The third is going to be the third tone of the C major scale, or an E. The C major chord, for example, will have a C as its root and lowest note. Major and minor chords are made up of three tones, called the root, the third, and the fifth. Ninety-nine percent of all popular music, and almost as much classical music, is built on these two kinds of chords and their variations. Most chords in modern-day Western music are either a major chord or a minor chord. When you make a chord, the distance, measured in half steps, between the tones of a chord determines what kind of chord it is. As you go up the keyboard, twelve half steps will bring you right back to where you started in the sequence of tones. Each white or black key is included in the scale, and is a half step away from the keys next to it. These tones, called the chromatic scale, repeat as you go up the keyboard.

The piano keyboard is made up of only twelve tones. So which notes do you play to make what chord? With eighty-eight keys on the piano, that makes an impossible number of combinations, right? Actually it’s simpler than that. Most simply put, if you play more than one note at a time you’ve got a chord. In this article I’ll tell you how to make piano chords, how to read chord symbols, and lots of ways to use chords to make your piano playing more amazing than ever. But for folk, jazz, pop, and rock musicians, chords are the foundation of how they think about, play, and perform music.

Although guitar players use chord symbols all the time, for many beginning piano students chords are a mysterious art. Have you ever seen those letters up above the staff in your sheet music and wondered what they are? Those letters are chord symbols.

In the end piano notes