

The key is that those three notes, C, E, G, make up the chord. You can choose whether you strum all six strings or just the highest five. When you play the same chord on the guitar, the notes you are playing are, from low to high, E, C, E, G, C, E. The same is true of the guitar.Ĭ piano chord with notes C E G – On piano, when you play a C chord, you are playing the C note, E note, and G notes on the guitar. Notice that the octave (the 8th note) is also part of the chord.” The notes of a C major chord are the 1st (the root note), 3rd, and 5th notes, which are C (the root note), E and G. Try to think of each of the strings of your guitar as one of your fingers on the piano.į offers a description of how chords are made up: “The major chord contains the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of a major scale.

Playing guitar chords on piano is very similar in theory. If you’ve written a song for the guitar and want to be able to play it on the piano, or you want to turn a guitar song into a piano ballad, it doesn’t have to be too difficult.Įven some of the most iconic guitar riffs can translate on guitar… You can work out how to play guitar chords on piano. In this guide, we’re helping you to work out the differences. The way the strings interact on the guitar can make a couple of aspects of the piano quite difficult to get your head around, certainly when you are just starting out. Unfortunately, the way the two are played is quite different. This means that converting guitar chords on piano is definitely possible. There are some similarities in the world of guitar and the world of piano. John Lennon went from singing songs with his acoustic guitar to writing famous songs like Imagine sat in front of a piano. In rock and pop music, moving from playing the guitar to playing the piano is seen as something of an evolution. Have you ever been to one of those gigs where you see a musician switch from guitar to piano, and vice versa, with ease? Sometimes musicians even switch in the middle of a song. If you play guitar, it’s natural to want to move on to another instrument and keep things exciting. Just because a song is written for one instrument doesn’t mean that it can’t be played on another with ease.

Playing guitar chords on piano is totally possible.
