Learning what chords are and how they function is really important for anyone who is wanting to learn to play the piano. It doesn’t matter whether you are into classical, modern or jazz music, chords are used in just about every type of music and they are essential whether you read music or not.
The thing about chords is that they can range from reasonably simple and straightforward to very complex. They are not something that is learned in just one lesson – it takes time to learn about the structure of chords and how to use them properly before you can mess around with them and be creative or inventive with how you play them.
I have noticed that there are some content creators online that understate what it takes to learn about chords and give you the impression that you can learn all about them in a lesson or two. These content creators are not going to tell you that it will take time to learn them thoroughly – it wouldn’t be a good marketing strategy (but it would be honest).
Before learning chords, it is important to actually be familiar with the individual notes because after all, it is the notes that make up the chords – any chord at all! Again, some content creators, but certainly not all, gloss over the note names and instead focus on the final chord. If you are going to get good at playing chords, then you should be able to play and name the notes that make up the chord. Even people who struggle to read music can learn what each note on the piano is called, over a period of time.
When learning about chords, I think it is useful to only learn 3 or 4 chords at a time. More than this would be far too overwhelming, besides there are a number of pieces of music that only use 3 or 4 chords in the entirety of the piece of music.
The chords that you should learn about first are major and minor ones. These are the most basic chords and you really need to understand them first before moving on to other types of chords.
After knowing major and minor chords for a while, I would recommend learning what is refered to as seventh chords. These chords have an added extra note to the major or minor chords and they can add such interest to a piece of music. These chords would enable you to play the vast majority or music but if you wanted to take your knowledge further you could learn about diminished and augmented chords. There is other chords that you could explore , but it certainly wouldn’t be necessary to learn.
Chords are really important to understand and play on the piano, but they are something that takes time to understand and be able to play proficiently.