Learning how to play a piano is not a hard as most people think.
I Know, I Know…… You’re saying “There are SO many keys!”
Don’t let that bother you. With a simple trick you can learn all of the keys on the piano and their note names.
There are tons of quick and easy tips you can learn that will speed up the learning curve for the piano.
Let’s take a look at some of the most important steps that you must follow as you start learning to play the piano.
Naming The Keys The very first thing you have to do is learn the names of the keys on the piano. Before you even look at any of the note names, you have to learn what the keys on the piano are called.
On a full size piano there are 88 keys. The thing that most beginners don’t realize is that these notes repeat themselves over and over again. There is a set pattern of notes that the piano follows making it easy to remember the names of all the keys.
If you can learn the pattern, then you can name every key on the piano. This is a great asset when you want to learn how to play a piano.
Tip – Learn the pattern of the keys to learn to name all 88 keys on the piano!
Music Rhythm
After you have a firm grasp on the names of the piano keys, you need to focus on a music rhythm.
Musical rhythm can take some time, but with practice it will become easier and easier.
You first need to understand note value. Note value how long a certain note is to be held out.
When reading music, you have to know how long a note should ring. The sheet music will give a single note. This note will tell you the name of the note to play, and it will also tell you how long to hold it out for.
There are multiple types of music note values. The most commonly used are:
- Whole Notes
- Half Notes
- Quarter Notes
- Eighth Notes
- Sixteenth Notes
These notes are written within what’s called a measure. This tells you how long each note should be held out. Either for the whole measure (whole note), half the measure (half note), or a quarter of the measure (quarter note).
Here is a lot more info on learning note value and learning how to play a piano online.
Musical Rests
Rests are similar to note values except, the note value tells you how long to hold a note out, and a rest tells you how long to hold out silence.
A rest tells you that you are to stop playing for the entire amount that the rest calls for.
There are five main types of musical rests. Similar to the note value, there is a whole rest, half rest, quarter rest, eighth rest, and sixteenth rest.
Chord Piano
Playing chord piano is the easiest and simplest way to learn how to play a piano online.
There are three notes in each chord. Those three notes gives the chord its unique sound. If you can learn all the major chords and minor chords on the piano then you will be playing not time. Use this chord finder to learn almost every chord possible.
Each song is made up of just a few of these chords. If you know all the chords in a song, you no longer have to sit and try and read music all day, just learn the chords in the song and it makes things a whole lot easier.
When you start getting a little more confident playing with chords, you will learn that almost all song have the same chords. This is called a chord progression.
A chord progression is a sequence of chords that usually go together. There is usually four chords in a chord progression.
Most popular contemporary songs have the same four chords in them. Learn some of the more common chord progressions and you will be playing just about any song you want in no time!
Scales
Now that you’ve learned chords, its time to focus on making your music sound Great!
When you play with chords it sometimes can sound robotic. I know when I first started to learn how to play a piano I just played one chord on each beat and it really didn’t sound all that great. I was just keeping the rhythm with the piano.
As you start getting better at playing with chords you can start focussing on scales. Scales can be used to add embellishments to the music. It also tells you which notes you can play and which ones not to play.
Playing with chords is easy, but really knowing which chords and notes go with which scale add a whole new element to your playing.
Learning all the scales is going to allow you start adding different notes in with the chords. Rather than just playing a three note chord, add a few of the notes close by that in the scale. This will make your playing sound much by adding in addition note to the chords that you playing.
Practice
Once you have learned all of the little tricks to how to play a piano, you can start practicing effectively. Start working on your piano fingering and other important techniques.
Start practicing all the scales with both hands, practice all the chord inversions, train your ear. Set a time in each day to allow yourself to practice. Whether its and hour, two hours, thirty minutes, whatever. Just make sure that you use all of the things that have learned and practice them to perfection.
Use all the resources you can. Scour this site for all kinds of great info that will help get you started playing fast.
You can start with my video course, Mastering Basic Piano Chords. This course gives you a complete run-through of how to get started playing the piano by ear.
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