Add2 chords are very important for all levels of pianists. One of the main reasons why this chord is so important is because it adds the beautiful sounding '2nd note' into the major chord, to give it a very lush sound. We can play a Cadd2 piano chord as a block chord or we can arpeggiate the chord notes to create beautiful melodies & improvisations.
C ADD2 CHORD
Cadd2 piano chord - Basic theory
To construct a Cadd2 chord, we can use the C major scale and play the 1-2-3-5 notes or alternatively, if you prefer, you can start with a C major chord (i.e. 1-3-5 or C-E-G) and then just add the 2nd note of the major scale. For a Cadd2 piano chord, this means that we would add the D note so that we are playing C-D-E-G.
C MAJOR SCALE
C MAJOR CHORD
C ADD2 CHORD
Pro Tip 1 - Try playing around with the add2 inversions to give you a wider range of sounds Pro Tip 2 - You can arpeggiate the add2 notes to give you very nice sounding melody lines.
Play your chords in beautiful ways
When learning how to play add2 piano chords, you will notice that there are 4 notes to play i.e. C-D-E-G. And when we play 4-note chords, there are lots of different ways that we can 'voice' or play these chords on piano. For more information about this, we invite you to check out our chord voicings page or our Top 100 Chord Voicings page.
Once you have learnt a few different chords and you have learnt some beautiful chord voicings, it is normally a good idea to learn how to combine chords with chord progressions. At this point, we can now create very beautiful music, noting that we can also add in things like piano runs, chord fills & arpeggios to really bring everything to life.