Have you heard someone on the piano effortlessly play amazing sounding chords and wished you had their talent and skill?

Here is some fantastic news: Learning chords on the piano can be much easier than many people realize! 

There are two easy formulas that will help you learn how to play amazing sounding chords. Put a little practice into these two formulas, and you’ll be impressing your friends and family before you know it.

Are you ready to jump in? Let’s do this!

Chord Formulas 

The trick to playing great sounding chords?
→ Learn chord formulas.

It’s quicker and much easier to remember! Instead of memorizing all twelve major chords one at a time, you can learn the major chord formula and be playing all twelve major chords in no time. 

Then, learn the minor chord formula and that is another twelve right there! 

Major Chord Formula

Here’s the easy and quick formula for every single major chord:

So how do we use this? 

To play any major chord, we use the formula above. 

1) Start with the bottom note of the chord, which we call the “root note”. 

2) Add the second note: Go up four half steps* from the root. 

3) Finish it off: Go up another three half steps and add the third note.

*A half step is two notes that are as close together as possible on the piano. For example, C and C# are a half step apart. Ab and A are a half step apart. E and F are a half step apart.

Now, let's look at some examples of how to put this in practice! 

We created a free downloadable reference sheet with these two chord formulas, examples, and practice tips. Grab your copy here! 

Major Chord Examples: 

Let’s get a little practice applying this formula by finding a C major chord.

• First we start on the root note, C.
• Then we go up four half steps, which takes us to E.
• Then we finish our chord with another three half steps, which goes to G.

C major is C, E, and G.

(If you haven’t learned the note names on the piano yet, be sure to check out our simple three step process for learning them here.)

We can use this exact formula to find every major chord!

Let’s do one more example, D major.

• We start with the root note, D.
• Then go up four half steps to F#.
• Then we go up three more half steps to A.  

D major is D, F#, and A.

And that’s it! We use this formula to build every major chord. Not too bad, right?

Keep reading to quickly learn 12 more chords - minor chords!

Minor Chord Formula

Like major chords, we have a simple formula to build every minor chord.

(You might have noticed: This is the same as the major chord formula, just flipped.)

That’s all there is to it! Let’s put it to the test.

Minor Chord Examples: 

Let's play C Minor:

• First we start with the root, C.
• Then we go up three half steps to Eb.
• We finish with another four half steps to G.

C Minor is C, Eb, and G. 

Great work!  

Let’s look at one more example, D minor.

• First we start with the root note, D.
• Then we go up three half steps to F.  
• We finish with another four half steps to A.

D minor is D, F, and A. 

And there you have it! You can use these formulas to play any major or minor chord. 

Chord Guide Freebie: 

We have something that will make learning the major and minor chords even easier:
A free downloadable pdf with diagrams of every major and minor chord (AND a simple way to memorize them). Download it for free here!

Take it a step further!

Now your next step is to put this information to work. 

We know learning piano can feel challenging and overwhelming, so we made a beginner’s piano course where we show you exactly what and how to practice. We take out all the guesswork so you know exactly what to do.

We are currently offering our “Beginner’s Bundle” promotion which includes our flagship course, Piano Foundations, along with our Chord Bootcamp and Sheet Music Accelerator courses all for a greatly discounted price! 

We’d love to see you thrive on piano, and we know you can do it. We’re here to help and cheer you on. 

Click here to learn more about the discounted bundle and enroll today!