How Can I Start To Learn The Piano?

Posted by writer on September 14th, 2009 at 10:15pm

If you are learning to play the piano, then one of the first things that you will need to consider is, of course, the note. The note is the fundament of all music and the basis of all the tunes. Unfortunately, it is also what makes the music quite difficult to learn – for the first time reader it will seem like there are an endless amount of notes that must be learnt.

To start with, you will need to learn the first 12 major notes. Most of us will have encountered the do-re-mi scale at some point in our schooling. In the table below we have applied it to simplify how those notes are transferred into musical notes. There a number of techniques that we will show you that will help you to memorize the notes and also to understand them a little better as well.

When you have these notes memorized, then you will be amazed at the number of doors that open for you. The next step is to move onto learning the 12 major chords. Just by simply learning the 12 notes, you are already well on your way to learning to play the piano.

These chords are the most important that you will learn, and, like the notes, will form the bedrock for your piano playing skills. Interestingly enough, these chords correspond directly to the chords that are used in playing the guitar, so when you have mastered them you will be able to play on both the guitar AND the piano!

You can probably see the comparison between playing the piano and playing the guitar for yourself – in both media, the only thing you really need to know is the positioning of the fingers for the 12 major chords. The table above also shows you exactly where to put your fingers to form the chord.

Learning these twelve will hold you in good stead for learning all the others. As you probably would have guessed, there are a lot more chords available than just the ones that we have illustrated above, but these twelve are among the easiest to memorize.

When you begin to tackle more complex chords as you continue to learn the piano, many will seem really complicated and difficult to learn. When you have mastered these – you will more than likely find it a lot easier than you think – you can move on to learning other chords. Other chords are just variations on the chords that we have illustrated above, and if you already know those, then you shouldn’t have too much of a problem.

As you progress you’ll discover that all the other chords you will learn are based around the location of Middle C, which is the most important location to remember. The variations around it are called the minor chords. The biggest difference is that whilst the major chords take only three fingers to play, the minor chords can involve anything up to five fingers.

When you are new to playing the piano, and just starting out, a lot of this can seem overwhelming. However, you will find that the rest will come quite naturally, especially as you discover that much of the variations are simply based on what you already know. Once you have learned the principles as we have set out above, the world really is your oyster.

Copyright 2009 Lauren Paltrow (Stage Pianist)

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