The 48 Basic Piano Chords

Before we get into the actual details of building chords, let’s first get a good overview of how chords are laid out.

Lot’s of people know a few chords, but aren’t sure just how many chords they need to know to cover the basics in an average song. In other words, enough to get along.

Of course they would like to know how to play 9th chords and suspended 7th chords, as well as chords built on the church modes, such as Dorian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian and so on, but they could live without ever knowing those. They just want to know enough chords to get by in a playing situation.

There are only 12 major chords, 12 minor chords, 12 augmented chords, and 12 diminished chords.

That makes 48 chords. Each one can be turned upside down, otherwise known as inverted, 3 times. Root position, which is the name of the chord on the bottom. 1st Inversion is the name of the chord on the top, and 2nd Inversion is the name of the chord in the middle. Three times 48 is 144. These are the basic 12 dozens chords a person needs to know to get along.

Good news is that these 12 dozen chords can be learned much more quickly than most people assume. It shouldn’t take you less than an hour of concentrated practice to get somewhat of a handle on these 144 chords.

Once a person learns the 12 major chords, all there is to finding the minor and augmented chords is to move just one note from the major chord. All there is to finding the diminished chords is to move 2 notes from the major chord.

In the next lesson, we’ll cover all of the 12 major chords.