Piano Chords

❦ First Published on

Piano chords diagram designed by Simon Griffee, aka HyperTextHero.

While learning to play piano (or keyboard, or synthesizer) I couldn’t find chord diagrams that fit the way my mind learns music, which is finding the chords for songs I like and then playing them by ear. 1

So I sat down, stood up, did some research, and made this one.

Download it for personal use or buy a copy in various formats including posters, artboard prints, and notebook covers to have handy in the real world instead of on a screen.

Milton Glaser’s Baby Teeth was chosen as an abstract yet still readable typeface to encourage the right side of the brain.

The extra C is there because I find it helpful to see B by C and
E by F with no sharps/flats in between. Letter, or any kind of musical notation, is strange to me because, I think, it turns on the left side of my brain too much! 2

Piano Learning Resources

  • PianoChord.org · Online chords reference.
  • Piano Booster · Software that reads Musical Instrument Digital Interface files and takes input from the MIDI instrument connected to your computer displaying the musical notes as you play. Windows, Mac, Linux versions. Open source.

♫ Thanks to Matthew De Ver, Stefano Giaccio, Amber Paulen, and Michael Pirnot for their feedback on the piano chords poster design.

  1. This is like working on a personal project to learn something instead of practicing for its own sake. The song, that you chose because you like it, is the project, and you learn the chords to play the song. ¶ While studying the chords and listening you learn the notes in them and their relationships in time, leading to rhythm, melody, and harmony. ¶ When you can play the song, you’ve completed the project and can learn or write another one. ↩︎

  2. Everyone learns differently, and it’s reassuring to know that many excellent musicians don’t know how to read musical notation, or made up their own which fits their mind. Eventually you may want to learn, or invent your own, so you can read and play and write songs on paper, but this is not necessary to play music. ↩︎


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