Chord Finder - The Basic
Design of Discovering What Works in Your Music
Using a
chord finder is a pretty straightforward process, but taking the
time to familiarize yourself with its basic design will help you
identify and understand the chords that you need to study. So the
following is a sort of "walk-through" of a good one we found on the
World Wide Web.
The first thing that you should see is a
graphical representation of a piano keyboard. It doesn't have to be
fancy, but its representation should make the white keys easily
distinguishable from the black keys. This is important because not all
programs use audio. Most of them are visual tools and their
effectiveness depends on its ability to correctly display the keys of a
chord. Therefore it should use color or dots to distinguish the keys of
a chord from all the other keys on a piano.
The next thing that
you should see is a list of root keys and chord names. The root key is
the first key of a chord and it will influence the kind of chord (chord
name) that you want to play. There are 12 root keys that you can choose
from to create up to 600 different chords. You should also see a list of
chord names (up to 50 of them) somewhere near the list of root keys.
Selecting a root key won't do anything by itself. You'll need to select
a chord name in addition to a root key before you start to see any
action. This is because the root key influences the keys of a chord.
Now once you make your selections, you should see a display of the keys
of the chord. Depending on the program itself, the display may be
colorful, dotted, or even plain text. If the display is plain text, the
program will display the name of the selected chord's keys, like " C,
Eb, G" for example. That combination simply means that playing the "C",
"E flat", and "F" keys plays the "C Minor" chord. If the program is
audio-enabled, you will hear what the chord should sound like when it's
played on the piano.
A major benefit of using an
in-depth chord finder is that it greatly reduces the strain in
locating the correct keys of a chord. It also addresses the numerous
chords that are available in an easy to user interface. Without such a
tool, you would have to flip back and forth through a music book, which
may not even list all the available chords. With a chord finder however,
you never need to worry about where the keys of a chord are is because
they're readily identified with a few clicks of the mouse.
Understanding the ease of this tool now, you can perhaps see why they're
so highly recommended. And your use of one could be the tie-in between a
speedy lesson and beautiful music -- playable within hours instead of
days.
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