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Before you begin to play the piano, you need to become familiar with what the instrument is. Some pianos are upright pianos, which are usually large, heavy, tall vertical boxes. These are anywhere from 36 to 51 inches tall. Spinets are the shortest upright pianos, at 36 to 39 inches. A studio vertical is 44 inches or taller. If you have the opportunity to play on a grand piano, you will usually get a better sound and a more responsive touch. Grand pianos are the more horizontal pianos, ranging from 5 to 9 feet in length. In a grand piano, the strings are horizontal. In a vertical piano, the strings are, well, vertical.

The piano will have a music rack of some kind where you can put your sheet music. It may fold down or slide into a slot. When you are ready to play, put it into position. There should also be a bench for you to sit on. Adjust the position of the bench so that you can reach all the keys from one end of the keyboard to the other. Do not sit either too far or away or too close.

There will be pedals at the bottom of the piano where your feet are. These need not be used by beginners. Once you become more proficient at playing the piano, you can learn how to use these pedals to sustain sounds or cut them short.

The part of the piano that will be most important to your learning is the keyboard. It is made up of white and black keys which run from the left to the right of the piano face. These keys do not alternate white-black-white for the entire length of the keyboard.

If you look closely, you will see that the black and white keys form a pattern that repeats from one end of the keyboard to the other. The pattern consists of 7 white keys and 5 black keys in a particular order. From the beginning of one such set of keys and ending on the beginning of the next set, an interval is formed. Intervals are just the musical distances between two sounds. This particular interval is called an octave.

The keys are lined up on the keyboard in order from the lowest on the left to the highest on the right. Starting at the left and moving to the right, each black or white key is a half step higher in pitch than the key before it. For a full step, it is necessary to go up (or down) two half steps. Try some half steps and some full steps. With a little practice, you should be able to learn the sound of those intervals easily.

Try other intervals to hear their sounds. Always pay attention to how many half or full steps you are taking. Do the same intervals at several different places along the keyboard. Try octaves. You can do this by picking out a key and playing the next key up that is in the same position in the next pattern group. Soon, you will be playing octaves with ease. This is very important to all kinds of piano playing.

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When you are beginning to learn the piano, you might feel that you need all the help that you can get.  You might look for lessons
online or through the mail.  Getting a piano teacher may be a priority for you.  These are possibilities you can consider.

There are many different people and companies offering piano lessons online.  Some of the lessons are very expensive and some cost less.  It may be difficult to find out the price of the lessons without committing to them, but you can do it if you are careful.

You should definitely make sure that you are going to be getting lessons from a reputable teacher.  Do not be afraid to ask for qualifications and accomplishments.  Some websites offer several free lessons to get you started and give you an idea of what is to come.  One website offers over 100 short free lessons before you buy.

Online piano lessons might be helpful to you.  The problem is that they are very generic and do not accommodate your own personal learning curve.  They are not designed with you in particular in mind.  You can get most of the information from reading.

On the other hand, a piano teacher might be more helpful, providing she is a good one.  You must expect a lot from a piano teacher.  Look for someone who will change her teaching style when her original methods are not helping.

Try to find a teacher who works with scales, chords, and improvisation.  More piano teachers are training their students on these subjects now than ever before.  Make sure you find one of them, and not someone who sticks to written music alone.

Get a music teacher who plays well herself.  Regardless of what has been said about, “Those who cannot do teach,” your teacher might be a very able piano player.  It is to your advantage if you can find someone who knows the tricks of the trade from experience.

Interview piano teachers to find out which one you might get along with the best.  Personalities are important.  You will want someone who will inspire you, but not someone who will be unkindly critical.  You will want someone you can talk to on an equal level when the subject is not piano playing.  After all, you should be given the respect that is due any adult learner.

When you believe you have found a piano teacher who can help you, you can begin your lessons as soon as she can work you into her schedule.  Do not leave it at that.  Always be aware that you can change piano teachers at any time.

If your piano teacher does not seem to know much about the kind of music you want to play, do not do the easy thing and stay in her lessons.  In time you will completely lose interest in playing the piano and quit.  Keep searching until you find that special teacher that can help you learn all you want to know.

It might take a while to find the right piano teacher.  In the meantime, you can keep your interest alive by studying the piano on your own.  Learn about how to read music, play scales and chords, and improvise.  It can only help you when you are ready to learn with formal lessons through a piano teacher.

Check out the link below to ROCKET PIANO, a unique multimedia course to fast-track learning to play piano while having fun in the process.

Payment is in dollars (not GBP) but at a very special price to pianoin.com

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A scale goes from one key to the key that  is an octave above that key.  It consists of eight tones.  There are different types of scales.  Some of them are major scales and some of them are minor scales.  Major scales have been described as sounding happy, while minor scales are said to sound sad or gloomy.

If you spend a part of your practice time playing scales, you build muscle memory in your hands.  This means that, after much time practicing, your hands go more easily to notes in the scale you are playing at any given time.  You only have to see the printed music or think of the melody and your hands know what to do. To talk about scales, you must talk about keys.  There are two kinds of keys when you are learning to play the piano.  There are the physical blocks of ivory, or some look-alike material, and wood.  There are also keys that scales or songs are played in.

Have you ever been to a lounge where a singer is giving an impromptu performance?  She might lean down to the pianist and say something like, “In the key of C.”  That tells the pianist where on the keyboard to begin.  It also tells the pianist what physical keys to start with and what chords to use.  The key of a piece of music is very important.

When you are learning scales, you can do it without learning all the key signatures.  (Key signatures are the written notation of the keys, such as the key of C or the key of G.)  You can begin by playing a C scale.  A major C scale is all done on the white keys.  Begin with your right hand in the Home Keys position.  Remember that your fingers are numbered 1-5, with the thumb being 1.

Play 1-2-3 as usual.  This is C-D-E on the keyboard.  Then, instead of playing the next note with your ring finger, slip your thumb under the fingers and play F with your thumb.  Reposition your hand so that your thumb is 1 on F and your pinkie is 5 on the C above middle C.  Then, continue to play up the scale.  So, you are playing 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-5, or C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C.  You have just played your first scale.  Practice it a few times.

To play a C scale with your left hand, put your little finger on the C below middle C.  Position your fingers from 1-5 coming up the keyboard from each key to the next.  Play 5-4-3-2-1.  Then, reach over the top with your middle finger and place it on the next key.  Play 3-2-1 from this position.  Therefore, you are playing 5-4-3-2-1-3-2-1, or C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C.

After you practice this for awhile, try to put the left hand and the right hand together.  Play the C below middle C with your left pinkie at the same time as you play the middle C with your left thumb.  Continue up the scale with both hands.  It can be a little tricky at first because you are going over with your middle finger of your left hand and the under with the thumb of the right hand at different times.  Practice awhile and it will come naturally.

Once you get the basic procedure down, it is easy to play other major scales.  The only thing you have to remember is the sequence of steps and half steps in a major scale.  The correct order up a major scale is: beginning note-step-step-half step-step-step-step-half step.  You should be aware that, since there are no black keys between them, the intervals from B-C and from E-F are each half steps.

You can play a scale anywhere on the piano.  Just pick a note to start on.  It does not matter whether it is a white key or a black key.  Use the given sequence of steps and half steps to go from there up an eight note scale.  You can even start from the left of the keyboard and continue the scale all the way to the right.  With a little practice, you will be proficient at playing major scales.

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