In this blog, I’ll talk about chords from a non-conventional perspective, i.e., from my own observation. Don’t expect any hard-hitting music theory, because as you know from my ‘hearing dependence’, I have none to speak of.

By way of observation, a chord is any 2 or more notes held together, whether with your left or right hand.

Commonly though, a chord is made up of 3-4 notes (and very rarely, 5, which is unnecessarily stressful on the fingers!) depressed at the same time, E.g., when you’re playing the organ, or you play the left hand on the piano in a percussive/staccato way.

With playing the piano - now practically speaking - a chord is played 3 ways on the left-hand fingers:

(i) just holding the notes of the chord down, usually until the sound fades and you’ll either depress them again do something else, depending on the song.

(ii) as an arpeggio by moving your fingers to the flow of the song. You would typically stretch out the notes over 1-2 octaves, before an expected change to the next chord.

(iii) as short ‘hits’ or ‘strumming’ (like the guitar), as part of a bass + chord combo in an imaginary drum pattern.

Playing a melody by itself on the right hand sounds pretty flat and…

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One of the most important things that makes your playing interesting is how you move your left hand bass and chords. This is especially so when playing as a solo pianist, when you’re basically ‘on your own’ to try to bring out the following elements of a song :

- the melody (E.g., from the main vocal, instrument, orchestra)

- accompanying or counter- melodies

- the chords

- the bass

- the underlying beat of the song.

While music notation show tempo signatures like ¾, 4/4, etc., I suspect that not too many students learning piano the conventional way are actually taught how to play the piano in accompaniment to drum/rhythm beats such as Bossa Nova, Swing, Rock, Cha Cha, Shuffle , Disco, Slow Rock  (watch demo).  These are common beats in contemporary ‘percussive and piano-friendly’ music (I use ‘piano-friendly, because some music just sound awful when played on the piano, regardless of whether a music sheet has been published for it!)

Thinking back, I feel very fortunate now, for having a background in playing the electronic spinet organ, where from day one I had to play songs to the accompaniment of the different drum beats available on the organ’s ‘rhythm box’ (picture below), at the same time stepping on…

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• Newly added songs under MUSIC: At Last; Somewhere Out There; Vivo Per Lei (Andrea Bocelli); Fly Me To The Moon; You And Me (2008 Beijing Olympics); We Could be in Love (Lea Salonga); The Most Beautiful - Cantonese; Two Words - I Do (Lea Salonga); Dahil Sa Iyo (Tagalog).

http://pianopod.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=671

• How I began hearing things

• Why learn piano by ear

• My piano hearing tools

• How I learn a song

• You And Me (Beijing Olmypics Song Tutorial)
  

• Why write your own notes

• How I write my notes

• Song structure

• Transposition on the run
• 
  
• About chords

• How to figure out chords

• How to determine the key of a song

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When hearing, if you happen to discover a chord that you’re unfamiliar with and really want to know its name…. As long as you know its root bass you would then just use a chord chart, look up that same root bass name and each of the available chords under it. Next, match the notes against each of these chords until you find the name of the chord that matches your notes.

In a another case, say you know a chord in one key , Eg . C Minor 6^th, and want to find out what the corresponding chord position is on another key, say Ab (ie. Ab Minor 6th)… and you don’t have access to a chord chart to look at.

All you then need to first count how many semiitones (ie each adjacent note) from the root of the first chord, ie. C, the next root (Ab) is from C…either left-wards or rightwards of the keyboard

The following video shows how, by counting left-wards, you are able to figure out the notes making up the Abm6 chord, based on your knowing the notes making up the Cm6 chord.

So, by knowing:

…you are able to count each of the above chord’s notes leftwards, and figure…

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You may be someone who has found that learning to play the piano can be challenging and oftentimes frustrating.  You perhaps thought that there’s no easy way to learn this instrument other than by the traditional way, i.e., step by step through long drawn-out music theory lessons; and the hope of having a good music teacher to guide you through it all.

Without a doubt, many musicians have developed their skills that way, but many others have fallen on the wayside giving up their interest out of sheer boredom, frustration, and lack of progress. They‘re left with the conclusion that conventional music sight reading and theory were the only ways they could learn music on the piano.

But let me tell you, there is an alternative way you could progress your music learning - perhaps a little faster - through hearing and observation.

This is especially so if you already have some musical knowledge, E.g., from having taken some months of piano lessons, previously played another instrument (especially the guitar, as in my case), or can even hum or sing in tune to a song!

Think about this…   If you can hum or whistle in tune to a song, why would you not be able to translate…

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