Playing Your First Note on the Piano

When I was eight years old, I told my father that I wanted to play the piano. I would pretend to move my fingers back and forth on the dinner table, pretending it was a keyboard.

When I was nine, I actually got my fingers on the instrument and was so excited!

Turns out, I didn’t know how to play at first. You are probably reading this because you just received your first piano or keyboard!

The piano is a simpler instrument for beginners because most music theory relates back to the piano. The piano can play as a solo instrument or accompaniment!

For beginners, the piano should be a solo instrument because you have not learned the basics yet! Playing your first note should be easy as most people would just have to press a button/key on the keyboard. But it is not that simple, so I created a step by step procedure of what you should know before and when you play the piano!

Learn the Finger Numbers

The piano has many keys, which have different pitches. Depending on which piano you have, you can have up to 88 keys!

Obviously, you only have 10 fingers in total. Therefore, you do not have each finger designated for each key. This is very important to know because when we play songs, we want to use the most comfortable and easiest fingerings as possible.

We use finger numbers so we know which finger to use to play each note! This is called fingering.

The thumbs on both hands are called fingers number 1. The index fingers are fingers number 2. The middle fingers are called fingers number 3. The ring fingers are called fingers number 4. The last fingers, the pinkies, are fingers number 5.

Playing Middle C

When you look at your piano, you can see that it has both white and black keys. You might have noticed that there is a pattern on the keyboard.

The keys are arranged so it has two main groups of black keys. There is a group of two black keys and the other group has three black keys. Then, the pattern repeats itself.

It is important to know the “guide note”, middle C, as it will help later with reading music. It is also the first note of the C Major scale, which is one of the first scales you learn as a beginner.

Something I learned in music class as a kid was the “do re me fa sol la ti do” scale. Over the years, I realized Middle C is “do” in the “do re mi fa sol la ti do” scale. Middle C is at the middle of the keyboard, beside the group of two black notes, on the left.

Now play the note five times using all your five fingers in your right hand, starting from finger number one.

Holding the Note

One question I asked myself when I was a beginner was:

How long do you hold that note?

You usually should hold it for one beat. To start, a beat is usually at the pace of a heartbeat. One beat is called a quarter note. There are different rhythms in music, and a quarter note is only one of them.

I hope this article helped you play and learn some things about the piano! I wish you good luck on your musical journey!