Piano chords are the building blocks of music. They're also a shortcut to understanding overall music playing.
Once I understood the importance of piano chords, I started to dive in and play around with chord progressions. Chords progression is basically a group of piano chords played together in a different order. Its like a puzzle thats made up of various little pieces. Most songs are composed using different combinations of chord progressions.
Take a look at the following video and you can see how powerful piano chords and chord progressions are:
Now that you understand a little bit about the importance of piano chords, we need to find a more systematic tool to memorize and construct piano chords. A good formula I found to memorize major chords is the "4 and 3 semitones" formula. Lets say you like to know how to play C major chords, you can use the "4 and 3 semitones" formula to figure out the four semitone from the C notes is E, and the three semitone from E is G, thus C major chords consist of the C, E and G notes.
There are hundreds of piano chords available; you only need to understand a few categories: major chords, minor chords, diminished chords, augmented chords, color chords, extended chords and altered chords. You may be aware that major and minor chords are the primary chords used.
To learn more about piano chords and improvisational techniques, I recommend Learn to Play Piano & Improvisation in 7 Days course if you are a beginner.
