Nathaniel School of Music

Slash Chords on Piano: Add Rich Colour With One Bass-Note Trick

A slash chord is a familiar triad played over a different bass note, and on piano you can enrich a progression like D–Bm–Em–A by keeping the bass note and playing the triad built a fifth above it, which brings out 7ths and 9ths automatically.

Video lesson by Jason Zac · Intermediate · 11 min

Can't see the video? Watch it on YouTube.

Key points

This lesson is part four of Jason Zac's series on making an ordinary pop chord progression sound more colourful. It is for pianists who already know their major and minor triads and want a simple way to reach rich, jazzy sounds without learning long chord names.

What is a slash chord?

A slash chord is simply a triad you already know, played over a different bass note. You see it written as C/D or A/G: the letter before the slash is the triad in your right hand, and the letter after it is the bass note in your left hand. Because the bass and the triad no longer match, tensions such as 9ths, 11ths and 13ths come out on their own. Jason Zac also uses this idea to make sense of complex jazz chords: instead of reading a long list of extensions, you can often think of the chord as a triad over a bass note.

The progression: I vi ii V in D major

The lesson uses the same progression as the rest of the series: D major, B minor, E minor, A major (I, vi, ii, V). The left hand keeps playing the usual bass notes; only the right-hand triad changes.

The fifth-above trick

The dominant chord

The A chord is the dominant, the chord that leads back home to D. The fifth-above rule would give E minor over A, but a nicer choice here is a G major triad (G B D) over an A bass, which gives a suspended dominant sound. For something even more exciting, you can try a triad from outside the scale, such as C major over the A bass. It is not in D major, yet it works in context.

Adding movement

Once the shapes are comfortable, experiment with different inversions of the right-hand triad, roll the chord up and down the keyboard with the sustain pedal down, or arpeggiate it.

Two ways to use slash chords

  1. To sound more sophisticated: replace plain triads with slash voicings, as above. Jason Zac demonstrates a jazzier version of Let It Be by the Beatles using this approach.
  2. As passing chords: play the IV chord over the I bass, then resolve to I. For D major, find the fourth (D E F# G), play G major over a D bass, then move to plain D. The same move works for other chords: D over an A bass resolves to A, because D is the fourth of A. This means two chords in a bar where you previously had one. It can even produce a triad with a note outside the key, such as C natural instead of C#, and it still works because of the passing function.

Artists such as Elton John and Billy Joel, and progressive bands like Dream Theater, Rush and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, use these sounds a lot.

How to practise

Questions about this lesson

What does a chord symbol like C/D mean on piano?

It means play a C major triad in the right hand with D as the bass note in the left hand. The letter before the slash is the triad and the letter after it is the bass.

How do I make a D major chord sound richer with a slash chord?

Keep D in the bass and play an A major triad (A C# E) on top. That adds the 5th, major 7th and 9th over D for a lush, jazzy sound.

What is a passing slash chord?

It is the IV chord played over the I chord's bass note, which then resolves to the I chord. In D major, that is G major over a D bass moving to D major.

Why does a chord with a note outside the key still work?

When it is used as a short passing chord resolving onto the main chord, the movement makes the outside note sound intentional. The lesson shows a C major triad working in D major for this reason.

Practise it

Related lessons