Building Piano Chords - Piano Lessons

Piano Lessons.com The #1 Name in Piano Lessons Online Basic Triads – Nate Bosch Hi! I’m Nate Bosch of Piano Lessons.com and today we’re going to learn about building basic triads. What is a basic triad? It is the most basic chord, a three note chord. [Demo] There we had the C major triad [Demo] Well all of these chords we can build around the notes of a scale. Say well pick the G major scale; G, A, B, C, D, E, F sharp and G. Now the key to building the triad is really simple, you take that scale. [Demo] And you start at the root. For the G major scale our root is the one that we start it on, G. So we play the first note in the scale, skip a note, play the third note, skip a note, play the fifth note. So we have G, E and D, from there we have the G major triad. Let’s take the next note of the G major scale which would be an A and let’s apply that same formula one, three and five to it so we have. Here’s the G major chord again one, three, five. Well let’s start on the A using the notes in the G major scale with our first note, skip one, play the third note three, skip one, play the fifth note. There we have the A minor triad. Now this is called the G major triad and this is called the A minor triad you can see how they sound a little bit different and that’s where their name comes from, we’ll go into that later. Let’s start on the third note of the scale was the B, we’ll skip a note, skip another note and there we have the B minor chord. So let’s review, we’ll start from the beginning we’ve got G major, A minor, B minor, now we’re going to start on the fourth note of the G major scale we have the C, we going to skip a note, E, skip a note, G, there we have the C major triad. We’re going to move on more note; D, skip a note, F sharp, skip a note, A, there we have the G major chord. Let’s keep going all the way up to scale we have E, skip a note, G, skip a note, B, there we have the E minor triad. Now we’re going to go to the F sharp, some of note in the scale; F sharp, A, C, now it sounds a little bit different again. It’s not really a major sound in chord or a minor in chord, it’s a diminished chord. So here are the chords using the notes in the G major scale; we have G, A minor, B minor, C, D, E minor, F sharp diminished and then we get back to our G. Now using that little formula of just playing one note in the scale, skipping a note playing a third note skipping playing the fifth note. You’re going to play that formula to any scale, say we start it in E by playing the E major scale. [Demo] You got E, F sharp, E sharp , A, B, C sharp, D sharp and E, there’s our E major scale. We want to build an E major chord. [Demo] Skip a note then a D sharp, skip a not play the B, there we have it. You’re going to play that to any scale and going to be able to play basic triads. So what that allows you to do is do well on your way when you’re creating songs or just wanting to play music understanding all of those chords how they come out of the scale. The root of that scale called G means that we’re talking about the key of G and there you build the chords. Just a little of information on how to build a basic triad on the piano.