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Playing Beginner Piano - An Introduction
 It
isn't hard at all to learn beginner piano and once you learn
the basics, you'll discover that the rest of your journey is
a straightforward process.
Learning can be
intimidating to people who have no experience with piano
music at all, but it can even intimidate musicians who are
used to playing a different instrument as well.
The
good news is that everything starts to get a little easier
with practice and understanding that it's relatively easy
after you learn how to read music notation.
Interpreting
music notation,
whether for piano, the bass guitar, or the saxophone, is
"required reading" because it not only communicates emotion
from a composer, it familiarizes the player with the basic
structure of all music.
Once you can read and play
piano notation, you can usually go on to play more advanced
notation for the violin, the flute, and a host of other
instruments.
The
basics start with understanding its 88 pitches -- the tones
produced by striking each key.
The white keys
are named by the A, B, C,
D, E, F, and G
letters while the black keys -- the sharps and flats --
change the pitch of the white keys with a slightly higher or
lower tone.
Each set of white keys starting from the
very left (A, B, C, D, E, F, and G) is called an
octave, and at first, you may learn to play a song
within a single octave. In more advanced notion however, you
may play songs with both hands in different octaves at once.
Of course to make a series of notes sound like a song, you
will need to learn about
note duration. Note duration is also one of the first
beginner piano lessons you'll learn, and it will introduce
you to whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes.
Holding down a piano key for the duration of an entire beat
plays a whole note, while holding down a piano key for the
duration of half a beat plays a half note. The variation of
these beats and tones is what creates a tune or a song.
At this stage, you'll mostly learn simple songs like "Row
Row Row Your Boat," or "Hot Cross Buns" because they provide
a gentle introduction to the piano keys, key pitches, and
note duration.
In
advanced music notation, you'll find more complicated note
durations indicated by dots or ties.
Understanding what the time
signature
means is another important beginner piano lesson, as it
determines the constant rhythm that an entire song should
follow. Two numbers that look like a fraction represent a
time signature in music notation.
The number on top
tells musicians how many beats are in a measure (a group of
notes in sheet music) and the number on bottom tells
musicians what kind of note qualifies as one beat.
The most common time signature for beginners is the 4/4
signature, and it tells musicians that there will be
four distinct beats in each measure and that the quarter
note counts as one beat.
As you practice the beginner
piano more and more and start to listen for these
characteristics in classical music, you'll start to pick up
on some pretty common patterns.
Most simple songs are
played within conventional time signatures and octaves, so
by training your ear to listen for them, you'll improve each
time that you sit down to play the piano yourself!
More about beginner piano lessons
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