Well there are some more chords than the basic major and minor chords, even when playing the simple triad piano chords. This lesson is to explain other chords that you may play on the piano for different types of songs. Of course playing major and minor triads are the foundation, but music can get pretty boring if this is all that you play. Playing chords with a little bit of a different construction adds some flavor to the music.
If you followed through with the fun little exercise from lesson two, you will have noticed something very odd when you played the B chord. While playing a triad chord using every other white key starting with the B note, something sounds different. You will have noticed that From B to D is a whole step and a half step and from D to F is a whole step and a half step!
This doesn’t follow the rules of being a major chord or a minor chord! So what kind of chord is this? Well as we said a major chord is when the root to the third note is two whole steps and from the third to the fifth is a whole and a half. We also said that a minor piano chord triad is a whole step and a half step from the root to the third and from the third to the fifth is two whole steps.
When you come across a chord where the root note to the third is a whole step and a half step and from the third note to the fifth note is also a whole step and a half step, this chord is known as a diminished chord.
When playing a chord progression, such as your triad chord exercise of playing chords all on the white keys, one chord naturally is a diminished chord.
However there are many other chord constructions that don’t occur naturally, but that are pretty neat. One triad chord that can be constructed, but that isn’t formed naturally from the diatonic major scale is the augmented chord.
So what is the augmented chord? How is it constructed? Well you might have guessed it is kind of the opposite of the diminished chord. Instead of having two whole and half step intervals from the root to third to fifth, it has two double whole step intervals. So if you were to play CEF#, rather than CEF you would be playing an augmented C chord.
C to E would be two whole steps and E to F# would also be two whole steps. However, because the augmented chord doesn’t exist naturally in the major scale, you have to break out of the C major scale and play one of the black keys to form the chord. Using the black keys is where things start getting a bit more difficult, but also more fun.
For fun try playing augmented and diminished chords in all keys, you will need to use the black keys for this exercise.