When played together on the piano, a piano chord is a group of notes that sound harmonious or pleasing. Composers and song writers combine piano chords to create music for the piano and to give music its distinct “feeling” or recognizable style. Triads are a type of chord that is formed by combining three notes from the scale. Chords can be changed by making minor adjustments to create major, minor, or inverted chords. Seventh chords add a note to the basic triad, resulting in a unique sound.
Harmony is achieved through the use of chords in all types of music, and a piano chord is used to create harmonies in piano music. There is a 12-note scale for each possible key in which piano music can be played. To make different types of chords, notes in that scale are combined in various ways. These combinations must contain at least three notes, but they can also contain several more. Chords give music its tonality, and most genres have a set of chords that are frequently used and create the style’s distinct sound.
Triads are the most fundamental chords, containing the scale’s first, third, and fifth notes. This piano chord can be played as either a major or minor chord, with the third note flattened to make a minor chord. The lowest of the three notes is usually the first, but a triad chord can also be inverted by making the third or fifth note on the piano the lowest. A C major chord, for example, is formed by playing the C, E, and G notes of a key, with the C being the lowest. The chord is an inverted C major chord if the lowest note, according to piano key position, is E but it is still combined with a C and a G.
By adding additional notes to the basic triad chord combination, different types of sound can be created in a piano chord. A seventh piano chord is created by adding the seventh note of a scale to the notes played in a triad. Each note adds to the complexity of the sound and gives it a slightly different feel.