It doesn’t matter what type of music you are into, whether it’s popular, jazz or classical music, you are going to need some knowledge of chords and chord symbols. Even if you were to do one of these online piano courses that can supposedly teach you to play the piano in a few short weeks without having to learn to read music, you will still need a basic knowledge of chords.
When there are lyrics to a song or a single line of music that typically is just the melody, there can be various letters and numbers to indicate a particular chord.
If there is just a capital letter, sitting by itself such as C , this means that the chord is a C major chord, which consists of the notes C E and G. These notes don’t have to be in any particular order and you can double up on any or all of the notes, especially the C because it is the most important note in the chord.
The next chord worth mentioning is the minor chord and the way it is written is a capital letter with a lower case m positioned immediately after. For example the A minor chord looks like this: Am . This particular chord consists of the notes A C E and like the major chord, any and all of the notes can be doubled up especially the A as it is the most important note of the chord.
Of course there is a technical difference between a major and a minor chord, which will be covered in another article, but the main difference between the two types of chords is the sound that they produce. A minor chord sounds more mournful or sadder then a major chord. Some people think that a minor chord sounds Middle Eastern in origin, but if that is not something you can relate to, then don’t worry about it.
The next type of chord that you can encounter, occurs quite frequently is known as a seventh chord. This is where you have a major chord such as G and you add another extra note. It is notated as G7, so there is a capital letter immediately followed by the number 7. So in the case of G7, it would be G B D F. The reason that the added extra note is called a seventh is because it is seven notes above the base note which the chord is named after.
[Just as an aside, it is important to note that when you are working out a seventh note (or any other note for that matter) you always include your starting note as ‘1’. It is not like mathematics where you start counting from the number after. Once you can get your head around this important distinction, working out ‘7’notes will be easy.]
Sometimes you can come across a chord that is written with a capital letter followed by a lowercase m and then a 7. This indicates that you have a minor chord with an added seventh note from the base note. For example Am7 consists of A C and E, which is a minor chord and then the added seventh is a G.
These are the most common types of chords that you will come across. On a rare occasion you will get a diminished chord which is indicated by dim and an extremely rare chord is an augmented chord and it is abbreviated to aug. While it isn’t important to know about these two type of chords, it is useful to know that they exist.
While I have covered that vast majority of chord types and how they are written above a single line of music or lyrics to a song, I have not covered all possible chords.
If you can understand the chord symbols just explained then you will be able to play almost all popular music, or have an excellent foundation for understanding jazz and classical music (even though classical music doesn’t use the chord symbols, it still uses the chords).