How to Play a C Major Chord On The Piano

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We're going to learn our very three first chords in the next three lessons. It's not a coincidence that I chose to teach you these three chords (C major, F major and G major) for they are very strongly related. We're going to discuss their relationship in the future.

For now let's start our lesson with realizing what a chord is.

Chord is a combination of at least three notes.

Each combination creates an impression of a mood.

The first chord we're going to learn is a C major chord.

A C chord is built out of three white keys.
Let's have a look at the white keys of the piano in order to form a C major chord.
I'm talking about the keys C-D-E-F-G.

Place your right hands' thumb on middle C.
Now skip one white key (and a finger) and press on E with your third finger, skip one white key (and a finger) again and then press on G with your fifth finger.

The combination of these three notes gives us a chord called "C major" (C-E-G). These major chords are often interpreted as happy chords or optimistic chord if you'd like (Yet some sad pieces start with a major chord). Listen to the sound of it. Do you feel the joy? :) The sound is open.

So in order to find the chord we took C as our basic note or let's call it the BASS from now on and we chose two more notes from the white keys.

What's "Major" in C Major?

Well, this brings us to the theoretical level.
The distance between the first note of the chord and the third note (C and E) is 2 tones.
This interval is called a Major Third (If you haven't followed the musical interval lesson I suggest you click here so you'll know what I'm talking about).

The C major chord is named after that important interval which defines him as a Major Chord. The distance between the second note of the chord and third note (E and G) is 1 and a half tone which is an interval of a Minor third.

The C major chord is named after that important interval which defines him as a Major Chord.
The distance between the second note of the chord and third note (E and G) is 1 and a half tone which is an interval of a Minor third.
To conclude, one can say that a C major chord is built out of a Major third and a Minor Third.

When we'd like state a major chord in chord symbols all we have to do is write the bass note with big letter.
C major would be written as a plain C for example. No other chord symbol is needed.

The C major chord is named after that important interval which defines him as a Major Chord. The distance between the second note of the chord and third note (E and G) is 1 and a half tone which is an interval of a Minor third.

Now I'm going to add here the C major chord in all possible chord inversions. We're going to talk about this in a few lesson but I wanted to add it here is well so we'll have this page complete when we get back here sometimes for a reminder. If this image doesn't make sense to you don't worry. We'll get to it later.

Question

O.k., so now that you know how a C major chord sounds like and how to form it in the theoretical level try to find the F major chord in the same way.

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