Every Player Needs To Learn The Diatonic Chords of A Key (Easy Theory)

Learning the diatonic chords of of the major and minor keys is a MUST for every musician, the chords made from the notes in the major scale and the minor scale. It helps you learn what chords will sounds good together, which chords are commonly used together in songs and get familiar with recognising and memorising them. It's a foundation you need to learn first before expanding into different kinds of chords progressions in the future. We also need this to help train to work out songs by ear!

Get you Chords of the Key PDF Worksheet here

Other PDF Guides available
(All 12 Major Scales, All 12 Minor Scales, How To Build Common Chords + More)

Learn to hear chords in a key by ear with Chord Crush, an interactive web app! 🎹

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More In depth Chord Building Guide

How to find all your basic triads (Maj, Min, Dim, Aug, Sus2 sus4)

Major & Minor Chord Finding Guided Practice (Playlist)

How to Build the natural Minor Scale in ANY KEY

Relative Minor Scales Made Simple!

Half Steps & Whole Steps

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TIMESTAMPS/CHAPTER MARKERS

0:00 What are diatonic chords of the key?
1:41 Chords of C major, how it works
4:02 The Pattern for the chords of any major key
5:15 The PDF
5:38 Chords of F major
8:09 Using this knowledge
9:40 Chords of the Minor Key

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Thanks for watching!

[PianoFromScratch]

Learn to hear chords in a key by ear with Chord Crush, an interactive web app! 🎹

Also, not sure what happened but I must have slid my keyboard away whilst filming without realising which explains the weird angle!

[fksimpson]

I am a 69 year young piano newby. I love how you can take a seemingly overwhelming subject and break it down into bite size pieces that are easy to understand and remember. You always have AWESOME content in your videos. Keep teaching us the things we need to know to make a go at this huge 88 key behemoth. CHEARS! Thank you.

[keith]

This is literally some of the best teaching for beginners that I've seen in years on YouTube. Can't wait to sit at my piano soon!

[imagep]

It's amazing how it all fits together. I played trumpet when I was a kid. Four years. I just read from sheet music. Didn't even know what theory was.

Then I switched to guitar. I just played root fifth interval chords and minor scales for years (hard rock haha!). Then a friend of mine who was a local pro jazz bassist showed me theory.

Since then I've been studying and applying. But although I've known the major key pattern for 20 years, I only just learned the minor key pattern today. Isn't that crazy? I also only recently started learning every single note on my guitar neck.


I'd recommend for anyone just starting as a musician to please be nice to yourself and learn theory. Learn as much as you can, because no matter what kind of music you play it will help you. Thanks for another great lesson! ❤

[miguelmunoz]

No doubt one of the best explanatory videos about chords for beginners. I wish I had seen such a good and clear explanation like this many years ago. You have a special talent to explain and communicate concepts like these. Many thanks for sharing !!

[rasuchiang]

U are the best I have found on utube who explain so clearly for us beginners to learn. Thank u so much. 👍😍😍

[TuneStunnaMusic]

Play-one-skip-one is the switch for my brain that makes it so obvious how to find these chords!

[lawrencetaylor]

For old time's sake, I came back to watch this for the third time.
I've seen hundreds of videos on piano and your explanation of chords is the best I've seen on the internet. I saw that I had found your channel after 2 weeks, and saw this first. Right after I saw the video for chords and I felt much more accomplished. I had to change bank cards recently but I'll slip some money into your tip jar since I can't thank you enough for making the piano such a joy to play.

[dawnesmith-sliming]

Thank was really helpful. I love that you also used a key with a black key in it to illustrate the theory. Everyone teaches on C major, and I know they have their reasons, but it’s good for this beginner to see how the theory works with more complicated key signatures. Thank you.

[lawrencetaylor]

I promised you 3 months ago that I'd be back and I kept my word. You really have a great way of teaching.

[kimberly]

😲 Mind blown 🤯 That makes so much sense! It’s like everything just came together in my head watching this. Thank you so much! 😃

[greatdwimp]

I've been using many online sources and you and Josef sykora are very helpful organized and on point with each lesson. I feel I've been improving in my first month pretty well.

[tinmya]

I just purchased the PDF for this lesson and printed the 11 pages. Was also sent an email with link to download in case I need to reprint. VERY easy and smooth process to order and print out. Thank you so much!!!! 🙏

[karkar]

He asked at the end “I hope this was helpful” and I immediately said out loud “ This was BEYOND helpful!” Seriously. I’ve only been playing piano a year and I’ve never been able to understand this until now. Thanks

[RockLobster]

That was SUPERB - will be watching all of your lessons now. You’re a good teacher.

[geoffreyhoney]

What a great simple way of learning chords in scales. Never taught this way. So simple. Very grateful for tips. Keep it up!!!

[adriankolsters]

Very well explained, and I agree once you know all the chords in the various keys, playing the piano becomes much easier, especially reading and playing from sheet music as you recognize chord patterns immediately instead of ploughing through individual notes. Good job.

[harshithaharidas]

I'm jus so wanting to learn to figure the chords out.. more power to you❤️

[n-spired]

Great content. Just get a video from you recommended and you caught me immediately. Good job

[tinmya]

This is the best explanation of diatonic chords I have seen. Thank you SO MUCH!!!🙏