Basics of a Piano Chord

What is a chord exactly?
A chord is a set of two or more notes played at the same time. However, most chords (especially the ones we will deal with) are made up of three notes playing at the same time. This chord is called a triad. 

Example of a C chord

Doesn't this mean that are technically thousands of chords?
Why yes, but most of them don't sound too well. The ones that are typically played sound well. However, the chords we are focusing on this blog is the beginner chords. There are only 24 of them, so no need to worry about memorizing a bunch of chords.

Alright 24 chords. What exactly are they?
Don't get too hasty! If you're a beginner I urge you to learn them all properly. If you just want a refresher, I urge you to head over to the master chord list. With that said, the chords we are dealing with are split into two parts:

    Major Chords
These are the "happy" sounding chords. They consist of a root, major third, and perfect fifth. No worries, I will go more in-depth about basic chord theory in another post. The important part is that there are only 12 major chords we are dealing with:
A
A#/Bb
B
C
C#/Db
D
D#/Eb
E
F
F#/Gb
G
G#/Ab
Now if you notice, the chords follow the alphabet, all the way from A to G. After G, it resets to A. The "#" stands for sharp and the "b" stands for flat. They both represent the same chord but in different ways. I'll go more into this in another post.
    Minor Chords
Next are the minor chords. As you might have guessed, these chords sound a lot more "sad". They consist of a root, minor third, and perfect fifth. Do you notice the difference between major and minor chords? That's right: the major and minor third changed. What does this mean to you? It means that once you learn the Major chords, the minor chords can be picked up easily as they are the same thing (except for one little change). The final 12 chords are:
Am
A#m/Bbm
Bm
Cm
C#m/Dbm
Dm
D#m/Ebm
Em
Fm
F#m/Gbm
Gm
G#m/Abm
It's like before, except with an "m" in front of it. The m stands for minor.

Final Thoughts
I hope none of this sounded too complicated to you and make you not want to learn the chords for piano! I promise it isn't too complicated. I will explain all of this more in depth so you can clearly understand things. This is just an overview of what I'll be teaching you. Stay tuned.