Understanding Music Theory Have you ever seen those letters up above the staff in your sheet music and wondered what they are? Those letters are chord symbols. Although guitar players use chord symbols all the time, for many piano students chords are a mysterious art. Some piano teachers never cover them at all (Some of my teachers I had while I was growing up ever did). But for folk, jazz, pop, highlife, hiplife Gospel and rock musicians, chords are the foundation of how they think about, play, and perform music. In this article I’ll tell you how to make piano chords, how to read chord symbols, and lots of ways to use chords to make your piano playing more amazing than ever. Part 1 – What Is a Chord? Most simply put, if you play more than one note at a time you’ve got a chord. So which notes do you play to make what chord? With eighty-eight keys on the piano, that makes an impossible number of combinations, right? Actually it’s simpler than that. The piano keyboard is made u...