Easiest way to learn how to play chords on keyboard?

Teacher's Lounge
#6

I vote against stickers! Keyboard shapes are so visually distinctive and physically and obviously tactile they almost memorize themselves. It’s not like guitar frets which all look the same and feel the same.

The best way is the hands-on way. Considering you already know the musical aspects of this, I’d just spell out some chords or progressions that you like and play them. You can play around with inversions if you like, that’s up to you. But really, all you need to know is that C is the note just to the left of the pair of black keys. There’s not much more to it to get started!

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#7

my two cents here…
If you want you fingers to get used to a keyboard - play some scales. Ok, I know it may sound strange since scales and chords are two different things, but it really helps. And… start with the E-major. Believe me or not it’s much easier than C-major.

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#8

Stickers = Bad - Don’t do it! hahaha

Umm, Maybe learn the first Hanon thing for your finger exercise needs (Guitarists NEED to punish them selves hahaha) Then I’d go after major triads in 12 keys root inversion, practice it in cycle of 4ths/5ths (I do 4ths) CFBbEb AbDbGbB EADG. Once you have that, do the same thing with LH doing octave bass, then rinse/repeat with the minor triads in cycle of 4ths/5ths, then learn a basic blues boogie woogie kind of thing with a simple walk… If you can do some simple blues scale soloing over top of your bassline, that would be deadly… (Keep it light, have fun!)

At this point you will have surpassed me, I am not much of a keyboardist… Good luck!

#9

@aliendough, Although I do agree with the above, it depends on whether you want any skill on the keyboard moving forward. If you don’t and you only want say a sustained chord for x measures and then change to another chord for x measures, then enable ‘cheat mode’ and punch them into logic i.e. click it in. Its fine if you don’t mind the lack of ‘feel’/groove and only getting the basic of all basic rhythms.

Another trick/cheat is to learn how to play all the chords you want in one key (c major maybe as it is all the white keys if playing diatonically) and then use logic to transpose it to any other key you would like. This enables you to get good at getting to grips with the chords physically and a bit of tonal variety. You can always move onto playing in the other keys as you progress.

With cheat mode disabled, I would say that simple chords on keyboard are easier to learn than your first chords on guitar.

#10

I would just use the score function and program your piano chords like you would program drums.

#11

C is next to CHOPSTICKS, and F is next to FORK. :thinking:

#12

The easiest way to learn piano is with a piano teacher. They have incredibly sophisticated teaching systems that make non-classical guitar teachers look… not very smart.

#13

I find the problem with a guitar is that some notes are on it once (say E2), twice, three times, four times, five times, and even six times (E4). So, the guitar is annoying regarding navigation: It has huge amounts of redundant notes and despite having around 144 places to finger it is merely has a four octave range, making it look pretty bad compared to a piano that has exactly one note per key, and its 88 keys therefore span over seven octaves!

But the guitar does have one advantage (other than portability), and that’s that chords can be translated up/down the neck to change key and keep the same fingering (impossible on a piano). Indeed, I tune in 4ths so that I can even move across the neck and still keep the chord shape. So, I actually think that chords are pretty easy on the guitar, as well as transposing keys (that requires a big brain for the piano). But I only make chords with no more than 4 strings, as that’s enough given my heavy distortion, and I also make my chords piano-like (when I can).

#14

Yep, that’s why learning scales structure or chords structure is easier on a guitar. Whole-whole-semi-whole-whole-whole-semi…)) It looks the same on almost every fret, while piano is not as straightforward.

As for chords, when playing with distortion obvious choice is to use more open chords (wide intervals) while piano sound works well even with very dense chords and even tonal clusters.

Second dimension on a guitar (same notes - different strings) is quite convenient actually, because you can often choose what fingering to use. You don’t have such luxury on a piano :frowning:

Another interesting technical difference is: the closer chord’s intervals are - the easier this chord to play on a piano. Guitar is opposite. Grabbing three major/minor 2nds gives you a lot of trouble (though every kid can do it on a piano). At contrary 4 octave chord is so easy (F-shape) on a guitar and is quite uncomfortable on a piano.

Different instruments, different feelings.

#15

Folks may want to refer back to my earlier comment in this thread. While true that on the face of it, the piano looks different, it can be just as straightforward. Ignore the raised nature of the black keys and the extended-for-thumbs white keys, and the instruments instantly have a lot more in common in terms of linear mental maps.

#16

I always thought the coolest inlay would be black and white squares underneath each string to look like piano keys. But one could never change their tuning after the neck was made!

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#17

You could achieve a similar effect, at least functionally speaking, with a Fretlight guitar.

#18

ahem… why turn guitar in piano?
As a man who play both I can say that they different in terms of feeling, mechanics etc. Absence of ‘black keys’ on a fretboard is a feature, not a bug )

#19

Uh, yes, and for that reason I purchase guitars without dots and markers. If someone is coming at guitar after playing piano, and vice versa, I can’t think of a good reason why one wouldn’t want to apply what they know towards leveraging the other. There is a definite commonality worth noting in the linear chromaticism of each, that transcends the physical features.

Talk to some famous jazz pianists and you’ll find that it’s not unusual for them to refer to guitarists as sources of inspiration and understanding, and again, vice versa.

#20

I sometimes unconsiously imitate piano voicings on a guitar as well )

If we are talking about pure ‘abstract’ theory you can apply it to any instrument. But if we are talking about some piano-specific knowledge or skills… I don’t know. There seem not much intersections.

Learning a guitar as a variation of piano is strange and limiting.

#21

We seem to have very different perspectives on this, and that’s fine. My observation about the symmetrical chromatic nature of the keys allowed me to advance very quickly (on piano) where I hadn’t before. As I shared in my first post in this thread, I’ve enjoyed immediate success in teaching relatively advanced (piano) concepts to young folk with the same. If that’s “strange and limiting,” then so be it.

#22

Different people, different ways )

Though I can’t get rid of a thought that you are actually talking about abstract theory, which obviously can be applied to anything.
May I ask you - what piano-specific stuff was useful for you on a guitar? For me it was sound: running arpeggios and chords voicings in a piano-like way. Though it has more to do with listening than playing.

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#23

I certainly speak of abstraction away from the particular instruments (guitar/voice/keys), but it’s definitely applied theory.

The second “FordScales” approach treats scales uniformly, linearly, 6nps chromatically, across the fretboard. It introduces limitation and granularity in ways inspired by piano playing. My first instrument was classical guitar, and Segovia scale patterns and Holdsworthian moves factor in big as well. The system basically answers the Berklee positions I came up on. My jazz mentor is a world class pianist, so there’s inspiration in there from him too.

Judging by lack of interest, not sure how well
it translates into textual presentation, but for what it’s worth, I shared a lot about the approach in this forum, here… FordScales - What the heck is "FordScales?"

But, the original post was about piano chord voicings. Did FordScales cause me to make a simple observation about piano playing? It seems likely. It’s all chicken and egg at this point though.

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#24

Ah, your first was a guitar…

Anyway, finding inspiration in different instruments is a great thing. I noticed that I tend to build triads on an overdriven guitar based on old orchestration lessons ) As for melodic parts - seems like I have something from violin and trumpet (Chet Baker made me fall in love with this instrument… wish I could play it)

I’ll definetely check FordScales, thanks for the link.

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#25

Thanks @ASTN, perhaps something in it will be of use to you.

I get a lot of joy out of playing individual parts in orchestral mockups these days. That, and with the morning singing/ear-training practice, thus orchestration’s been on my mind a lot.

(Where I mention Segovia above, I should say that Bobby Ferrazza at Oberlin College was the other big diagonal scale influence. But anyhow, not so important to the points made.)

When I learned about Drop 2 voicings from Bret Willmott’s “Complete Book of…” a light went on for me. The realization that the ultra common root position maj7, R-5-7-3, bore a close relationship to the very Holdsworthian sounding inversion of the same, 3-7-R-5, was mind blowing for me. I’ve probably tried to reconcile the sounds I hear on piano with the way voicings lay on the guitar for many years since.

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