Piano music notation uses the treble and bass staff at the same time. If you look at your piano and play a C, skip a note to E, and skip another to G, and play it all together, you are making a C chord in its basic triad from. To refresh, a triad is a chord that is created out of thirds, notes that are in letter name away from each other, stacked on top of each other. The following notation uses root position of these chords, meaning you build the chord’s triad from its root. We will use the following chord progression for most of this article: C-G-A minor-F. Notated examples are included, but they will be explained thoroughly. This article only assumes that you know the names of the notes on the keyboard. There are entire courses and studies devoted to learning how to change chords as smoothly as possible, but we will focus on some simple and enlightening approaches on how to do this on the piano. This article deals with smooth transitioning of chords. Keeping it simple, if you have ever played the notes, C, E, G at the same time, you’ve played a C chord. To bring us all up to speed, a chord is a group of usually three or more simultaneously occurring notes. If you have been playing piano for a little while, you probably have heard of a chord.
Much music of the past 250 years, and most popular music is homophonic, meaning that a melody is supported by an underlying voice that offer harmonic and rhythmic support.
