Nathan Cheng
How to Play Popular Piano in 10 Easy Lessons, Norman Monath
To begin this post, let's define what a chord is. According to How to Play Popular Piano in 10 Easy Lessons, "A chord is a combination of three or more tones sounded simultaneously..." (Monath 37). Typical chords consist of notes that are certain distances from each other, called intervals. When these notes are played at the same time, the sound is pleasing. This also explains why one can't just slam their hand on a piano expecting a beautiful sound to emanate from it, as certain combinations of notes have to be pressed to form a pleasing sound (Monath 38).
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| Silent Night sheet music. Chord cues are circled in red |
The first chords taught by the book are the C, F, and G chords. All three chords consist of three notes one note apart from each other and are played with one's left hand. This may sound confusing but the graphic below should help.
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| Fingerings for C, F, and G chords in reference to Middle C |
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| My attempt to do a vamp with the C chord |
To those who play an instrument; what memories do you fondly look back to with your instrument?
Monath, Norman. How to Play Popular Piano in 10 Easy Lessons. Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Monath, Norman. How to Play Popular Piano in 10 Easy Lessons. Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Nathan,
ReplyDeleteYour post was very concise and well done. It's good for you to begin to understand the role of chords when playing piano and music in general. Even though your clarinet isn't capable of playing chords, it's still apart of a chord if you look at the overall band, as each group or section is responsible for the different notes of different chords. To answer your question, I play the trumpet and I remember on multiple occasions when playing in Jazz and getting the opportunity to improvise solos. When doing so you have to understand many different chords and variations in order to play the correct notes that correspond with the rest of what the band is playing measure by measure.
You make a good point about a clarinet being part of a bigger picture; that being creating a chord with the band. Oddly enough once you get past the technicalities of having to play multiple notes at the same time, I think piano may be a little easier to play than a wind instrument, since you don't have to worry about things such as intonation. Since you share experience with both the piano and a wind instrument, would you agree?
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