures quite a bit of what the guitar is playing on the original song.
Brick - Ben Folds Five. A great piano tune, this is pretty advanced, you might have to fiddle around and
experiment with it to get it sounding like Ben Folds. Heres a midi which gives you the basic structure
of the song and the rithym. When you get it sounding like this you'll be in a great position to sing the
lyrics on top of it. For most of the song you can get away with playing the bass note of the chord in
your left hand while fiddling with the notes of the chord in your right hand.
As always, start by learning the chords needed by the song, then try to spice them up mabe by playing them
as inversions or by moving the chords around the keyboard. Mabe break the chord up so you play the
root note first followed by the top two notes of the chord next, or in any other way you think might
sound good. Remember, unlike classical music there are no rules here, if you find something that you
think sounds good then by all means play it! Dont be afraid to experiment, and whetever you do, do it
confidently!
Congratulations, you are now at the position where you know all the theory and skills you need to pick up a
chord sheet and put together a basic rendition of the song!

17) Links

Well heres some good piano links
http://www.olga.net - The olga chord archive, almost everything you could possibly want here
http://24.118.61.128:69/song/index.php - The Cosmic Kitchen, a great site with lots of chord sheets
http://learnjazzpiano.com - A great site with free lesson pages on how to play jazz and blues piano, also has
a forum for asking questions and discussing all things piano.
http://www.pianotricks.com/ - An excellent site, they offer free online text based instruction as well as free
video lessons. Well worth checking out. A very comprehensive selection of lessons are offered as
well.
http://www.gopiano.com/ - Seems to have free piano lessons on this site, it appears to be focused more on
reading sheet music rather then playing by chords.
http://www.pianonanny.com/ - Another site with piano lessons on it, again going into much more musical
theory and less focus on playing by ear.
http://www.learnpianoonline.com/welcome.html - Yet another site with piano lessons focused on music
theory and reading music.
http://www.pianolesson.tv/ - This site has a bunch of great 1 minute videos showing different tricks you can
do to improve your playing. It starts off pretty basic but goes up to some advanced stuff. Worth
checking out if you have a fast connection.
http://www.free-online-piano-lessons.com - A great site with a ton of free lessons on it. Has lessons covering
scales, chords, arpeggios and a whole lot more! Definately check this one out.
http://www.piano-lesson-online.com/ - Another good site with free piano lessons, taking you right through
buying and checking your first piano to playing and reading from sheet music.
http://www.piano-lesson-online.com/ - Another good site with free piano lessons, taking you right through
buying and checking your first piano to playing and reading from sheet music.
http://www.zebrakeys.com/ - An excellent site with free piano lessons and Flash animations to help
understanding, well worth checking out. Has lessons that range from beginner to advanced.
http://www.learn-piano.org - Another great site that goes through piano lessons scales and composition as
well.
http://www.simplepiano.com - A very professional commercial site that offers various piano lessons for
purchase
http://www.bluesplayer.dk/ - This site offers a tool for learning to play classic blues piano licks
http://www.pianovillage.com/ - Learn the piano with free online piano lessons. Free piano lesson videos,
piano articles, piano lesson reviews, and more to get you started.
Play piano lessons using power piano chords!
Top 100 Piano Sites [http://www.top100pianosites.com/] - Discover the best sheet music, piano lessons, and
piano dealers on the web.
http://www.pianoscores4u.com - It offers some free piano sheet music downloads, and piano related links.
http://www.guitartricks.com - A commercial site offering guitar lessons.
http://nfo.net/MFILE/ - An excellent site where you can find out the keys in any given chord using a cool
visual display.
http://www.easysheetmusic.com - A site with a great collection of pieces you can download for free
Piano Forums at Piano World - Join the World Famous Piano Forums at Piano World (it's FREE)
Piano Lesson | Online Piano Lessons - Piano Lesson Videos by renowned pianist Paul Tobey for advanced
and intermediate piano players. These online piano lessons are the most comprehensive piano
instruction courses on the internet.
Piano Lessons - B&B Music World - Professional teachers serving music lessons on different instruments
for any ages and skill level at students home located at Maryland, Virginia & District of Columbia.
Authentic blues piano!
Pop & Jazz Piano Music Resources - Learn how to play pop piano with our free online lessons
Roland Industry News - Here is a cool little write about about this site from the good guys at Roland
TAMMY's PIANO LESSONS ONLINE - If you would like to know how to play the piano, it's important
that you make time to read anything you can get your hands on relating to piano, set your mind to
focus on only piano and your everyday piano lessons. Concentrate & dont worry about your dog or
you favourite TV show. Devote your self to only your piano lessons, learn to play the piano to
perfection and become a piano skilled player like your friends before you.
Piano lessons centralLearn to play piano!
Unrelated Links
Heres some links that are not directly related to piano lessons:
Novelty Music Boxes - Searching for Novelty music boxes? 1-Noveltyphones offer large variety of novelty
music boxes for all the music lovers. We also have novelty clocks, novelty radios, novelty jukeboxes
and much more.
Fingerweights! Piano Players Save 25% By Entering FWCJ07Q3 As the Discount Code! FingerWeights
increase speed, dexterity, endurance, and control for all players all instruments. Webmasters note -
I have never used finger weights so cannot personally vouch for them.
Piano lessons online Adult & Beginner Piano lessons online, Free Tutorial
Djembe African Hand Drums Factor and Outlet Djembe African Hand Drums Factor and Outlet , producing
musical instruments.
Djembe Drum The best Djembe Cajon & Hand Drums online store
PIANO LESSONS NYC Piano Lessons NYC offers private piano lessons in New York City and many areas
of Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island for all ages and levels