How to Play Piano

Use your ears as much as your hands when learning to play piano.

Almost anyone can play the piano. Learning the keys, scales, techniques and fingering takes time, practice and patience. Just as learning how to read means learning words and their sounds, learning to play piano means learning how to read notes and what they sound like. Before you can read notes, you have to learn how the keys sound and how to find the high and low notes.

Difficulty:

Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Piano
• Music books
• Music teacher

Learn the Keyboard, Scales and the Sounds of the Keys

1. Look at the keyboard of the piano. Notice the white and black keys. Find the center of the keyboard. Play a note with your right hand. Listen to the pitch of the sound. Keep playing notes to the right and notice that the pitch gets higher the higher you go on the keyboard.

2. Do the same thing with your left hand. Listen to the pitch each key makes. Notice how deep the sounds get as you go farther down the keyboard. Place your hands back on the middle keys. Hit one key with a finger on your right hand and then a key with a finger on your left. Play with the keys--both black and white--to get familiar with the keyboard and to associate what you hear with your ears with what you play with your hands.

3. Look closely at the keyboard. Notice that there are two sets of keys that run the length of the keyboard. One is a set of three white keys and two black keys. The center of the piano is the center set of three white keys and two black. Put your thumb on the center white key. That is called Middle C. The next white key is D and the next is E. These letters repeat for these keys in this set throughout the keyboard. Piano keys are lettered from A through G only.

4. Look at the other set of keys, which consist of four white keys and three black keys. The first white key is F, then they run consecutively G, A and B. These letters repeat for these keys in this set throughout the keyboard.

5. Look at all of the keys and how their patterned on the keyboard. The C key is always before a black key, D is always in the middle of the two black keys and E is to the right of two black keys. F is always to the left of the three black keys, and G is found between the first and second black keys. This is how you learn the names of the notes.

6. Keep your hands slightly above the keyboard and your fingers curved when playing. Do not lay them flat or allow your wrists to drop. The position of your hands is important, as it allows you the freedom to reach the notes and is better form to prevent pain.

Listen to How the Keys Sound When Played

1. Use one finger and play the keys going up the piano and down the piano. Recognize the different sounds. Play a white note and then a black note and notice the different pitches. Find the Middle C key and play it and the other C keys with one finger all the way up and down the piano.

2. Learn the keyboard and the way the keys sound and know the names of the keys and where they are placed. This will allow you to play your first easy song. See if you can pick out notes to sound like a simple song. Start at Middle C and find a melody you know. CDE will start the song Three Blind Mice; find the other keys to play the rest. Listen carefully to the sound. For now, you can use one finger.

3. Find a teacher and take lessons if you have an interest in learning how to play the piano. If you do not have a piano, see if you can buy a good used one. A table keyboard with a full piano keyboard is less expensive to begin with and will allow you to start learning to read the notes that you are playing.

Tips & Warnings

• Be prepared to practice every day when you take piano lessons.

• A teacher will use a music book and will teach you to read the notes in the book and find them on the keyboard.

• Until you are prepared to be serious about playing the piano, buy an inexpensive full keyboard.

Resources

• Learn to Play the Piano