Hi I'm Scott Houston have you ever tried to play some non classical piano using
chord symbols
in come across some chord symbol that you might not know all the notes for?
Well in this quick video I'm gonna show you how to find the notes for
any chord symbol you might ever come across using this really handy
little chord finder tool.
Okay here's a situation you might find yourself in
You're trying to play through some non-classical tune probably using a type of
sheet music called a lead sheet. lead sheets are what I use to teach
in my programs and
those rely on using chord symbols rather than written out notes in the bass clef.
So it's very important then to figure out all the
notes in those chord symbols right
Well when you're starting out if you're a beginning student even if you've been
playing for a while
there's just a ton of chord symbols out there and you may sometimes come across
one you just don't know yet and you need to find the notes out for
well I 've got your answer and I can show you how to do that really simply
using this really tool I found. It is called a chord finder
it's almost like a little ruler if you will and I'm gonna show you exactly how
to use it. it's just a really handy little thing that you can leave right on
your piano
so that you never ever get stuck again when you come across a chord symbol
okay now first of all we gotta talk really quickly about the
yen and yang of a chord symbol. If I was going to joke about that but
just so we're straight on this a chord symbol can always be
separated into two things one is
the root— right? you got the root whatever the note name is at the
beginning. It'll say
F sharp or Eb or A or D or one of the note names right
it'll just have that and then after that comes
what I call the "flavor" of the chord which is major, minor
7th, augmented, diminished you know all these different
flavors of what the chords are so you need to be able to quickly look at
a chord
symbol and separate the root which is just the note name at the beginning
the letter name of it
and then whatever's after it which is either gonna say you know MAJ or min
or there's a lot of different kinda standards used but they are usually pretty clear.
but the only thing if you've never looked at these before I can tell you that are
kinda hard to figure out
because if you didn't know then you just would not know sometimes instead of saying
augmented or aug
they'll put a plus and sometimes instead of saying diminished or dim they will
put a little circle like a little degree sign so anyway
that's that's kinda info for different a video at some point.
assuming you can figure it out you got the root and you got the the chord
flavor coming after that's what you need to use to use this tool
so let's take a look. this thing is this shape first of all
it's three-sided right you got three different side you
can look at when you twist it.
well each one of those then has two different panels on it that read
one way or if you flip it over you can do the other so in total we have six different
panels
that we can use to find chords and that's handy because here's
what they tell you. right now I will flip it back this way
Here are the different chords you can find and it'll tell you right here in the end
of each panel what chord type this is so this is the
this is what you would use if you need to find out a major chord alright
and if you flip it once here's the side you would use if you need to figure out
a minor chord
okay we have a major minor there this sus chord, a suspended chord
that's that and then the other three sides will tell you
a seventh chord or a dominant seventh chord
they actually have two different ways that you'll typically see things
written so sometimes it is kinda handy and you'll see one or the other. But that says dominant
seventh if you can't see that cuz it's so small
So this what you'd use for a regular old seven chords then this is the one the
side you'd use for diminished
and then augmented. All right, so that's what we have going on
so here we go so the problem we're trying to come across Let me just pick an
easy one I'll pick a major chord so we can
do a simple one to begin with. Say we come across something like a
F major chord it just says the letter F or F maj chord
right so you know you're trying to figure out a F major chord
Well F is going to be the root and then major is the flavor that you're looking
for. That's the chord type for the chord family so here's how you do it you'd
find the major
panel which is right here. right, so make sure you get on the
right one
and then at the end of every one of these at the end you will see this thing that says root
with a couple little lines on it. all you do is just line those lines up with
whatever the root is, so in this case it was an F note. This one
right here , right we have
CDEF
right, that's it.
so there you have it so you just line it up and lay it right on your keyboard
sorry try to do this on a camera there we go, you just lay it right on there
so I have a root sitting right over the F and then wherever the blue
triangles are
on the panel, that's the note you need to play to play the chord.
so if you want to play an F chord there you have it, it's those three notes.
simple huh? it's pretty neat
now the beauty that is so if you just want the main the chord by itself but
the basic chord the root, in this case it's a 3 note chord.
you play the blue panels, but then if you got some they call extension or
and maybe and some sort of a variation of a chord maybe a
F major 7 see if you can see that something you can go ahead and I'll tell you all those too
this one says major seven right there
so you would add that so you have these three main ones and you add that to
to play the F major 7 and for sure that is the notes in an F major 7th chord.
so it's a pretty simple thing to do let's try another one.
Let's do a seventh chord of some variation. so first off
You find wherever it says seven there's major minors, sus
No, its not there. There it is -dominant 7th so there we go. So I have
got the right panel
now let's say we're gonna find a I don't know a Ab. let's find an Ab7
chord
so you know that the Ab was the root so you find the root here
and find your Ab note there's the root, and you line that up
you just put the stripes if you will where it says roots right over
whatever your root chord is and then you just use the blue triangles to point
out the notes that are in the chord
so that's it and Ab7
It would be these
and that is an Ab7 chord. So okay so that's how to use this thing and it
would work exactly the same way
whether you're doing a seventh chord or dominant or any others you just pick out
the root line it up over the root
whatever your root and let it just tell you what the other notes are in the
chord or any the extensions on the chord or
any the alterations on the chord. So that's it. this thing is a handy little
tool.
you can find it, I'll put up a link up on the video
where you can find these
chord wands
why didn't I think of that is just such a logical thing
and I think it's a lot easier just you leave this sitting at your piano
rather than some other big you know 120 page book which is some other things we sell
that are these
big giant books that have every chord
hat's what I want to tell you now you've got a really quick
solution a quick easy way if you wanna figure it out
pick up one of these chord finder devices and it'll be a really
fast way that you can never ever get stuck. It's kinda like having having a
dictionary sitting next to you if you're sitting down to write a novel
this case if he ever come across a chord you don't know this will get you unstuck and
tell you what the notes are
in that chord symbol. Have fun!
music playing
hi I'm Scott
Houston and I just forgot my name