If you are a beginner piano player – or more experienced with just a basic knowledge of how to play and use chords – you may wonder how your favourite musician goes about playing piano chords with both hands.
You may know a bit about the not so professional way of using chords on the piano – playing a melody in your right hand and then adding three or four note chords in the left hand.
Maybe you know how to play a few chords in the right hand – but don’t know what to do with your left hand.
Whatever your starting point is let me walk you through just a few approaches that will allow you to use both hands to play chords on the piano.
1. Full chord in your right hand – part of the chord in your left hand.
If you are a beginner and don’t know how to do chord inversions – this approach might appeal to you.
If you don’t know what chord inversions are, please read this article: “What are chord inversions used for”
It’s a fact that there is a limit to how low (how far left) on the piano keyboard you can play a simple 3 note chord. At some point – not that far down the keyboard – the chord starts to sound a bit messy and cluttered.
A simple way to avoid this cluttering is to leave out the middle note of your basic three note chord.
As an example let’s look at the C major three note chord. In it’s basic inversion (root inversion) it consists of the notes C – E – G.
Now – with your left hand – play the chord – but leave out the middle note – the E.
Play the note C with your 5th finger (pinkie) – and the note G with your 1st finger (thumb).
You will notice that you now are able to move the chord (left hand) down (to the left) at least one or two octaves and still have a nice and usable sound. This approach also brings in the nice deep bass notes to your chord playing.
All you have to do now is to play the full three note chord in your right hand. Place your right hand chords as close as possible to the middle C on the keyboard to get the “fattest” sound.
In your right hand – play the C major three note chord with your 1st finger on the middle C – your 3rd finger on E – and 5th finger on G.
Now play your two hands together. There you have it. You are playing the C major chord using both hands – and it sounds full and great.
To play a chord progression – a song – simply move through all the chords playing them i root position.
2. Chord inversions in right hand – part of chord in left hand
In this section I am going to elaborate a bit on how to play chords in the right hand – and chords without the middle note in the left hand.
To get the right sound for any chord – the right interpretation if you will – it is important that the lowest note you play on your piano keyboard (the bass note) is the root note.
The root note of a chord is the note on which you build the chord. The root note is also the note that gives name to the chord. EX: the root note of the C major chord is the note “C”.
This means that if you use an inversion of a chord in your right hand – which is great and perfectly all right – you still have to play the root inversion of the same chord in your left hand. This way you get the root note of the chord as the lowest note on the keyboard.
Let’s take an example:
Play the G major chord in your right hand. Use the 1st inversion of the chord. The notes are stacked like this: B – D – G.
If you were to play the same inversion in your left hand – leaving out the middle note – your bass note would be the note B.
But since you are aiming to play the G major chord – you should have the note G as the bottom note.
Therefore – play the root inversion of the G major chord in your left hand ( G – B – D) and leave out the middle note. This gives you the two notes G and D in your left hand.
Now you have the correct bass note for the chord – even if you play an inversion of the chord in your right hand.
3. Chord in right hand – double bass note in left hand
In my online piano course for beginners and more seasoned piano players “Piano in 3 Weeks” I teach a third approach to playing piano chords with both hands.
In the course I show you how to play chords in the right hand – and how and why you should use inversions. But I also recommend using a double bass note in your left hand (playing octave bass).
This approach opens up for a more groove way of playing chord piano. You get more options on how to make rhythmic interchange between the right hand and the two fingers playing bass notes in the left hand.
Basically this approach is even easier than the ones I’ve already walked you through.
You still play the chord in your right hand – this time choosing the best inversions for your chord progression.
In your left hand you play the root note – but this time you double it. Ex: in the C major chord you play a deep “C” with your 5th finger – and you also play the note “C” one octave higher with your 1st finger.
This position of your two left hand fingers opens up for more movement in your left hand. And this in turn opens up for more advanced rhythmic playing between your two hands.
Meaning: You will be able to play more interesting and complex rhythms on your piano – using just chords – and using both your left and right hand.
4. Playing larger chords – dividing the chord between right and left hand.
To round up the subject of playing piano chords with two hands – I’ll just touch upon how to divide larger chords between your two hands.
This stuff is for the more advanced piano player – but I just want to mention it anyway.
If you play piano in styles like jazz and bossanova you will typically use larger chords. Meaning that you will at least be playing 4 note chords – and often 5- and 6 note chords and beyond.
Just to give you a basic example of how to play a 4 note chord divided between your two hands – let’s look at the chord Cmaj7 (pronounced C major seven).
In root position this chord consists of these notes – stacked in this way: C – E – G – B
Now instead of playing the full chord in your right hand – just play two of the notes. And moving back to the very first approach mentioned in this article – play the basic 3 note chord without the middle note in the bass.
So – in your left hand play the notes C and G
And in your right hand play the rest of the chord notes – the E and the B.
This still gives you a total of all the 4 notes you need for the chord – and it gives you the correct bass note – AND it give you a nice open jazzy sound.
So – if you want to sound more jazz-like – go ahead and use this approach for songs that have a lot of 4 note chords.
Lastly – about this “jazz” approach – I want to mention that when you hear jazz pianists they very often play together with a bass player. Since they have a bass player to take care of the lowest note in the chord – the jazz piano players don’t have to worry about playing the bass note themselves. This gives them more freedom to mix up the notes of their chords anyway they feel like.
So – these were my words – intelligent or not – on how to use both hands to play piano chords.
If you are interested in learning more about how to play groovy piano using chords – I’d like to invite you to attend my webinar about my online course “Piano in 3 Weeks”
“Piano in 3 Weeks” will take you from being a total beginner – to being able to play your own version of just about any pop and rock song. You will learn how to find the best chord chart online – you will learn how to build and play any chord – you will learn how to create a groove with your right and left hand – and you will learn how to “Spice up” your version of the song with a wide array of musical tools.
Learning to play a groovy style of piano with chords is so much faster and easier than trying to learn sheet music. The chord skill can be learned in just weeks – hence the title of my course.
If you want to attend the webinar – simply sign up here. It is absolutely FREE – and I promise you will get some “aha” moments just attending this webinar.
Whether or not I’ll see you in a few moments in the webinar – I hope you found some usable knowledge in this article.
My mission is to help as many aspiring piano players as possible – I hope you found some help here.
Thanks for reading – see you back soon..
Niels
