During one particular lesson before Christmas with one of my late elementary level piano students, we picked Silent Night (in C) to sing and harmonise it with primary chords.

Trying to make it as simple and intuitive as possible, I gave her a simple rule to work out what chord fits best for each phrase in the song, starting with an open 5th on C (C major chord without the 3rd), using the thumb and little finger in the right hand.

(She prefers playing chord accompaniment with both hands rather than playing a melody with chords).

Rule that I gave her was:

When you hear a chord needing to change, move either your little finger up a step or your thumb down a step, keeping the other finger where it is.

By the second attempt, she worked out which chord fits best with each phrase in the song.

She was very happy with the results. I was told by her dad later on, during the Christmas break when she came downstairs in the morning, she just sat down at the piano and sang Silent Night with the right chords, and filled the room with joy.  Hearing that was a lovely Christmas gift from her to me too. Listening to live music is always uplifting, however simple the tune is 🙂

When the new term started yesterday, she played/sang it (with a bit of vibrato!) again for me with much confidence. After that, we worked on adding the bass notes (although, we briefly did this before Christmas, she needed time to get really comfortable with the right hand chords first). Based on her basic knowledge on major and minor chords, I asked her to play the root note of each chord as a bass note for the left hand.  Surpriginly, she naturally used the 3rd (instead of the root) for some of the C major chords (similarly to the one used in Sea Birds she just finished learning from the Children’s Songs; I think she was reusing the idea there).

She managed to self-accompanied whilst singing the tune as follows:

Finally, I revealed these 3 major chords in a major key is called primary chords and are the base for many tunes that you know. Now, we’re going to find more tunes that work with primary chords and explore different ways of accompanying!

Happy harmonising!