Once you’ve mastered playing a five finger scale, it’s time to focus on learning octaves. Each white key on our home keys position keyboard represents one higher letter than its previous position – starting from middle C!
Put your thumb on C, middle finger on 3 (which represents E), and pinkie finger (G). Play these three notes together to form a simple chord.
Keys
Beginners to piano may take longer than expected, but with perseverance and patience it will eventually pay off and allow you to play songs you enjoy. Furthermore, learning piano will give you an enjoyable hobby while impressing friends and family members.
As you begin playing keyboard music, the first step should be learning where your fingers should land on the keys. There is a group of nine keys located near the center called home keys that should serve as your starting points when learning the basics of piano or guitar playing. Once familiarized with them, then other keys may become accessible.
Step two is learning to read written music. Your first piece may seem very daunting at first; each note will have both its letter name and number indicating where on a piano keyboard it should be played, plus an indication of sharp or flat to help guide your playing. In order to comprehend this piece of music properly, you will need to learn what a clef is – this musical symbol resembles an upside-down letter S, used to represent notes with higher pitches while bass clef is for lower pitches.
Once you understand this concept, practice recognizing intervals. Each note represents an interval – for instance a full step from the bottom note is G, with C in between and D on top as intervals.
Understanding what a chord is will be very useful. There are two primary types of chords: major and minor. Major chords typically feature three notes that sound joyful while minor chords tend to sound sadder or darker. An effective way to remember the difference between major and minor chords is counting half steps: for every seven half steps that separate major from minor chords, four or five half steps separate minor ones.
Starting piano can be difficult when everyone around you is an accomplished musician. There may be jealousy and insult from some individuals; but try not to let it bother you too much as most are meant well and want you to succeed. If you want to continue playing, just ignore their criticism and focus on your own progress instead.
Scales
Scales are essential to piano music. You will encounter them across various genres and learning plans alike; practice can feel tedious at first but will eventually pay off when playing your favorite songs on the piano easily. Learning them also gives you greater insight into how notes interact and chords come together.
Scales are an excellent way to accelerate piano learning quickly. By building muscle memory in your hands and making chords simpler to play, they also give a great overview of all of the piano keys’ shapes and placement of black keys.
Based on your preferred music genre, it may be tempting to only learn one kind of scale. But it would be advisable to learn at least some major scales so you will understand their patterns – every scale has a pattern made up of whole and half steps; once you learn this formula for each type of scale starting on any note (for instance C major scale: starting note-step-step-half step-step-half step).
Practice scales both upwards and downwards with various rhythms and dotted notes as a good place to begin, then as soon as you have them memorized change up rhythm and speed to increase the challenge of playing them.
Practice scales at least once every day without becoming bored – doing this will not only strengthen your technique but may even keep you interested in playing piano! If practice becomes tedious or uninteresting, your technique won’t develop properly and interest may fade completely in this instrument.
As part of your studies in scales, understanding written music becomes much simpler. Once you can read sheet music, a new world opens up for you; you will discover songs that were previously unheard and play them exactly how their original musician played them.
Chords
Piano chords are the building blocks of music. Though their forms vary greatly, all chords share one common trait: multiple notes played simultaneously create a chord. Some pieces require two hands to play chords together while most can be performed using just one. To start learning piano chords, press multiple keys simultaneously on both piano or keyboard program until you find combination that produces desired chord.
As part of your musical studies, it’s also helpful to memorize some basic scales – groups of notes that recur when moving up or down the keyboard – which repeat in their order when moving between white and black notes on the keyboard. A common example is A, B, C, D, E, F & G scale that never changes. By memorizing these scales you’ll know exactly which fingers and thumbs to press for any given chord on any given occasion.
Step two of creating songs involves combining chords and scales together. This can be accomplished either through reading written music or improvising freely; written music usually comprises melody notated using standard musical notation with chords stacked one atop another in various ways indicated by symbols representing root note, third, fifth chord tones above root. A number written after each chord symbol represents how many tones above root to add; these additions give different sounds or atmosphere to chords such as C major with roots C E G while C diminished adds additional tones C D D F for instance!
Beginning guitarists should learn the most common chord progressions, as these can be applied to nearly any song. Furthermore, it would be wise to practice each of these progressions across all twelve keys, both up and down an octave.
Music Theory
While scales and chords should form part of your piano practice routine, you should also dedicate significant time to music theory study. While this may seem intimidating at first, taking an analytical approach to it can make all the difference to your musical success.
First step of music theory is learning the names and identity of musical notes. A great way to do this is with a show tune from The Sound of Music like Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do, using letters A,B,C and D for easy memory of keys on piano as well as notes they represent.
Learn the names of notes easily through a basic scale. A C major scale, with all its notes on white keys, is an excellent starting point – its simplicity lies in just remembering its steps and half steps as you ascend it: beginning note-step-step-half step-step-step-half step. This will provide an invaluable foundation to learning any scale on piano!
Once you understand how scales work, it is wise to review sheet music. When doing so, pay particular attention to the key signature; this will tell you which sharps and flats exist within a song – this information will determine where your fingers should be placed on the keyboard when performing that piece.
Many beginners worry about sight-reading written music, but it needn’t be difficult. The key to successful sight reading is developing muscle memory through listening and playing songs more quickly and efficiently.
Improvising can also help improve sight-reading. By practicing scales and chords enough, your hands will develop muscle memory for particular notes more quickly than others; this makes learning new songs simpler as memorizing chord progressions and melodies will come more naturally to you.