How to Play the Piano in Flash

Playing the piano.

Piano playing is a highly valuable and impressive skill, and it requires years of practice to reach a virtuoso level. But everyone should be able to approach a piano with some understanding of the instrument. The goal here is to introduce the piano to an ultra-beginner but, more important, quickly outline the most important things a player needs to know to begin. Piano players are only limited by their creativity and willingness to learn, so take the introduction and hit the ground running.

Things You'll Need

• Piano
• Piano bench
• Sheet music (semi-optional)
• Book on music theory

Instructions

Learn to Sit at the Piano

1. Sit at the piano, with your back straight and your feet on the floor, squarely under your body. Adjust the bench if it needs it--your elbows should fall comfortably at your sides and your upper arms should be relaxed. Place your fingers on the keys, putting your right thumb on middle-C. Middle-C is the common starting place for beginners--most beginning music books start with melodies where the hands don't move out of a middle-C position. If you don't know where middle-C is, don't panic. Just put your fingers anywhere. Higher notes are on your right side, lower notes on your left. Run your fingers along the keys to confirm this.

2. Second, your fingers should be curved on the keyboard, as though you were holding a ball in the palm of your hands. Touch the keys with only your fingertips; don't place them flat. Good pianists know you can't play quickly or with control with flat fingers.

3. Learn the keys. This sounds obvious but is one of the most important things--those 88 black-and-whites can look daunting when you don't know what they are. Look at one section on the piano, spanning from two black keys to three black keys and back to two black keys. Begin with the first note to the left of the pair of black keys: this is C. The keys are as follows: C, C#/Db, D, D#Eb, E, F, F#Gb, G, G#Ab, A, A#Bb, B and then C again. These 12 notes repeat up and down the entire keyboard and are the basics for all piano.

4. Don't be daunted. Looking at all of the keys together can make you wish they had been named, or at least numbered. Remember that everything repeats, and if you can't always know what note you're touching, at least be able to find out what note it is you're touching. Use C to orient yourself to the keyboard (the one to the left of the leftmost black key in the pair of black keys). Touch all the Cs (called playing octaves) to further orient yourself.

Knowing Your Hands, Playing the Music

1. Understand your finger numbers. In piano, each finger is numbered to help earn which should hit which key when. The thumbs on each hand are 1, pointer fingers 2, middle fingers 3, index fingers 4, and pinkie fingers are 5. When you begin playing piano, most exercises and songs will have you start out with 5 on the left hand and 1 on the right hand on the same note, often C. Place your hands and then try this: If you play "5-4-3-2-1" (pinkie-index-middle-pointer-thumb) on your left hand while playing "1-2-3-4-5" (thumb-pointer-middle-index-pinkie) on your right hand, they should sound the same. Experiment from here.

2. Play music. This is easiest for children and hardest for adults. Piano is an instrument of making mistakes, and you must begin to play and fail before ever becoming a good player. Try to play some simple songs without music. To be frank, you'll only get so far until the next two steps, which are the hardest steps to playing piano.

3. Learn to read music. Buy yourself a book and practice reading music until you can do so quickly. You will never be a good piano player until you learn to read music, and the process of learning to play and learning to read should take place simultaneously. These two activites go hand in hand; unlike other instruments where reading music may or not be necessary, like percussion or guitar, piano requires fluent and quick reading of musical notation.

4. Practice. Once you have a basic understanding of piano mechanics, how to sit at the piano and how to orient yourself to the keys, all that's left is to begin working. To begin, start thinking of songs you want to learn to play. Songs you like will be much easier to practice and will make you want to work hard. Work on increasing your repertoire by populating it with nice-sounding songs that make you proud to play. Practice, practice, practice. Real piano playing takes years and careful study to accomplish. You will not sound good in one day, or even two. Keep working.

Tips & Warnings

• To find songs that you want to play, either look online or go to your local music store. The right pedal is the dampener, the most commonly used. Hold it to make the notes hang on longer. The left pedal is the quiet pedal. Press it when you want to play quietly. Piano keys respond to different touches differently--play gently to play quietly and hard to play loudly. Don't get discouraged, and don't compare yourself to more experience players. You're just starting out, as they once were.

• Do not expect to begin to play well immediately. Piano is the one of the most difficult instruments in the world.

References

• History of the Piano
• Piano Technicians Guild