Start Playing Chords By Yourself

Hi Friends,


One of the things budding piano and keyboard/synthesizer players often ask that how can they start playing the chords by themselves i.e how they can figure out the chords of a particular song without anyones help. So I thought it would be better to publish a post listing out few things which might answer their queries.


Before plunging into the details, let me clarify that there is no hard and fast rule or formula which will enable you to figure out the chords straightaway. Music is all about passion, and it takes considerable practice and hardwork to attain greater levels. However, the good news is, if you are a true music lover, and have a good ear for music, its not that hard to learn the basics. Once you have learned the basics, you can build up on that knowledge with time.


We shall start now -


1. First things first, get yourself acquainted with the piano notes and try to memorize them. Please visit my chord tutorial pages  ( Basic Piano Tutorial, Basic Chords Tutorial - Part 1, Basic Chords Tutorial - Part 2 and Basic Chords Tutorial - Part 3 )  if you have not already done so. It is very important that you get familiar with the notes and their corresponding chords. With repeated practice, it will become your second nature, for instance, if we talk about the note F, then you should be immediately able to play the chords F major and F minor chords in the keyboard.


2. Dont jump into trying to figure out the chords as soon as you listen the song first time. Hearing a song time n again, in order imbibe it within yourself is equally important. As you listen the song, the brain parses the song internally, trying to identify patterns within it. It also tries to identify areas where the chords change ( it is not only important to identify which chords are used in the song, it is equally important to identify the areas where the chords have been used and at which syllable the change takes place ). As you gain experience, you will realize that much of the pattern of the song can be figured out simply by listening to it carefully few times.


3. Play along - Once you have imbibed the song within yourself, try playing the song ( not the chords)  in your piano or keyboard/synthesizer. Keep the song in a loop in your song player.You donot need to be accurate with the notes while you play, but just try to identify the notes used in the song. This will give you an overall feel of the song. You dont even need to play the whole song, just try to get the mukhra of the song while you play along. Once you are able to identify the notes used in the mukhra of the song, the rest of the task becomes relatively easy.

4. Having identified the notes in the mukhra of the song ( i.e the starting phrases of the song ), you now have the task of identifying the chord which will be used. If you had gone through the basic chord tutorial pages in my blog, you must have learned that each note has its corresponding major and minor chord. In case of major chords, the notes that will be used for a particular note  are as follows : The root note i.e the chord for the note which you want to play, the 4th reed counting from the root note and finally the 7th reed starting from the root note.As for
example, if we want to play C Major, the notes in use will be C (root note),E ( 4th reed counting from the root note ) and G ( 7th reed starting from the root note ).

In case of minor chords, the notes that will be used for a particular note are
as follows : The root note i.e the chord for the note which you want to play,
the 3rd reed counting from the root note and finally the 7th reed starting
from the root note.As for example, if we want to play C Minor, the notes in
use will be C (root note),D# ( 3rd reed counting
from the root note ) and G ( 7th reed starting from the root note ).

5. We will take a concrete example here: Consider the song "Ya Ali" from the movie gangster.
I found out while playing along, that the starting lines consists of the notes B,C,E,D,F#,A.
It goes like this Ya (B note) A-(C note) Li(E note). So simple observation will reveal that the starting line must constitute of a chord with these notes. The chord Em consists of the notes E, G and B.Play the chord while the first line of the song plays. Yes, it matches perfectly. To re-iterate, you must have good ears to play good music. Whether the chord you are playing matches with that of the song is purely your ability to match the two sounds based on your judgement. Of course that comes with experience.

6. If you cannot figure out which chord corresponds to the starting phrases of the song, try to figure out which note is being used the most in the starting few lines of the song. Try experimenting with all the chords which contains that particular note. Chances are that one of them will surely match.

7. Once you have figured out the starting chord, you can formulate very easily which other chords will be used in the song. In this case since Em is the starting chord, so definitely the chords D ( minus 1 note), chord C ( minus 2 notes), B ( minus 2.5 notes ),chord G( plus 1.5 notes) and Am ( plus 2.5 notes ) will be used.

8. Now again play along the song, the entire mukhra. Pick the points where the notes are changing, also try to figure out where the chords are changing in the actual song by listening carefully. The areas where you find that the chord have changed, find the corresponding note being played at that part of the song. Since you already have the list of chords which will be used in the song, by and large, it will be easy for you to identify the chord which is being played at that part of the song, by matching it with the note being used in that chord.

9. With a little bit of effort, you will soon be able to figure out the chords being used in the song. I will now post the chords for the song Ya Ali -

[Em]Ya Ali
Rehem Aa-[Am]-li
Ya Aa-[D]-li
Yaar [B]pay qurban hai sa-[Em]bhi
[Em]Ya Ali madad Aa-[Am]-li
Ya Aa-[D]li yeh me-[B]ri jaan yeh zinda-[D]gi

[D]Ishq pay haan
Mita [C]du Luta [Am]du mai apni khu-[G]di
Yaar pay [D]haan
Luta [C]du mita [Am]du mai yeh has-[B]-ti

I leave the rest of the song as an exercise for you.