Many of us have seen that piano, collecting dust in the corner, and told ourselves we should learn the mysteries of its 88 keys. But it’s a daunting task to begin, isn’t it? I hope to ease your doubts and make it clear just how simple music can be to understand. Let’s begin!
All you will need is a working piano and some spare time.
Step 1: Intervals
Let’s begin with a foundational element of music: the interval. An interval is the musical term for two notes, and the relation between them. Some sound nice, some sound harsh or grinding. By varying these traits in music, you can create tension and release, which gives music its movement and interest. The most consonant, or pleasing, interval is the octave.
To play an octave interval, play any two notes with the same name (i.e. C and C, D and D, or F# and F#) simultaneously.
The octave is very important to music. The reason the notes have the same name is because they sound near identical to each other, since they harmonize so well. Octaves also measure each time the twelve notes repeat.
The closer the notes get to each other, the more dissonant, or grinding, they sound. Practice these intervals of C.
- C and C# (Half-Step/Minor Second. Very dissonant, wouldn’t you say?)
- C and D (Whole-Step/Major Second. A little better…this is the foundation of sustained chords.)
- C and D# (This is a Minor Third. This is the foundation of the minor chord.)
- C and E (This is a Major Third. This is the foundation of the major chord.)
- C and F (This is a Perfect Fourth. It is very consonant!)
- C and F# (This is a Tritone, so dissonant they used to be considered unholy.)
- C and G (This is a Perfect Fifth, also known as a power chord.)
What comes after a that, you might ask? Since the tritone is in the middle of the keyboard, anything past it functions as a reverse of the intervals you just played. C and G are the same distance as C and F, because G is now close to the C in the next octave. In other words, the octave C is now the Perfect Fourth of G, instead of the other way around.
This works for all other intervals. C and G# is a Major Third, C and A is a Minor Third, and so on.
Step 2: Strike a Chord
Next, let’s learn some chords! A chord is usually three notes (I’ll get into chords with more notes later). This is because we can only play three notes that are fairly consonant at a time. If we try to play more, it becomes dissonant, which can sound good, but we need to be careful with it.
Try playing a C major chord, which is C, E, and G.
C is the tonic note. It’s the note the chord is named after. It also sets the context for the other notes. E is a Major Third away from C, making it a major chord, which usually sounds happy. G is a perfect fifth, which finishes off the chord. The fifth is important in contextualizing the chord. Soon, I will explain what happens when you move the fifth.
Now try playing a C Minor chord, which is C, D#, and G.
Do you notice a more melancholic sound? Minor chords are different from major chords because they use a Minor Third, which is slightly more dissonant. Now try playing a minor chord with C as the third.
Play A, C, and E.
The same minor sound, right? This is A Minor. What would happen if we turned C Major (C, E, and G) and moved the fifth up to A? We’d have C, G, and A. This new context turns C Major into A Minor with one simple change. It doesn’t matter which order you play the notes in, only which intervals are between them. See, fifths are important!
Step 3: Masters of Dissonance
There are other sorts of chords we can play too. Try playing these main ones:
- Diminished Chords (Two minor thirds, such as C, D#, and F#.)
- Augmented Chords (Two major thirds, such as C, E, and G#.)
- Sustained Chords (Chords that use major seconds, such as a Sus4 C, F, and G, or a Sus2, like C, D, and G.)
- Seven Chords (Four notes, such as C, E, G, and B)
Diminished chords are very close together, giving them an uncomfortable, tense sound. In major keys, the seventh chord is diminished. In C Major, it’s Bdim, or B, D, and F. This tension can prepare you for a pleasing release onto a more consonant chord.
Augmented chords use only whole steps, giving them an ethereal, directionless, almost confused sound, like a question. This strange sound comes from the major third, but a tritone for the fifth. There are only two possible augmented keys, and in an augmented key, there are only two augmented chords, as every other chord is just an inversion of one or the other.
Sustained chords provide tension by placing notes closer to one another. A Sus2 brings the third down to a second, close to the tonic, and a Sus4 brings the third up to a fourth, close to the fifth. These chords usually want to resolve to their non-sustained versions—for example, Csus2 resolves nicely to Cmaj.
Seven chords use the seventh of the key, which is almost always a half or whole step from the tonic note. This dissonance, combined with an otherwise pleasant sound, can create a feeling of nostalgia. The band Coldplay is often teased for using seven chords to fuel their sentimental sound.
FAQ:
Q: Where are E# and B#?
A: They’re hiding in plain sight. E# is the note F. B# is the note C. F and C are both on white keys so that you can easily play the C major scale. The scale goes whole step, whole step, half step, whole, whole, whole, half. These half steps give music in almost all keys momentum, like a skip in their step. If you play only whole steps (C, D, E, F#, G#, A#) you get the augmented key, which sounds directionless and dreamlike, so much so that it is recognizable as being used in many movie and TV dream sequences. Although it may not seem intuitive, all of the keys on the piano are equally spaced tonally. If you play all of the white and black keys in sequence, each note moves up an even half-step.
Q: Why do we perceive certain notes as “consonant” or “dissonant”?
A: It’s all about math! Consonant notes are actually just evenly divisible. Because of how instruments are tuned, intervals like tritones have a hard-to-work-with long number that they divide by. Most of our ears can naturally hear when a tone is a third or two thirds of those pleasant octaves. This is how we can usually tell when something sounds out-of-key or flat. Even if we can’t pick out which note or by how much, which is difficult, most of us can tell if music or singing sounds dissonant.
Q: Do chords only work when played at the same time?
A: No! You can split up the notes to achieve a very similar effect. An arpeggio is when you play notes up, down, or up and down a chord in sequence. The Stranger Things theme song is a very simple Cmaj7 arpeggio. If you’re not familiar, listen to it. You can hear the notes go up and down the chord. Also, the same theory can be applied to melodies. Some melodies can be understood as being minor or major by which intervals they move between.