Guides › How to Accompany a Song on Piano Using a Chord Chart
Accompanying a song is the dream of many beginner pianists: playing for someone who sings, or singing yourself while you play. And it’s more within reach than you might think. You don’t need full sheet music: most pianists in pop, rock, folk or church bands play from a simple chord chart.
This guide follows the path of units 11 and 12 of the method: reading the chart, adding a bass line, placing the chords without jumping, choosing a rhythm, starting and ending the song, then transposing for the voice. All you need is a few chords under your fingers; if you don’t have them yet, start with the guide piano chords for beginners.
A chord chart reads like text, from left to right. Each box, between two bar lines, is a measure (or bar). In a song in 4/4, a chord alone in its box lasts all 4 beats; two chords in the same box share the measure, 2 beats each.
Tip: First exercise: take a chart, count “1, 2, 3, 4” out loud and play each chord on “1”, just once per measure. Until you can do that without stopping, don’t add anything else. Lesson 61 trains you on it.
Before playing, look at which chords keep coming back. A song mostly uses the chords built on the notes of its scale, and the pattern is the same in every major key: chords I, IV and V are major, chords ii, iii and vi are minor, and V often becomes V7.
The tonic, chord I, is home: often the first chord, almost always the last. A chart with G, C, D and Em? It’s in G major. Here are the chord families of the easiest keys on piano:
Tip: An unfamiliar chord in the chart? Build it by counting half steps (4 + 3 for major, 3 + 4 for minor), or look it up in the chord dictionary. The scales, like G major or A minor, show the notes of each key.
In a band, the bass almost always plays the root of the chord, on the first beat. When you accompany on your own, your left hand is the bass player: for G, it plays a G; for Am, an A. For a slash chord like C/E, it plays the note after the slash, here E.
Start with a whole note on the root, then build up, from simplest to liveliest:
Tip: Low bass, yes; low chords, no. At the bottom of the keyboard, three close notes sound like mud: give your left hand single notes, fifths and octaves, and keep the chords for the middle of the keyboard. All of this is practiced in lesson 63.
Your right hand plays the chords around middle C, or a little below when someone is singing. To keep it from jumping from one end of the keyboard to the other, choose each time the inversion closest to the previous chord. Two rules are enough:
Tip: These inversions aren’t written in the chart: you choose them. As long as your left hand plays the root, the chord keeps its name. Practice with lesson 65.
Keep the same four chords, change only the rhythm of your right hand… and you change the style. Five basic rhythms already cover a lot of songs:
Tip: Get each rhythm into your body: tap it on your thighs saying “boom-chick”, then play it on a single chord, and finally over the whole chart (lesson 64).
A song isn’t just a chart going round and round: you have to start it, end it and follow the person singing. The habits of experienced accompanists (lesson 66):
Tip: No singer around? Sing yourself, even quietly: you’ll feel right away whether your accompaniment supports the voice or drowns it out.
The key in the sheet music isn’t necessarily the one that suits the voice. To find the right one, have the singer try the highest note of the song, often in the chorus. Straining? Go down a whole step or two. Sounding muffled, way down low? Go up.
To transpose, think in scale degrees rather than chord names. C – G – Am – F is I – V – vi – IV. In D, I is D, V is A, vi is Bm and IV is G: the chart becomes D – A – Bm – G. Everything has moved up a whole step, and your right-hand fingering doesn’t change. That’s the idea behind the Nashville Number System, where studio musicians write charts in numbers so they can change key without rewriting anything.
Tip: Exercise: play | C | Am | F | G | (I – vi – IV – V), then the same chart in D, G and A, with lesson 72. The repertoire then has you accompany real hits, like Stand by Me or Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, for free, with just a Google account.