How To Play Piano (Beginner Piano Lesson)

so you want to learn how to play the piano well you've come to the right place my goal is to get you playing music right now and give you all the information that you need to continue

The Learning Journey so let's get started all right first things first we're starting from the beginning we need to learn how to navigate the keyboard notice how we've got groupings

of two black keys and three Black Keys and that pattern just kind of continues and continues and continues and continues so that's going to help us to know where we are and where we're going so I want you to take your P sign

fingers and place them on the group of Two Black Keys nearest the center of your keyboard so here we are I'm going to take my pointer finger I'm just going to slide it down and this takes us to a

very important note for new piano players this is C this is where we start a lot of what we're going to be doing so C now this is how the musical alphabet goes we're just going to move up from C

after C we have D and then after d we have e and then you can guess F and then G but that's where things stop because the musical alphabet stops at G and goes

to a so there's no h so if this is G this is a and this is B and then this is the magic look at this we're back to a group of two and it's C and then that

just repeats d e f g a b and c now that brings me to a second Point Landmark notes on the keyboard this is going to make navigating the keyboard so much easier for you so if you play this

grouping of two black keys and slide down you know that you have C so C kind of becomes a landmark that's easy to locate because of that group of two black keys so take your right hand thumb

so we call this our one finger 1 2 3 4 five and find a c nearest the middle of your piano and just play it now see how quickly you can move to the next C above

that so you look for the group of two and you place your thumb on C look for the group of two place your thumb on C that's a great way to get comfortable moving around a second Landmark note

that I find really really helpful is f so if you look for the group of three Black Keys the bottom of that is f right CDE e f so if you just find all the fs you can play them with any finger you

like it's a great way to just get comfortable with the layout of your instrument all right so that's all great but let's actually get our fingers playing some of these keys so let's take

your right hand take your thumb place it on middle C that's the C nearest the Center of your keyboard and I want you to relax your fingers so that each of them gets its own key and this is easier

than easier said than done as a new piano player because our fingers can get like ah where do I go so just relax your hand place your thumb on C and set your fingers up one on each key now notice

how I'm not here my hand is not flat I'm not crunched up here my wrist isn't low my wrist is just slightly above right there's a little bit of space there's some buyant see like there's like a little bubble under my hand that I don't want to pop

so I keep some buoyancy in my wrist and then my fingers naturally get this nice little curve in them so now I'm set up to just push down with my thumb try this

with me whoa and then release and then the next one is with your second finger one two press and release and this might not be clean at first you might find that you bump into some other keys and

two fingers want to work at the same time that's okay and then you walk your way back down and I call this a five note scale and it's kind of like the first skill that you should play as a

piano player because it kind of helps you to gain control in your fingers so let's do that again so your thumb goes

on c c d e f g back down f e d and I'm going to keep going just like this and

you can think about finger numbers so I'm on four five 4 3 2 1 or note names d

e e f g and then your alphabet backwards the f e d c and that's where you start like you want to spend enough time there that your hand can do that without you

feeling like oh my gosh this is so challenging and it takes a little bit of time and then once that's comfortable you take your left hand and our fingers get numbered the same way so thumb is one baby finger is five and you'll want

to place your baby finger of your left hand on the C below middle C so you find find that group of two get your five finger placed and then each finger gets a key and it's exactly the same thing

it's getting used to playing one finger at a time up and down that five note scale really smoothly and fluidly just like that this is where you

start and you have to remember to breathe you have to remember to smile and you want to check in that your shoulders aren't like this and that you're not like ConEd over your hand trying to watch what you're doing we're

working toward this feeling relaxed and easy and and might take a few practices that's what it's all about but eventually you'll be able to do this two

hands at the same time and that's sort of your next little Target and goal is being able to play this five note scale both hands at the same time and have a

sense of ease about it not that it needs to be easy but you should be able to get through it and be like oh I was playing both of the notes at the same time um my volume was pretty consistent my fingers

were super tight and tense my posture was good and I could maybe even go a little faster next time so work that into your practice routine we call that the five note C scale you want to do it

with your right hand and your left hand and eventually hands together and it's going to get easier and easier and easier it's going to wake up your fingers it's going to strengthen them and it's going to help you to build good

presence and posture on the keyboard all right the next step is an actual scale and you can do it even if this is the first time you've ever played the

piano I'm going to walk you through it and then I'm going to show you why scales are so important they lead to all kinds of fun things I promise so we're going to start with our right hand again because this tends to be our dominant

hand and then we're going to place our one finger or a thumb on that middle C again and we're going to play one note at a time but we're going to go from C all the way up to the next C and back

down again so it's going to sound like this just like that we only have five fingers and there are eight keys to play so what are we going to do we have to use some

fancy finger work so this is another great opportunity to build control in your fingers which you need as a new piano player so you start with your one finger and then you play your two and

then you play your three and you just pause there keep contact with this third note and I want you to pretend like maybe there's like a little mini soccer ball on this key and your thumb's going to come underneath and push it off and

so you're going to play the next key with your thumb now keep that in contact and kind of uncurl your fingers move them over and look at this every finger has a key now and you just have to

continue to move them all the way up the scale easier said than done which is why we practice it's not about perfection it's about practice and that's one of the reasons we have those chapter

markers on this video so you can come back to the sections and practice along with me so let's try this stick together now so really slowly I'll say the finger

numbers we're going to go 1 2 3 thumb comes under one uncurl 2 3 4

5 and hang out there take a breath we're going to head back down so four finger 3 2 1 and then we've run out of

fingers oh no third finger comes up and over to play this e reset your fingers D and C so that was the C scale you want to get really

comfortable with just the right hand let's go through how we would play that with our left hand so five finger goes to Losi and you're going to use up every single finger first when we run out then

our third finger comes up and over like that so we'll go slowly together starting on c c d e f g and now oh now

we're out third finger comes up and over a now we've got two fingers left we can go B and C hang out there breathe now we're going to play our two

finger our three finger this is where we stop three is the magic number Thumb comes under plays the next key our hand resets and we just walk our way back

down to the end so let's do that one more time cuz this is new so 5 4 3 2

one up and over with the third finger and then two one and then we go back

down two three pause thumb coms under one reset 2 3 4 5 and that's your C

scale all right we've got a real song here and I'm going to teach you how to interpret this music that you see so the first thing we're looking at is this symbol right here that's called a treble

cleff and it you usually indicates to play with our right hand so we're going to play the notes with our right hand and all of these little dots and circles with the lines those are the notes I'll

tell you what they mean in a moment but I also wanted to bring your attention to something else before we start playing and that's this time signature so time

signature gives us context for the rhythm of the song how long to hold each note because this is really important that's what makes the music so if you notice we've got these lines that to

separate our notes these are called bar lines and in between them we would call this like a measure this stuff here or a bar of music now in each of these this

is what the time signature tells us we have four beats and a Beat is based on a quarter note now these these things these are quarter notes Okay so we've

got that information we kind of put it in the back of our minds for a moment let's figure out what keys to play based on what these circles and lines are

showing us if you ever took music in in like high school you took a band class you had panel lessons as a kid in the back of your mind you might remember these acronyms we can spell the word

face in the spaces here f a c e and that's like a quick cheat sheet to what the notes are so we can tell by this that this first note is a c okay this is

good we're learning something we're going to cheat the system a little bit and instead of having to go like okay well then what's the next acronym how do we figure it out we're just going to follow the direction the notes are

moving so look from C we're going down uh C is a space note and this next one is a line note it's going down to the next possible note so this is B and then

we're going down again that's a and down again to G and down again do you see this we're just moving in steps down down down and then things turn around when we get to F we're moving up in

steps and you can tell because it's always going from the space to the line to the space and then whoo wait a minute watch out we've got a space note and a space note so we've skipped the line so

when you're playing you're going to pay attention to that and let's actually play this on the piano because it's going to really make sense so if we start at the beginning that first C we're going to use our baby finger and play the C above middle C that's the C

that this is referring to and then we're just going to step our fingers down down down down and now it's going up so move up and when we get here this is a this

is where we've got that skipped note and we're going all the way up to C which is the first note we played and now you've just played two bars of music and you can notice that we're changing the

direction we're going down again and down and down we've run out of finger so we'll just cross over you just read some music it doesn't have to be as complicated as being like I got to memorize what all these are you you need

to memorize what some of them are so you know where you actually are but you can use the distance between the notes to kind of help you guesstimate your way through music it's cheating but it's not

you'll notice now we have some new things above the Music These are called chords now you see an a with a little tiny M beside it ignore the M for now

all I want you to worry about is your left hand is going to play a your right hand is going to play the melody that you've just learned to

read now the chord changes so you now see a d and we're going to move our left hand to D now it changes to G so let's go to

G and now it says C you just created a left hand accompaniment without having to read any extra notes this is where I get so exciting now these are chords and a

chord actually has more than one note so you you're ready for this I want you to take your baby finger and I want you to place it on a and then I want you to take your thumb and I want you to place it on E so 1 2 3 3 four five they're

five apart and then we're going to play it a couple times just to get used to that feeling I want you to take that whole party and your five finger is going to take you over to D and then again five

notes apart now you take your five finger and you go all the way up to G and you're going to play G and then 1 2 3 4 5

D and then finally five finger takes you all the way down to C and you're going to play C and then 1 2 3 4 5 G so that was just the practice you don't have to play all these repetitions

of it you can just hold the keys down so I want you to try that with me five finger on a thumb on E so your right hand's going to

play now we move all the way down to the D you can do it and then the party goes up to the

G and then five finger takes C down to C you're playing real music and that that's really just the beginning that's

taking notes that you're reading chords that you're building and bringing that together so that you can kind of create your own version of the songs that you

love now inside piano we have over a thousand songs they all have chord names above them and you can set it up so that you just see the melody and the chord names and we've gone ahead and created a

playlist of the best songs for beginners to start learning just for you so if you want want to access that you can grab a free 7-Day trial below this video just click the link and you can go have some

fun with playing real songs cuz now you know all the skills you need to be able to do that so I'm so excited for you this really is just the beginning of the journey comment below introduce yourself

let me know a little bit about your goals at the piano and I can't wait to meet you so happy playing and we'll see you around