Music Laziness: Piano Lesson Part 2 - Fingering and chord Introduction

Hands on! We finally get to learn Positions and Major Chords! 

Well Future Readers, we've reached our lesson 2 :)

Now that you know how each key is called, can you play all of the Do/C notes on your keyboard?

Great, let’s put your hands on the keyboard the correct way then.  This post is all about the fingering, and how to form major chords. 

Fingering according to Google is:

the placement of the fingers for playing different notes (or sequences of notes) on a musical instrument.

In order to ‘place’ our fingers on the keyboard, we need a starting position.  Remember the middle C from our Lesson 1? Well, keep it your head we’ll use it soon.  We have to name your fingers first in order to place them (there’s a lot of pictures for finger positions on google, so I’ll just link to one of those and leave a reference).

From epianostudio.com

This works, for now… We don’t play music with numbers right?  Let’s jump into the notes and replace those numbers shall we?

Your right hand should be positioned on top of the following keys starting in Middle C:

*1 = Middle C

2 = D

3 = E

4 = F

5 = G

Your left hand should touch the following notes in this order – on the set that’s adjacent (on the left) to the middle C:

*5 = C

4 = D

3 = E

2 = F

1 = G

That’s all there is to it when it comes to starting position.

*’ = Root.

Your #1 Finger on your Right hand will play and define the chords and scales, Call it the Root finger.  At the moment, you have your hands rooted on “C” so you’ll be able to play C chords or scales, but if you put your #1 finger on the D note and move your position to the notes that follow D, you’ll be ready to play the D chord, or simply sing in the D Scale; it’ll give a name in your head as to what scale or chord you’re playing.  The important thing now is that you already know how to position your hands. Let’s move on.

Now that you can identify every note on the keyboard, and you know how to position your hands on the keyboard; it’s time to form some chords and manage some scales.

Wait Loth, what do you mean; what are these chord and scale things?!

Don’t worry, I’ll explain it carefully future reader.

Music is a composition of sounds; we know these sounds are formed from Notes, and you know what these notes are.  But what is this thing about composition?  Well, think about a sandwich; what is a sandwich composed of? Bread, Ham, Cheese and butter.  You know what these ingredients are, but the order in which you use them creates a pleasant tasty sandwich.  The same thing happens with music.  In order for a song to exist, we need to compose the music; and to compose the music we need the ingredients (notes), and put them in a correct order. 

The order depends on 2 things when playing the piano; Chords and scales.

Let’s define what a chord is first shall we?

Google gives us this third definition: 

a combination of three or more notes that blend harmoniously when sounded together

Well that was conveniently straight forward!

A chord is the sound of 3 or more notes that blend pleasantly when played together.  Here’s where tension and release comes into play.

When playing any instrument that can play more than one note at a time (for example the piano or guitar) you can form chords.  Chords are what hold a song together; they define the street where the singer or the melodic instrument is going to run through. 

Pianos can be used to sing AND play chords; we can play a melody (sing) and give it a road (chord/rhythm).

How you hit the keys, the speed you hit them defines the rhythm of a song; normally the rhythm in bands is defined by guitars/bass and the percussion (drums,congas,etc) and the piano supports them using chords and “singing” with the singer. 

In order to play a chord, you just have to hit 3 or more keys at the same time;

When we start practicing with “Just the way you are” you’ll be free to accompany the singer and even do some freestyle playing that wont sound like junk all thanks to chords.

I won’t touch rhythm or the complementary things that form a song (Rhythm, Bass, Percussion) directly, but if you want more knowledge I encourage you to Google those terms when you finish reading these posts (you’ll be playing jazz in no time).

In order to keep the posts readable I'll divide some of the content; I don't want to create super long walls of texts o.o they scare me.

Since you know what chords are our next step is forming the chords and learning how to use/play them, so lets move to our next lesson.  Chord magic!

So lazy... they even go to the beach to sleep >:( I bet they get the ladies too...

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Abdiel Rodz

Hi. I’m a social researcher, developer and consultant. Bringing you news that would probably make your head hurt and some others that will make you want to hug a puppy.

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