Learn to Play Piano

A pianoforte, or piano, was first invented in the early 1700's as a sort of innovation to the harpsichord. The difference between a piano and a harpsichord is that the piano has the ability to be played with varying degrees of loudness or softness; thus the name pianoforte (piano translates to soft, and forte translates to loud).

A piano has 88 keys, 52 white ones, and 36 black ones. The white keys are called "natural" keys, and the black keys are called, "sharps" or "flats."

Most piano's have three pedals: the damper, the soft, and the sotenuto.

The damper pedal is the one on the right. This pedal is pressed to allow the the notes to vibrate. When pressed, it makes the notes last longer. It is used when the piano piece calls for notes to be played legato, or smoothly and "tied together." Pressing the pedal sort of blends the notes that are played consecutively.

The soft pedal is the one on the left. When pressing this pedal, the little hammers inside the piano that srike the strings that make the sound, do so in a way that makes the note much softer. This mechanism is done differently by different pianos. In early pianos, each note had two strings that the hammers struck to make a sound, but when the "soft pedal" was pressed, the hammer only struck one of them, so the sound was more quiet.

The sostenuto pedal, if your piano has one, is used in conjunction with a damper pedal. It keeps those dampers raised (meaning the piano strings that were already used can keep on vibrating in legato), while other notes can be played staccato (staccato means abrupt or short; you don't want staccato notes to vibrate or tie into other notes).

**Many upright pianos have a "practice pedal" instead of a sostenuto pedal. The practice pedal just makes the notes very quiet, so that you can practice your piano without waking up the neighborhood or driving your roomates insane.

Down To Business: The Music Theory you Need to Know to Begin Playing

There are two aspects of the piano that you should learn before beginning your first lesson:

1.The idea of a scale

2. How to read music notes

Scales

A scale is a group of notes, in a particular pattern, that go up or down the keyboard. There are all kinds of scales that have different sounds. The two basic types of scales are the major scale and the minor scale, though there are others. Even those scales have different variations. The C major scale is probably the easiest to learn. The notes of a C major scale are: C,D,E,F,G,A,B, and C. None of those notes are black keys. They are all white keys. There are 8 notes in each scale. From C to C, eight notes up, is one Octave. The same is true for any note.

To find a C note on a piano, look at the black keys. You'll notice that they are in groups of three's or two's. C notes are the white keys just before the two black keys.

The C note that is pretty much in the middle of the keyboard is called Middle C.

Middle C is important because it delineates, usually, where the right hand and left hand will play. The right hand usually starts on Middle C, or on a note above Middle C.

Experiment with scales:

**Keep in mind, the notes go in order alphabetically from C in a C scale. The white keys don't have any funny names, such as C sharp or D flat. You'll learn about that some other time.

1. Starting with Middle C, play every single key, black and white, until you get to to the next C. That's called a Chromatic scale. From one key to the next, you are playing what is called a half tone, or half step. This scale includes every note, and all the other scales are based on this scale.

2. Note the difference in sound when you go from C to the very next key, C sharp (this is the black key right after C, going from left to right). Now play C, then D (the very next white key). When you go from C to D, you are playing a complete tone. You're going one whole step. Just think of every adjacent key as being one half step and any time you skip a key, including the black keys, you are making one whole step.

All scales have a very specific pattern based on how many whole steps and half steps you take when playing each next note.

From one note to the next, in any major scale, such as with a C scale, you will be playing the following pattern:

whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half.

Looking at your keyboard, take note of what the keys look like from Middle C to the next C up. There are two black keys, then three black keys, but you never play them when playing a C scale. Never. So, from C to D, you've made one whole step. From D to E you've made one whole step. With each of those progressions, you've skipped one key: a black key. Now, notice what happens when you go from E to F. You don't skip any keys at all. You go from E to the adjacent key, which just so happens to be F. You've only made a half step. Then, from F to G, you've made one whole step. G to A: whole step. A to B: whole step. B to C doesn't skip any keys at all, so it's a half step. Now, look at the bold words in this paragraph. Don't they match the pattern above?

In short, a half step is when you go to the very, very next key, no matter which color it is.
A whole step is when you skip one key to go to the next key, not matter what color it is that you skip (or land on).

3. Now, pick any key at all (don't worry about using the right fingers for now). Experiment with this pattern. For example, play the A note. Make a whole step to the next key. Which key is that? B!! Then make another whole step, then a half step and so on, following the pattern you just learned for any major scale: whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. If you've done it correctly, the scale should sound similar to a C scale in melodic quality. Notice, too, that in order to play an A scale, you will have to play three black keys!

If you use this pattern, you can figure out any scale on the piano that you want, whether you start with C sharp (the black key right after C), or B, or whatever you chose.

Experiment with scales: Use correct fingers.

Now that you understand how scales work you can learn about finger placement. Incidentally, knowing how scales work is extremely important to being able to play music, as any piece in A major, for example (only because we already discussed how that one had three black keys), will always have C sharp, F sharp and G sharp in them. Those are the three black keys we mentioned.

Starting with a C scale, as this is the first scale you should learn, you will practice your right hand, then your left hand, and eventually, you will play the scale with both hands together. When you accomplish those feats, move on to practicing your scales all the way up the keyboard, then back down the keyboard.

Why is this important? Finger placement is extremely important to being able to play a piece seemlessly. Also, when you begin to learn to read music, you'll want to be able to look at the sheet music without focusing on where your fingers are. It's very much like learning to type quickly. You may be able to hunt and peck on a computer keyboard just fine, but if you want to be able to type quickly, you'll have to learn your "home row," or your proper finger placement.

Technique:

In general, you want to arch your fingers when playing the piano. They should be slightly curved. Place your fingers on the keys and play a few random notes. Can you see the tops of your fingernails? If so, your fingers may have a concave curve. That's not good. You want the belly of your fingers' curves to be facing away from you. Lift your hand now and make a claw, so to speak, with your hand. See how your fingers are curved? That's more like what you should strive to achieve than what your finger looks like when you are pressing a button.

As far as your hands are concerned, they should almost rest on the keyboard. In otherwords, if the keyboard were to be swiped away from you rather quickly, your hands would fall down. Don't try to elevate your hands and pluck the keys with your fingers.

Right Hand: (right hand plays treble)

Starting with Middle C, the order of finger progression when playing a C scale is this:

thumb, pointer, middle, (cross your thumb under), thumb, pointer, middle, ring, pinky

If you were to keep going up the scale, you would cross your thumb under again and bypass the pinky every time you got to the starting note of the scale.

Left Hand: (left hand plays bass)

Starting with the C that is exactly one octave below (left of) Middle C, the order of finger progression is this:

pinky, ring, middle, pointer, thumb (cross middle finger over), middle, pointer, thumb.

Hmmm. The left hand progression is the exact opposite of the right hand!!! Could it be because left and right hands are mirror images of eachother?

Practice

You should practice your right hand first, whether left handed or right handed, because the right hand usually plays the melody of most songs.

Practice slowly. No one will expect your fingers to ride the keyboard like a zipper when you first start. The main idea is to get used to the keyboard, using the correct fingers and technique. If there needs to be a 2 second delay between each note, then so be it. Once you are familiar with a certain pace, you can increase the speed, but don't rush the process. Repition is golden in this instance.

Then, try your left hand, paying close attention to proper finger placement and technique as well. When you are comfortable playing each hand individually, practice playing both hands at the same time.

Eventually, you want to be able to play both hands up the keyboard, then away from eachother, then down the keyboard.

Reading Music

The notes the right hand plays are called the treble notes. When you look at sheet music for piano, you will notice two symbols at the beginning of two sets of lines, five lines each. Those are the treble clef and the bass clef. The treble is the one that looks similar to an ampersand, and the bass clef looks like a backwards "C", somtimes referred to as "C" clef. The treble notes are on the top set of lines, and the bass notes are on the second set of lines. These two sets of lines are connected with a bracket.

The bottom line on the treble staff represents the "E," note. The space is the "F", then the next line up is the "G" note.
They go in order like such. All the lines in the Treble, starting from the bottom are E,G,B,D,F and the spaces are F,A,C,E.

For the bass notes, the bottom line represents "G" and the space right above that is, "A," and the line is ,"B," and so on.

Many people use little devices to help them remember the notes when they first start reading music. The pneumonic device for the lines in the treble staff is "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge," for "E, G, B, D, F." The spaces in the treble notes actually spell a word, "Face." Easy enough.

To help you remember the bass notes, "All Cows Eat Grass," might help you to remember that the spaces represent, A, C, E, and G. "Good Birds Do Fly Always," is the way to remember the notes on the bass lines.

To help you practice sight reading notes, http://astro.sci.uop.edu/~harlow/piano/index.html is a very cool website. It's very simple, but you can choose what level you want to practice, and as notes pop up on the screen, you can choose the correct note.

Aside from that, you can pick up any music book and practice looking at the notes to acquaint yourself with reading.

Good luck, and remember, you're not being timed. Practice at your own pace and have fun.