A chord sounds several pitches together. A triad has three different note names. Its root is the note it is built from. In root position, the root is the lowest note. C major uses C, E, G. Press those keys together with right-hand fingers 1, 3, 5.
A semitone is the distance to the very next key, black or white. C to C♯ is one; E to F is also one because no black key lies between them. A whole tone is two semitones. Count movements, not the starting key. C to E is four semitones, then E to G is three. A major triad uses 4 then 3; a minor triad uses 3 then 4.
C4 + E4 + G4, intervals 4 then 3 semitones
Selected event 1: C4 + E4 + G4 · 4 beats · Right-hand fingers 1, 3, 5
Stopped. Select a note with Next note, or play with sound.
Right hand · treble clef. Finger numbers: 1 thumb, 2 index, 3 middle, 4 ring, 5 little.
Tempo: 60 quarter-note beats per minute. The count-in lasts 4 beats. Durations in the selected-note readout use quarter-note units. Tempo changes and Reset stop playback and select the first note. Audio starts only on request, plays once, and stops when hidden or off-screen. The tones are synthesized pitch guides, not a piano recording. A short release gap separates notes. Next note advances to the next attack in either hand. Held notes stay highlighted. There is no moving cursor. Start at low device volume.
Use the two C-chord construction diagrams to separate three kinds of information. The letter names identify the notes, the physical keys determine the sounding pitches, and the distances between those keys determine the chord's construction. C, E, and G are three letters with one unused letter between each pair. That does not mean the two distances are equal. C to E crosses four semitone movements, whereas E to G crosses three. The white keys do not all have the same distance between their pitches.
Trace C to E on the keyboard picture before pressing a chord. Begin on C without counting it as a movement. Move to the black key between C and D for one, D for two, the black key between D and E for three, and E for four. Then start a new count on E. F is one movement, the black key between F and G is two, and G is three. The absence of a black key between E and F changes the count. Counting only white keys would miss that distinction.
Now trace C to the marked black key in the minor diagram. It takes three movements to reach E-flat. From E-flat to E is one, to F is two, to the black key between F and G is three, and to G is four. Both C chords span seven semitones between the outside notes. What changes is how that span divides at the middle note. This explains why checking only the lowest and highest pitches cannot distinguish these two triads.
A useful contrasting case is C, F, G. Those notes still occupy a seven-semitone outside span, but the lower gap is five semitones and the upper gap is two. It is not the C-major or C-minor triad shown here. Another case is C, E, A. Its first gap matches C major, but the outside note has changed. A chord test must check the whole collection rather than recognize one familiar gap. Find these keys silently beside the diagrams, then return to the printed C-major collection before adding sound.
E♭ and D♯ are two names for the same key on this keyboard. Their spelling depends on musical context. We call the middle note of C minor E♭ because the chord uses the letters C, E, G. A simple pitch readout may instead call that key D♯.
Major and minor chords sound different, but “happy” and “sad” are not dependable definitions. Tempo, register, rhythm, and musical context also affect what you hear. Identify the changed note before trying to attach a mood.
In the sound example's score, the three noteheads lie above one another. This means one coordinated beginning, not a rising melody that happens to use the same notes. Read the stack from low pitch to high pitch to identify its contents, but do not turn that reading order into a playing order. C4 is on its ledger line below the treble staff, E4 is on the bottom line, and G4 is on the next line. Together they show the same keys marked in the major construction diagram.
The chord's open noteheads without stems are whole notes. In this 4/4 example, all three pitches begin on beat 1 and occupy four beats. The separate noteheads describe separate pitches, not separate amounts of time to add together. Three simultaneous whole notes do not make a twelve-beat chord. Count one shared span of four beats. At the end of that span, release the keys. Continuing to count while holding helps distinguish a sustained chord from an attack followed by an unmeasured wait.
The numbers beside the chord identify the fingers for the corresponding noteheads. For C major, 1 belongs to C, 3 to E, and 5 to G. These are right-hand numbers. They are not a request to play finger 1 on beat 1, finger 3 on beat 3, and finger 5 later. The player readout lists the fingers together because the event contains three notes. With note names hidden, the staff positions and finger numbers remain available. Use that view to check whether you can read the stack rather than depend on its printed letters.
Before timing the chord, identify each intended key separately without retaining a wide held shape from another position. Then make one comfortable attempt at the three-note beginning. If one note is absent, inspect which key and finger were intended. If the notes arrive one after another, the pitch collection may be correct while its beginning differs from the written event. Do not solve that timing problem by striking harder. Return to silent placement and an unhurried common beginning. A text lesson cannot determine whether a particular hand shape suits your hand.
Both construction diagrams remain visible when you choose the sound example. That matters because the comparison is a change in one note, not a change in keyboard scale or picture size. Point to C and G in both diagrams first. They stay in exactly the same places. Then compare E with E-flat. The flat sign belongs to the written E and lowers it by one semitone. It does not lower C or G, and it does not tell you to move the entire hand left by one key.
The C-minor score writes its middle note at E's staff position with a flat beside it. Pitch height on the staff follows letter names, so E-flat still occupies E's line. The accidental supplies the alteration. This is why looking only at the vertical outline of the stack is insufficient here. The major and minor stacks have the same letter positions but different middle pitches. The flat sign is part of the pitch instruction, just as the clef is part of the instruction for naming the staff lines.
If you choose to listen, hear the major example once, then select minor and request its sound. Keep the comparison at the same tempo. Each is one four-beat chord, so rhythm does not explain their difference. Listen for the changed middle pitch rather than assign a mood to the entire sound. The synthesized tone gives a pitch comparison; it does not reproduce all the attack and decay qualities of your instrument. You can also make the comparison at your keyboard without using the audio player at all.
For a narrower listening experiment, play C4 followed by E4, then C4 followed by E-flat4. These are successive pairs for comparison, not extra written bars in the player. Keep the starting C unchanged. Next compare E4 to G4 with E-flat4 to G4. The lower gap becomes smaller while the upper becomes larger. If both pairs seem unchanged, check that you actually moved E to the black key immediately left of it. If your ear does not yet identify the quality, the keyboard count still establishes which chord you constructed.
Practice these right-hand root-position triads: C major, C4–E4–G4; A minor, A3–C4–E4; F major, F3–A3–C4; G major, G3–B3–D4. Use 1–3–5 for this exercise. Move the whole hand for each chord rather than stretching between positions. First locate each silently; then play once on beat 1 and hold through beat 4.
When moving from C major to A minor, C and E are shared pitches. You may re-finger them; a shared note does not force you to hold the same finger down. Later, inversions rearrange a chord's notes to reduce movement. We use root position first so the chord construction stays visible.
To accompany a melody before full chords are comfortable, play just the root with the left hand once per bar. A bass note suggests harmony without requiring three fingers to land together. The next lesson uses this simpler option.
The four keyboard pictures in the next practical task share one displayed range. Use that common range to see how far the root-position chords move. The C-major chord begins at C4, while A minor begins below it at A3. F major and G major also begin below C4. Do not interpret the separate pictures as four independent middle-C positions. Their note labels refer to the same keyboard, and their matching left and right limits let you compare actual locations.
Derive A minor from A3 rather than assume that three alternating white keys always form a major chord. From A3, move to the black key above A, then B3, then C4. That is three semitones. From C4 to E4 is four. A3, C4, E4 therefore fits the minor pattern. For F major, F3 to A3 is four semitones and A3 to C4 is three. For G major, G3 to B3 is four and B3 to D4 is three. The same construction rule works even when a gap crosses an octave label.
Compare the fingers on shared keys during the C-major to A-minor change. In C4, E4, G4, the thumb plays C and the middle finger plays E. In A3, C4, E4, the middle finger plays C and the little finger plays E. Thus C and E remain the same pitches, but their finger assignments change. You may release and relocate the hand between these practice chords. Holding shared keys with their old fingers would impose an extra coordination task that this root-position exercise does not require.
Before connecting all four chords, compare two neighboring pictures and name the coming lowest note. For A minor to F major, that note is F3. Locate F using the group of three black keys, then identify A3 and C4 above it. For F major to G major, the three target letters all move up one white-key position. That visual similarity does not remove the need to check B rather than B-flat in G major. The construction count, not a general white-key hand shape, determines whether the result is the intended triad.
The sequence's octave labels change at C, not at A. A3 to C4 rises only three semitones even though its numeral increases. G3 to B3 rises four semitones without a numeral change. Read the letters and octave numbers together. A changed octave number alone does not measure the size of a chord gap.
A chord change has a destination and a deadline. Finding the right three notes without a clock tests the destination. Beginning on the next bar's beat 1 tests the deadline. Those checks can fail separately. If the next chord is wrong even when you have unlimited preparation, counting more firmly will not locate it. Return to the labeled construction picture. If the correct chord appears after a long search, first reduce the search before trying to connect measured bars.
For a timing experiment, choose only F major and G major from the shared-range pictures. Find both without sound first. Then count four beats on F major and begin G major on the following 1. Keep saying beat 4 even if you release a little before the boundary to move. That release creates a short gap in sound, not an extra beat in the meter. Compare this with stopping the count after 4 and waiting until G is ready. The latter changes the timing even if both chords contain the correct notes.
Listen or inspect one question at a time. A missing middle note asks whether the chord contains all three pitches. A staggered beginning asks whether its pitches began together. An extra pause asks whether the next event arrived in time. A wrong chord asks whether its note collection matches the intended root and quality. These observations lead to different repairs. Repeating the entire four-chord sequence while trying to fix every aspect makes it difficult to identify what changed between attempts.
The final paragraph of the existing practical task proposes a simpler accompaniment, one left-hand root per bar. This removes the simultaneous three-note landing but preserves a planned low pitch for each harmony. It does not claim that one bass note fully specifies major or minor. C alone cannot distinguish C major from C minor because their roots agree. The melody and other musical context supply information that a lone root omits. Keep that limitation in mind when the next lesson replaces these right-hand triads with a melody above a moving bass route.
Which key changes when C major becomes C minor?
Keep the root and top note. Lower the middle note one semitone.
C–E–G becomes C–E♭–G. E♭ is the black key just left of E. The lower interval decreases from four to three semitones; the upper increases from three to four. Moving all three keys left would transpose the chord rather than change C major to C minor.
How many semitones are there from E to G? Use the keyboard rather than counting letter names.
Every move to an adjacent key counts once, including E to F.
E–F is one semitone, F–F♯ two, F♯–G three. E to G is a minor third of three semitones. There is no black key between E and F. A–C–E therefore has three semitones below the middle note and four above it, making A minor.
Which pitches are shared by C major and A minor in this exercise?
Compare note names, not finger numbers.
C major is C–E–G and A minor is A–C–E. C and E are shared; G is replaced by A. In the root-position voicings used here, the A is below C, so you move the hand left and change the fingers on C and E. Chord identity is about pitches, not a fixed hand shape.
MusicTheory.net lessons provide further explanations of notation, rhythm, and chords. Open Music Theory is a longer reference. The keyboard diagrams, exercises, and rock-style study here were made for these lessons. The Beethoven example uses a public-domain melody, transposed to C, not a modern published arrangement.
Robert Hutchinson's Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom provides optional explanations of staff notation. Its sections on meter, major-scale construction, inversions, and chord symbols support the corresponding theory explanations. These references do not assess physical technique or certify a playing level.
Casio CT-S300 product information is the reference for the likely instrument. The lessons do not depend on a particular button sequence, USB connection, or automatic accompaniment.