Chord Symbol
A chord symbol is the letter name printed above the staff — C, Am, G7 — naming the harmony so you can play it your own way rather than note for note.
It is a different kind of instruction from notation: the staff says exactly what to play, a chord symbol says what will fit. Lead sheets and songbooks use them because an accompaniment is a choice, not a transcription.
How To Spot Chord Symbol
Capital letters above the top staff, often with small suffixes: m for minor, 7 for a dominant seventh, maj7, sus4.
Find It In Thirty Seconds
Find a chord symbol, play the chord in the right hand and its root in the left, and keep time with the melody. That is an accompaniment, and it is a genuinely useful two-minute skill.
Open any piece of sheet music on this site and do it now. Reading is a recognition skill, and recognition is built by finding things, not by reading about them.
Related Topics...
How to Read Sheet Music: Learn how to read sheet music using interactive lessons from Chordzy. Or browse our various reading music topics.
Music Notation Glossary: Every symbol on a page of piano music, explained in one sentence each — clefs, note values, rests, accidentals, dynamics and repeat marks.
Dynamics: Dynamics are the letters under the staff telling you how loud to play: p is soft, f is loud, and mp and mf are the moderate versions of each.
Staff: The staff is the set of five horizontal lines that piano music is written on. A note's vertical position on those lines and the spaces between them tells you w…