When choosing how to teach piano chording to kids there is one important thing to remember: keep it simple! Even your young beginners can start learning about chording on the piano as soon as they can recognize and play a 5th.
When teaching chording to young piano students, you can skip the long-winded theory explanations and the chord charts, and you can just delve right into the music, knowing that the theory and the understanding of major and minor and augmented and suspended and sevenths etc. will follow. Your first priority is to excite them with the potential of the piano.
Here’s a quick-start guide for how to teach piano chording to young students. With your “keep it simple” mandate in mind, follow these 4 steps and your piano kids will soon be chording like pros!
A Piano Chording “Quick-Start Guide”…
1. Begin with 5ths – Teach beginning chording using 5ths in instead of 3-note chords. This means your piano students don’t need to worry about major vs. minor and the accidentals that go along with this. Without the 3rd in the chord they’re free to practice moving around on the keys without having to think too much. Nothing sours a first chording experience like consistently forgetting the F# in a D chord. I introduce chording as a “both hands” activity. We get into playing a melody line with the RH later on, but first I like to have both hands involved in the chording process.
2. Choose your Keys Wisely – Avoid introducing chording that requires tricky hand positions (like a chord with Bb as the root). Look for music that contains chords where a white key is the root for all of them (avoid Bm if you can as that’s tricky too!). My young piano students right now are learning to chord along with P!nk’s “Try” which requires just Am, F, C and G for the entire song. It’s completely approachable with nothing to trip them up.
3. Leave the staff out of it – When teaching your piano students how to chord you’ll be asking them to move out of any sense of position on the piano. Because method books can often rely on position-based playing, this can be unnerving to some kids who are not used to moving around… so you’ll want to keep the process as simplified as possible. You don’t need to write the chords on a staff… use chord symbols on their page instead. Chording is often done from chord symbols or by ear in the “real world” anyway. You can find thousands of chord charts on sites like UltimateGuitar.com.
4. Scaffold your teaching – Much of how to teach piano chording to students should be done in stages. Students should first learn to move through a 4-chord progression using solid 5ths in both hands played at the same time. I use two quarter notes per chord to start them off with some sense of rhythmic pulse to their playing. Once they can easily do this, you can then change it up by using broken 5ths (so LH plays fingers 5-1 and RH plays 1-5 on each chord). You can get away with playing most of today’s pop music in this manner and not sound half-bad! 🙂
Once you’ve created this framework you can then add “extras” to your students’ chording abilities. These include adding the RH 3rd (for my young students I keep a 5th in the LH for quite a while as it sounds better with pop music anyway until they can comfortably reach an octave), changing the rhythm, playing the LH broken and the RH solid etc. etc. The sky is the limit – and that’s the great thing about chording!
Finally, the most important thing to remember is to give your piano students the motivation behind learning to chord. Playing chord symbols off the page is okay, but putting these into the context of a well-known song is really motivating. You can either teach them to chord along as they sing the melody, or you can teach them to play the right hand melody line while chording the left hand.
Introducing young piano students to chording eases the discomfort they may feel when playing “out of position”; it gives them freedom on the keyboard in more ways than one. Learning how to chord gives piano kids an applicable skill with life-long potential, it opens the door to improvisation and composing, and it creates confidence in accompanying and “jamming”. Plus… it’s just really fun!
Keep The Pop Sounds Flowing In Your Studio
Teaching chording to your teen beginners is one way to “hook” them on the piano immediately. But when you want to focus on note reading skills, our levelled books of rock repertoire for teen beginners is the resource that you need. Designed for teens in their first year of piano lessons, this book is set in the C Five-Finger Scale but the pieces are not like your typical beginner repertoire! 14 teacher duets round out the experience to leave your teen beginners smiling with pride! Find it here on Amazon.
Sarah says
Where do you find PInk songs that are easy enough for them to play? Great reminder about chord! sorry the question is about the other curious fact!
Andrea says
Hi Sarah – I find all of my chording songs on ultimate-guitar.com… guitar players get all the free stuff 😉 This provides me with the lyrics and the chord symbols (and it’s also transposable before you print so this helps with choosing a good key). For my kids who are learning to chord and sing this is all they need. If I’m wanting to turn it into a lead sheet then I just write out the RH melody line in my music notation program and use the same chord symbols. Most pop songs are easy enough for kids as they’re usually based on just 4 repeating chords.
Imani Hekima says
Hi Andrea,
Thanks for your blog – it popped up in my Facebook Memories today. Just wanted to ask you about the Pink tune. I wondered if you had to modify it rhythmically for your young students? Listening to the Pink song, the chords are slightly syncopated – would you, for example, arrange the chords so that there’s no syncopation, i.e for the sake of simplicity?
Andrea says
Often it’s helpful to teach these sorts of rhythm by ear. You may find this podcast with Jon Schmidt from The Piano Guys helpful where he discusses techniques for teaching pop music effectively: https://www.teachpianotoday.com/2013/11/18/piano-teaching-advice-direct-from-jon-schmidt-of-the-piano-guys/
Marilyn Brennan says
I wish you would tell me other “well known songs” students may know that have fairly simple chording. I do not know them. Sometimes students will want to play a song they know but when we go to get sheet music it is too complicated. I will use your suggestions. Thank you.
Corrie Anne says
You could try some of these: http://www.makingmusicfun.net/htm/mmf_guitar_sheet_music_index.htm
Heather says
Hi Marilyn…..I too would like some song ideas, but Christmas music is my favorite time to “add chords”. The music is so easy. I also use Christmas music to introduce “playing by ear”. That is where I ask all level of students to figure out as much of a Christmas tune “by ear” as they can……..and it’s not always Jingle Bells! This year I had a first year (age 6) student come in with It Came Upon a Midnight Clear! WOW! Then we finish melody together and then add chords (we learn by ear only, I don’t use the staff)…..then they perform “their” Carol at the Recital. Love the idea of only using 5ths……I use root only or the whole chord. Thanks!
Corrie Anne says
Interesting… I like the idea of starting with fifths!
Cameron Weckerley says
Me Too! 🙂
Maryn says
I do “chording” with all of my students as early as age 6 and no one ever complains! They love it, especially in an ear training setting. I do have one question, Andrea or Trevor: do you encourage the younger students to do chords in cadences for each song, or simply root position chords? Every now and then I have a student who can’t think of the F chord in 2nd inversion when chording and only wants to play root position F. Thanks!
Andrea says
Hi Maryn – when first introducing chording I don’t touch on inversions at all. We use only root position. I try to keep it as simple and approachable as possible for young piano students. All of the “fancies” can be added on once they’re comfortable with the first stage of learning to chord.
Alice says
Could you suggest other current popular songs with simple chording? I am overwhelmed with all that is out there in terms of popular music and don’t know where to start. (I also can’t figure out what artists appeal to what age.)
Andrea says
Hi Alice,
Happy to share! Right now the popular ones for kids doing chording and that have easy chords to teach are:
Ho Hey! by the Lumineers
Try by P!ink
I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift (transposed down to C+)
Baby Baby by Justin Bieber
Stay by Rhianna (transposed down to C+)
Firework by Katy Perry
Thousand Years by Christina Perri (has D+ chords so a bit harder)
Hey Soul Sister by Train
Wavin Flag by Knaan
That should get you started 🙂 When you are on ultimate-guitar.com you can search by song title. Choose the version that has the most ratings and that says “chords” beside (stay away from TAB!) 🙂
Miranda says
I know this is a question from a year ago, but just in case anyone else is wondering about this, I just ask my students what they like. I have them give me a list, I look up the chords to see if it will work for their level (usually on Ultimate Guitar!), and listen to it on Youtube if I’ve never heard the song. My kids love it! I’m glad you mentioned doing it with younger kids because I’m going to have to try that! A great website with songs for young kids is: http://www.songdrops.com/. I typically play these for my own babes, and they are all super easy chords! (I’m talking some songs only have 2 chords- C and G!)
Alice says
What are the top five songs from the ultimate-guitar site that you use in teaching chording?
Andrea says
Hi Alice,
I just pasted a list of the latest most popular chording songs under your first comment if you want to check back.
Christine says
Hi Everyone!
I love to teach chording to all my students, especially because you can teach the same song to student of all different levels and make it is a simple or as elaborate as you like! I have http://www.billboard.com/charts/pop-songs bookmarked in my web browser and I check it to find out what are the most current pop songs. I try and listen to pop or rock/alternative radio in the car….but I still love my classical station best 🙂 The billboard list saves me when I ask my students what their favorite tune is at the moment and they draw a blank.
Andrea says
Great tip Christine – yes, Billboard Top 40 is great resource. I also keep my eye on the top downloads on iTunes too to be really current on what my kids are listening to.
Cameron Weckerley says
“The Rose”
Betty Dean says
I love teaching the chord method…sort of doing it my way. I go through piano books and find songs that will accommodate chords. Sometime they jump out at me. Using the Adult method books helps too. I learned to play by a chord method about 60 years ago. My piano teacher wrote her on method and had it published. Wish I had access to it. She probably passed away many years ago. Her name was Mrs. Howard Miller and she lived and taught in New Philadelphia, OH.
Anita says
Great info. In the scaffolding section, what do you mean 5-1 in left and 1-5 in right? Are you talking fingering on root note or inversion (in C playing GC with left and CG in right?). Thank you!
Gianna Capelli says
My favorite “Today” songs to chord to play ALONG with the youtube tracks are as follow.
1) Best Day of My Life Only D & G Chord for the whole song…8 Beats for each and the same pattern throughout the whole song. You can teach the kids how to play the Guitar Solo. It is in the same key as the original.
2) Radioactive Bm, D, A, E. Two beats each… for the whole song.
3) Any 12 Bar Blues Songs! I have found great 12 bar blues in every key backing tracks on youtube that the students can play along with.
Tina Vernon says
Thanks you for all your neat ideas and suggestions!
Cody Myers says
Hi, how do you then later introduce the 3rd, and how to differentiate between minors and majors. Thanks!
Amazing article. Although I might be biased to say so, because I coincidentally seem to teach piano nearly the same as you do, based off what I just read. And it gave me confidents to see another teacher, especially one who seems more experienced, share similar ideologies as myself. Cheers!
Andrea says
Hi Cody – the third of the chord is something you can introduce once your students is really comfortable with chord changes. However, in pop music I seem to instead double the octave and keep the 5th and use that as a broken accompaniment in the LH often or simply double the octave for rock music. If you want to add some fullness to the sound you can use sus chords or you can often add the 2nd instead of the third for some neat sounds.