Creating Complete Musicians
In the Let's Play Music method, we begin our piano playing by learning the primary chords. Musicians know these as the I, IV and V chords. But in Let's Play Music, we color code them and call them Red, Blue and Yellow chords. We start from the very beginning teaching our students to hear, recognize by ear, sing and play chords for several reasons. The overarching reason is that our goal for our students is total musicianship, and a total, complete musician will be able to use chords and chord theory to improvise, transpose, and compose music. Starting early with chords trains our students' ears, hands, and eyes to hear, play and recognize chord notation until chords become second nature. Chords are the building blocks of music, and having both the theory knowledge and a developed ear gives students an innate sense of how each chord functions, and how they come together to create beautiful music.
Starting Out: Training Ears and Eyes
Before we even touch the keyboards, we spend a year with 4- and 5-year-old students (our "first years") training their ears to hear these chords, recognize which chord sounds right with a given melody, and notice patterns and chord progressions. We play chords on the autoharp while reading color-coded chord maps, and we sing broken chords using solfege ("do-re-mi" syllables) learning to recognize the three "pieces" that make up each chord. At the Keyboard: Training Fingers
Have you noticed that we love to come at chords from every angle? As we begin our second year of Let's Play Music, we take our chord knowledge to the keyboards, and begin by learning to play the "Red Chord" (C Major chord) on the piano. We learn to recognize the notation, and to use correct fingering to play the notes. We learn how to make that chord minor by changing the middle note - now we can play Halloween songs! Then we add the Yellow Chord, and then the Blue - we learn to recognize chord notation whether it's "stacked up" in block form or broken in pieces.We continue to discuss the three pieces that make up each chord so that we can recognize each chord no matter which of its "pieces" is on top or bottom. But during the second year, we use the regular cadence positions for each chord and talk about chords in terms of "shape" a lot too: "snowman shape" for the root-position Red Chord C-E-G; "top-heavy" shape for the Blue Chord C-F-A (3rd on top, 4th on bottom); and "bottom heavy" shape for the Yellow Chord B-D-G (3rd on bottom, 4th on top).
At Home: Helping Chord Theory Stick
It's perfectly okay that some of these concepts may take a little longer to sink in. That is why repetition is so important. Using this same language at home and asking leading questions will help your children know what to look for when identifying chords. "What note is on bottom of that chord? Is it a middle C or not?" "Does that chord have a 3rd on top or a 3rd on bottom? Is it top-heavy or bottom-heavy?" "Both intervals are 3rds? So the whole thing is stacked up nice and neat in snowman shape? So what color is it then?" Lots of leading questions will help you to know what they know, and help them to cement the concepts they are still learning.
Knowing Chords = Knowing Music
Once your child has learned just three primary chords, suddenly the possibilities of songs they can play has become endless! Did you know that 90% of the music we hear and listen to is made up of these three chords? By playing a chord accompaniment and singing along with a melody, we are creating music that sounds much fuller than just a one-note melody line. Plus, once we learn to play chords with our left hand (also during the second year) we are already able to play a melody with a chord accompaniment AND sing along! Not bad for just a few months of piano instruction! However, their real ability and total musicianship goes much deeper than what you are seeing or hearing on the surface!
In the third year of Let's Play Music, we add to our chord knowledge by learning F Major, G Major, C minor and A minor cadence chords. We teach our students (now about 7 years old) to distinguish between root position and inverted chords, to find the root of a given chord, to take a given chord through all its inversions, to name all the triads in the key of C, and other chord theory. We also teach students in both second and third years to play and improvise "stylized" chords: marching chords, broken chords, even "calypso style" rhythmic broken chords. We are giving them all the tools they need to improvise, compose and create anything they want to musically! This - the ability to take music in any direction, to create with it, use it at will, really own it - is the essence of why we sue a chord approach in Let's Play Music, and why it works to create total musicians!
For more resources on chords, check out these Making Musicians posts:
Learning Chords: Fingering and Muscle Memory
Block, Broken, Marching: Love those Chords!
