Worship piano: the ultimate guide for beginners

If you’re anything like me, then you probably consider music to be one of the most amazing gifts from God. As a kid, I wasn’t always excited about attending the Sunday service, but I remember that the time of praise and worship was my favorite part of the service, and that’s also where my desire to learn worship piano was born. When looking back on my life, music has played a significant role in my walk with Christ, since it can impact us on a deeper than merely an intellectual level. Music can directly reach our hearts, and that’s why I think music is so powerful and worth learning and exploring.

Since music can be such a powerful tool used widely in a Christian’s life, I hope this article will help you learn how to start playing your very first worship songs on the piano.

This article is supposed to be comprehensive. So if you are brand new to piano and music theory, I would recommend taking your time while reading through the theoretical parts. Understanding the different concepts will help you later in your musical development.

In case you are familiar with any of the following topics, feel free to skip to the part you’re interested in.

Table of contents

1. The two common approaches of learning worship piano
2. Learning the piano keys
3. Understanding the major key and major scale
4. Basic chords & chord progressions
5. Playing worship songs using lyric sheets with chords
6. Learning your first song

1. The two common approaches of learning worship piano

There are many ways you can go about learning the piano. The most common one is learning how to read sheet music, which requires an understanding of notation in the bass and treble clef.
While being able to read notes is undoubtedly valuable, it can be a rather slow and lengthy process.

Another approach you can take is to learn how to play different chords on the keyboard and play songs using lyric sheets with chords. Since I find this approach a much easier, faster, and more enjoyable way of learning to play the piano, this is the method I’m going to explain in this article.

2. Learning the piano keys

One of the most important things to learn before you start playing the piano is knowing how to identify notes on the piano keyboard. 

Most standard pianos have 88 keys. In case you have a keyboard or digital piano with less than that, you can read about the pros and cons of smaller keyboards in my other article here.

Even though 88 keys may seem like a lot to remember, there are, in fact, just 12 different keys. As you can see on the piano keyboard diagram below. These 12 notes repeat throughout the rest of the keyboard.

As you can see from the diagram, there are white keys and black keys.

White keys on the piano represent notes A, B, C, D, E, F, G – simple right? Since they correspond to the letters of the alphabet, remembering them should be a breeze.

Black keys on the piano are called either sharps (#) or flats (b) of its neighboring white keys. Therefore they have not one but two names, the first one being G# or Ab, second A# or Bb, third C# or Db, fourth D# or Eb, and the fifth F# or Gb.  Sharps occur when you move up the keyboard, while flats occur as you move down. That’s it!

3. Understanding the major key and major scale

Now that you know where to find different notes on a piano, it’s also important to know what is a major key. To put it simply, it is a set of notes that sound well/harmoniously together. In total, we have 12 different major keys, which means there are as many major keys as there are different notes in music.

Major keys vs. major scales:

Similar to major keys are major scales. Regarding the notes they contain, they are the same. Nevertheless, both terms describe different aspects of musical theory.

Every major key and major scale consists of 7 notes. The first note of the key is called the tonic, which determines the name of the key or scale. For example, if we have a key or a scale starting with the tonic note G, it is called the G major key. All notes of the G major key are G, A, B, C, D, E, and F♯. 

Generally speaking, a major key is more of an overarching term, which indicates the set of notes a song or musical piece will be built around. For example, if a song is in a key of G major, it means that the chords and melody will be written based on the notes we find in this key – G, A, B, C, D, E, and F♯.

A scale is a sequence of notes written or played from the lowest to the highest pitch. For example, G major scale is simply the sequence of notes G, A, B, C, D, E, and F♯ written or played in an ascending or descending order.

“Both a lake and a river are bodies of water, but only river flows in a particular direction. The same is true for the major key and the major scale, both include the same notes, but only in the case of scale, they “flow” in a particular order.“

Learning notes of all 12 major keys

There are two most common ways to learn the notes of all 12 major keys. You can either memorize them or learn a simple formula on how to build scales which will also tell you the notes of a given key, since major scales and major keys share the same notes.

As I mentioned earlier, every major scale consists of 7 notes. The distance between each note of the scale is called an interval. The smallest interval we can play is called half step (H), which is simply the closest note to the one we are playing (either black or white). The second important interval to know in order to build a scale is a whole step (W), consisting of two half steps.

Now that you understand the two basic intervals. Here is a formula for creating major scales: W, W, H, W, W, W, H. As an example, I built a G major scale using the rule above, where I show how the formula works.

4. Basic chords & chord progressions

Now that you know the names of the notes on the keyboard and how to play scales, you need to understand one more piece of theory, and those are chords.
Chords happen when 3 or more notes are played simultaneously. The good news is that you don’t need to know a lot of chords in order to start playing many contemporary worship songs. Actually, you can start to play knowing just 4 simple chords.

For the purpose of this lesson, we will be using 3 note chords called triads (or triadic chords).

The 4 basic worship chords are:
Name of the chord (Symbol of the chord) – Notes of the chord
G major (G) – G-B-D
C major (C) – C-E-G
D major (D) – D-F#-A
E minor (Em) – E-G-B

Tip: When playing chords, make sure to use correct finger placement. For example, when playing G major chord, play the note G with the thumb, the note B with your middle finger, and D with your pinky. By doing so, you will minimize the tension in your hand, and start forming the right habits.

Chord progressions

As you may have already figured out a chord progression is nothing more than a sequence of 2 or more chords. Majority of worship songs are built around one or more different chord progressions, which generally tend to repeat throughout the song.

Building simple chords

Building a simple triadic chord isn’t too difficult, but it requires you to understand musical notes, intervals as well as chord formulas.
All chords are based on intervals called thirds, and there are 2 kinds of thirds:
Major third (3) – interval of 4 half steps (e.g., C -> E)
Minor third (b3) – interval of 3 half steps (e.g., E -> G)

In order to build a major chord, you need to stack a major third on top of a minor third.

In order to build a minor chord, you need to stack a minor third on top of a major third.