How to Play Chords on the Piano

Learning to play chords on the piano takes time, patience and coordination. You need to know the keys on the piano and the fingers you should use to play each of them. The basic chords such as A Major and A Minor won't take long to learn, but as the chords become more complicated these easy chords will help you learn the harder chords.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Study the keyboard of the piano--there are white keys and black keys. The white keys take up the entire length of the piano whereas the black keys are in groups of twos and threes.

2. Locate the keys on your piano--they are C, D, E, F, G, A and B. The C key is located to the left of the group of two black keys. The progression is easy from there--find C and your next key is D, the next is E, and continue to you reach the two black keys again and there you will have C again.

3. Understand the groups of black keys. They are also C, D, E, F, G, A and B but depending on their position to the white key they are either sharps or flats. The sharp keys are a half step higher than the white key to its left and carry the symbol #. The flat keys are a half step lower than the white key to its right and have the symbol b. In other words, each black key has two values.

4. Learn to associate your fingers with the numbers--when you play, thumbs are 1, index fingers 2, middle fingers 3, ring fingers 4 and pinkies 5--with beginning lessons you see these numbers to remind you which finger to use when playing. You use this for either hand.

5. Position the fingers of your right hand on the keyboard like this--the middle finger goes on C sharp, the thumb on A and the pinky on E--to play an A Major chord. To play the A Minor you change the C sharp to a C.