How To Find The Chords Of A Key - Essential Music Theory || Piano Questions Answered

Being able to find the chords of a key - its diatonic chords, using the term in its broadest sense - is a really useful skill that makes lots of musical tasks, from transposing to composing to improvising, much easier. In this tutorial I look at the techniques you can use to work out the chords to any key, major or minor, and along the way cover some music theory essentials, including how to build scales from patterns of tones and semitones/steps and half steps and more.

If you're getting into improvisation, composition or just general playing - or you're studying music theory and you're trying to make sense of one of its most important concepts - this tutorial will help!

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[andreasmaier]

Hi Bill! I have watched this video basing on my question I did. You can't imagine how grateful I am for this explainations. This video has exactly anwered my question! Now I can go forward to work on 'Here comes Emily Brown'. Smile. So comments I read makes me suppose that this video has answered many questions so far for what no answer has been provided by so many Youtube-Piano-teachers. My very best thanks and very best regards from Germany! All my thumbs up for you!

[anotherdeadweirdo]

I have to point out that in almost 40 years not one person has explicitly explained the tone/step terminological divide. I’m very annoyed it was that simple but thank you very much for saying it. You also managed to explain more and do it more clearly in the first 15 minutes of this video than the TCU music professor The Great Courses hired for their theory course in like 3 whole lectures. Well done. Thank you.

[tombear]

This is one of the best piano tutorials on the internet! :)

[Omega]

Very helpful. Thank you for not sticking to just the C scale. Love your teaching methods.

[ahleempennyfeather]

Wow. It took me 5 times to watch this to understand. But my guy told me you were making sense. Thank you a lot. I always felt like I needed to know this. I teaching myself and your vid did help!!

[ArtRodent]

Great tutorial and excellent refresher, thanks Bill. A reminder that knowing it instantly is much better for real-time playing than having to think about it, even momentarily. The next level, 7ths, particularly minor 7th's and extensions is where I struggle to use the math when sat at the keys.

[SvenFx-]

What an amazing video, thank you. I’ve been teaching my self to play and self learning theory. I’ve watched many videos and reading many books, but they way you present the information just clicks with me. I’ve learned so much from this video

[blueeyedsoulman]

I was born in the US but my family ancestry is from Ipswitch, England. I always used both terms for tones/steps interchangeably. Never gave it much thought before. I also use the "U" in Colour and Labour and it drives my friends three sheets to the wind. Anyway, great lesson. Carry on gov'na, Cheers!

[WalkerTXRanger]

Thank You Much. It just took the first few minutes of your video saved my chord playing. I knew it was kinda easy but picked right after you mentioned the numerical numbers for the chords. I’m Subscribing for this video.

[BillHilton]

Remember to check out my books, How To Really Play The Piano, Seven Studies In Pop Piano and (for good measure!) An Introduction To Cocktail Piano. Links here:

[lawrencetaylor]

Merci for this. I'm just starting out, and I need to study chords more. I'll check out your other videos.

[brianag]

What an amazing video thank you so much! You’re an incredible teacher!

[juliangoncalves]

Bill, thank you so much for your classes! Super, super helpful for us the beginners. A big hug from argentina!

[silvenshadow]

Awesome video! One of the areas I really need to work on. Thanks!

[ffc]

Fantastic. I am a guitarist but now want to learn piano after watching this! Thanks

[TheFakeyCakeMaker]

This is a good video but it doesn't quite answer the question for me. I could work all this out from knowing the key but it would have been good to see how to look at or hear a piece of music and be able to work out what chords fit from the notes. This really helps if you know that but want to transpose. I still learnt a lot watching, I'll watch other videos as they may hold the answers I'm looking for. Thanks for the very clear explanations.

[igallery]

Great solid explanation to a good question, well worth the watch!

[RBmusic]

exactly what i was needing to know. Thank you for a great video thats straight to the point.

[realSTYLISHx]

So you can take any key on the piano (note) and apply these tones/semitones/Roman numerals of to fit… and it gives you a major/minor scale of that root note ?
Like it doesn’t have to be certain notes, you can literally apply these ideas to any note and build chords from there

[popoolakolapo]

Thanks for the video.Very useful and educative.