Beginner Piano Crash Course

1. About This Course: Hi there. My name is Jacob Lamb. I'm a musician and a music teacher. I've taught courses on my own sites, hovering the basics of the piano from front to back. I'm also really excited that you are interested in piano. I know we want to jump right into it. So let's just get started. There is a workbook with this course absolutely free as a PDF in the description. So download it to follow along and make the most out of your practice sessions. 2. Names of the Notes: The first and most helpful thing to notice is that the piano is broken into patterns. So if we split our white and black keys, we'll see that the black keys are in groups of two and three, two, and three, two, and three, all up and down the keyboard. So we have this pretty clear pattern grouping of two and three black keys and the keys around them. When we picture it like that, then we see that we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven groups on the piano. The other thing we want to know is that the smallest amount we can move on a piano is called a half step. So I'm starting from any key. I'll start here, and the smallest amount I can move up would be right here, there's no key between them and the smallest amount I can move down would be here, no key between them. So these are half step. Movements. It doesn't matter if you're moving from a white key to a black key or a black key to a white key or white to white. If it's the smallest amount you can move, it's a half step. The other helpful term is whole step, and that is just two half steps put together. So, again, if I'm starting from the same note and I want to move up a whole step, well, I'm going to count two half steps, and I know that these are a whole step apart. We want to know the names of the notes so that we can reference them in this course. But if I'm ever moving too fast for you, don't get overwhelmed. You can always go back, rewatch a part, ask questions in the comments. I want this to be at your pace. But let's look at the names of the white keys, and then we'll look at the names of the black keys, and we'll see that they're actually really similar. On the white keys, we're going to start with the white key right before a group of two black keys, and that is a C note. Now, the C most in the middle of the piano is very cleverly named middle C. What do you know? Now, thankfully, music is really easy because we just go through the letters of the alphabet as we move from white key to white key. So after C in the alphabet is D, after C on the piano is D. After D is E and F, and G. But wait, now it starts over. Music goes from A to G. So after G, we start back over at A. B, and we're back to C. Now, we talked about breaking the piano up into patterns. Well, those are the notes in our patterns. C to the next CU, C to C. So we've got C, D in the middle of two black keys, E to F, G, A. B. We're right on back to C and our pattern loops. Now, the good news is that the black keys aren't difficult to learn if we know the names of the white keys. The biggest trick to knowing the names of the white keys is memorize where C is. That's the most important note when we're starting out and then just counting up or down, going through the alphabet from there. The names of the rest of the notes will come to you as we use them more and more. Now, the black keys are called sharps or flats. They're a little bit of both. So if we're talking about a sharp note, we're talking about taking one of our white keys and moving it up by a half step. Now, here's an example that will make it make sense. I've got my C note. And if I move it up to the black key above it, I'm going to call it C Sharp. I've got a D note, and if I move it up a half step, it's a D sharp to the black key above it. Flats are when we come down. Okay? If I've got an E note and I'm going a half step down to the black key below it, that is an E flat. So D sharp and E flat are actually the same tone, the same pitch, and they share a key. Now, believe it or not, you're able to play songs on the piano, and I'll prove it to you. We can put notes on the screen, and you're able to count around the white and black keys. For example, we've got some notes on the screen now just looking at letters. So let's try to figure this out on the piano. Our first note is an E, so I'm going to count from the piano, C, D. Next one's a C. That's very easy. C. C, D, E, F G. And D. That's all there is to it. Now, there are 1 million ways to play notes. There are multiple notes at a time. There's sheet music, which is a different way to read notes. But for right now, we know the names of the white keys and the black keys and how to play basic songs. So we're ready already to write our own music. Now, like I just said, we could even play two notes, and we do that by putting them on top of each other. So here I have C and G and C and F. So I could again take my hand, and I could play C and G and hit them together. And C and F and hit them together. Now, if you've got the PDF from the description, there's going to be a ton of songs in there that you can practice through with just the letters you may even recognize some of. 3. How to Play Chords: Now, I don't want you to get confused. Sometimes you'll be handed a song that looks like this, and it's really important to know that these are not single notes. This is something called a chord chart, and that word chord is really important to us as pianists. We need to know what a chord is and how to play it. Now, this isn't difficult. We've been learning single notes, right? One note at a time. And a chord is just any three or more notes that we're playing at the same time. Sometimes in private lessons, I'll have students lay down on the piano when they hear a chord is A three notes or more. And they go, Is this a chord? And, technically, laying down on the piano would be making a chord, just not a very good sounding one. But yes, a chord is any three or more notes. Now, specifically, the chords that we want to learn start from a note, any note, and we play every other note. So if I start from a C, I'm skipping over the D and playing an E. Skipping over the F and playing a G, and that is the type of chord you and I are going to be using throughout this course. This is called a Triad chord because we've got three notes. Try triad. The really important part here is that whatever note our chord starts on is also the name of our chord. So I'm starting from a C note. I've got a C chord. I start from an F note, and I've got an F chord. Or a G note, I've got a G. Cord. So there's Triad Cords one oh one, but there's one more piece of information we want to know. That's that there are two types of triad cords called major and minor. Now, major chords sound really happy like this and minor chords sound more sad like this. Now, both of those chords started from the same note. They started from a C note. But we made one little change that made the whole sound happy or sad, major or minor. So let's look at how to do that, and then we'll be able to play major and minor chords from anywhere on the piano, which is really cool. This all has to do with half steps, okay? For a major chord, we're starting from any note, and I'll use that C as my example. And then for our next note, I'm going to count up by four half steps. So I've got here and I'm counting one, two, three, four. And I found the next note in my major chord. Now, I could count up from this note again, but I want to count three half steps on top. So from this middle note, I'm counting one, two, three half steps, and I've got all the notes I need in a major chord. The really cool thing is, you can do that from anywhere on the piano. I could take it from a weird note like F sharp, and I still only need to count one, two, three, four, and then one, two, three. And I've got a chord that uses all black keys. This is an F sharp major chord. Now, minor chords are just as easy. They just flip the order. So I'm counting three half steps first. Let's try that again from my C note. And I'm counting from here one, two, three, which is a different key now. And then from here four half steps one, two, three, four. Now I've got a C minor chord. So major and minor. You'll notice the only note that changes is that middle key. It's moving by a half step up and down. So now let's take a look at a cord progression. We've got C, E minor, G, and D. So let's see if we can do this. We know three of these chords are major, and it looks like one of them is minor. Let's start with the first chord, the C. So I'm going to start from a C note. I'm going to count one, two, three, four, and then one, two, three, I've got a C chord. Next chord is an E minor. So I'm going to move my starting note to an E. And remember, I'm going to flip how I'm counting. So now I'm going to count one, two, three, one, two, three, four. There's my E minor. Then I've got a G. So now I'm moving to a G note, counting one, two, three, four, one, two, three, and finally, a D, starting from a D, counting one, two, three, four, and one, two, three. So together, that's C. E minor, G, and D. Now, something I want to point out is that our minor chord was all white keys. One of our major chords, two of our major chords were all white keys. And we had a major chord that used a black key. So it doesn't really matter minor major if you're playing white or black keys. All that matters is counting those half steps accurately. The last way we can use chords and make them sound really big and booming is with root notes. And this is where we're using both hands a little bit, which seems scary, but stay with me. All we're doing is taking the first note in a chord. That's our root note, the note it builds off of and taking our left hand and moving it down to the next example of that note. So if I'm playing a C chord, my left hand will play a lower C. And then I play them all together and I get this nice big sound that fills out the piano a bit more than chords by themselves. So that root note follows my chord. I can take this same set of chords and try it with the root notes. I've got C E minor G D. So if you know how to count to four, you can play chords on the piano, which is really cool. Again, in the PDF that comes with this, there's gonna be a bunch of different sets of chords for you to practice this new skill out with. 4. Reading Sheet Music: Okay, now we get into sheet music, and I know that this can seem a little bit daunting, but we're going to break it down as best as we can. So by the time this course is done, you'll be able to look at a piece of sheet music and have a pretty good understanding of what's going on and how to translate it onto your piano. To start with sheet music, we have a clef. And a clef is something that designates a portion of the piano. For example, we have something called a treble clef, which is the higher register of the piano and a bass clef, which is the lower register of the piano. Both of these clefs combined make something called a grand staff. Now, the staff here is what you'll typically see in piano music since we have both parts of the piano in a song. These clefts are separated by middle C. That's C in the middle of the piano. So if I'm playing above middle C, I'm probably playing in the treble clef, and if I'm playing below middle C, I'm probably playing in the bass clef. You'll notice these clefts are just lines and spaces. Each clef has got five lines and four spaces. And what we do to communicate notes is we put dots on these lines and spaces. Now, before we get too crazy, let's separate these clefts and just take them one at a time. And we'll start with the treble clef, which is more common in beginner piano. The treble clef starts from middle C and moves up the piano. Now, middle C is special. It gets its own line underneath the treble clef. And the really cool thing is we move these dots up line space, line, space, line space, line space, and they all move up one key of the piano. So after C is D, E and F, and G and A and B, and another C and D. Thankfully, we don't need to look at this and try to memorize where every single dot goes because that sounds like a nightmare. Instead, we have sentences and words we use to help us easily memorize these. For example, if we can remember the very real truth that every good burger deserves fries, then we know all the lines of the treble clef. Every good burger deserves fries, EGBDF just like that, we know all the lines in the treble clef. The spaces are just the word face FACE. So instead of memorizing individual notes, let's just remember that every good burger deserves fries and face, and we should be able to look at the treble clef and say, Okay, I know what this note is. I know what this note is. I know what that note is. The only exceptions to this rule is that there is middle C kind of hanging underneath on its own line, and D sits underneath on the bottom. So they're kind of weird notes in that way. The base clef is just as easy, except from that middle C, it's all below. So now we're working down. So middle C is above the base clef. In fact, it joins the two clefts together sitting right in the middle. Now, the sentences for the bass clef also, for some reason, have to do with food. I didn't make them up, but they're all about food. For the lines, it's good burritos don't fall apart. Another very true fact, and all cows eat grass for the spaces. So we look at these two big, scary clefts and we go, Oh, my goodness, I'll never read sheet music. It's not true. Just remember, good burritos don't fall apart. All cows eat grass. Every good burger deserves fries and face. And with those four truths and a word, we can read sheet music, which is super cool. Middle C right in the middle. We move up or down. So for example, here's a super simple song on sheet music, and I know just looking at it, we'll work through it together. We've got C up to G D. Then it looks like we move back down into the bass clef. So down to A, a low G. A low D, and even a low C. That's how we're breaking it down. And we could go through 1 million examples together, but this is a quick course. So we're just going to cover how it works and you need to put in the work and the practice. There are only two more things to know about sheet music, which is crazy. One has to do with note timing, and the other has to do with chords in sheet music. Now, let's start with chords because they're easy to understand. If we want to play a chord on the sheet music, just like at the beginning of the orse when we put the notes on top of each other, we're going to put these dots on top of each other. So looking at a C chord, I have C E and G. So I need to find the notes, CE and G and just put them vertically on top of each other. Sometimes you'll see a blend of single notes and chords on top like the chord chart. That's also really cool because then you can play melody with your right hand and know what chords to play in the left hand without having to think through the sheet music and reading each note. The other kind of more complicated part is note timing. When we play a song, not every note we hold down lasts for the same amount of time. So we need to understand how to write time in sheet music. Now, some songs are really quick. So songs are really slow, and we set that with something called beats per minute. And a beat is just a click, a count. It could be fast. It could be slow. It doesn't Some people think that one beat is 1 second, and that's not quite true. A beat would be 1 second if you had 60 beats a minute, 60 seconds in a minute. So the most important thing to know is that the length of a beat is relative to the song. Might have a fast song, might have a slow song, but different ways to write notes last for different beats. Now, the easiest way to look at this is Mary Had a Little Lamb. Check this out. You'll see that some of these notes are filled in. Some of these notes are not filled in, and most of these notes have this line coming off of them except at the very end of the song. Here's what this all means. The notes that are filled in are quarter notes. They last for one beat. So when we count them, we're counting. One, one, one, one, one, one. The notes that are not filled in are called half notes, and they last for two beats. So we have one, one, one, one, one, one, two, one, one, one, two, one, one, one, two. Okay? Quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes are just these fat circles, and they last for a massive four beats. So at the very end of our song, one, one, one, one, one, one, two, three, four. And we hold the key down through all of those counts. Now, there's a ton of types of notes out there. We have these eighth notes that last for half of a beat. We have these dotted half notes that last for three beats. And we have a lot of ways to manipulate how many beats we're using. But in a lot of the basic sheet music we're going to be using and you're going to see in the PDF, we're sticking with quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes. Now, why are these note timings called quarter, half and whole? Well, music, sheet music is split up into these things called measures, and they just measure the music. And your most common measures have four beats in them. So when we're writing out music, we have these measures. We split them up into four beats. Some songs use three, some songs use six. The most common ones use four. So we're naming these notes based off the most common type of measure. One beat would take up a quarter of a common measure, right? You could fit four of them in. A half note, two beats would take up half a four beat measure, and a whole note takes up the whole measure. So the two things you need to think about when you're playing sheet music is just where the note is on the piano, and that's going to be where it's written vertically. And then how long you're holding the note four, which is going to be how it's written, filled in, not filled in, or big fat circle with no line. 5. Final Tips: Now, piano is 80% hands and 20% feet. You may notice that you have some pedals underneath your piano. If you don't right now, maybe you have a small electric keyboard on a bed or something, that's totally fine. This is still an important course because it's so common. But these are pedals, and we play a little bit with our feet. Sometimes there's one pedal, sometimes two, sometimes three. But we're going to talk about the most important pedal. If your piano only has one petal, it is this petal we're about to talk about, and that is the sustain pedal. Now, if I play keys on my piano and I don't press the sustained pedal, I get this. Nothing crazy about that. If I press the sustained pedal down, and then I play these keys Ah. They keep ringing out, even though I'm not holding them down. So the sustained pedal is going to keep the notes playing until I take my foot off or until the notes just kind of die out. So how do we use this in a song? Well, it can be really nice to help us string these notes together. I I hold it down. That's lovely. Or it could be a huge problem if I hit some wrong notes or the notes start overlapping each other. So if I play a chord progression and keep my pedal held down, It's just a mess. It's a disaster. So we want to be really careful with when we're pressing it down to hold notes and when we're lifting it up. When we're playing chords like a chord chart, here is just a great way to think about it. When the hands go down on a new chord, your foot comes up and down. So let's go ahead and take a look at that. We're going to use the same chord progression we did earlier on C, E minor G, and D. So I've got C. I'm gonna press it and press my foot down to hold it down. Now, when I play my next chord, I'm gonna press it down. When my fingers go down, my foot will come up to release the last notes and then down to hold the new notes. So let's try that a little bit quicker. I've got C down. Fingers go down, foot comes up and back down. Move to Go goes up and down, and D foot goes up and down. So that's how we use the sustained pedal to kind of hold notes in a way that's helpful to us, but let go of notes that might be hurtful to us. When we're playing single notes in music, it's really up to you and your ear. But as you're starting out, a great point of reference is maybe we just lift up and press back down at the beginning of each new measure. Finally, being able to play chord charts is really cool and fun and exciting, but how do we find them? I'm sure you've got songs that you want to learn, so what do we do? This is probably the easiest part of the whole course. You look up the name of the song you want, followed by the word chords. Now, there are a few different places to go. I personally like ultimate guitar. This is not sponsored by them. I just like the tools that they have down at the bottom. If some of the chords are crazy or you don't understand them, you can hit Simplify. And that's going to just make the chords really standard letters major or minor. And then there's another one that says transpose, which helps us kind of shift the whole song up or down. So we're playing the same song, but using different chords that we might be more comfortable with. And for new students, I find that to be really helpful for them. It's a huge relief on them to look at chords, hit simplify, and then all of a sudden the song is really approachable. And believe it or not, those are the basics. That's knowing what the white and black keys are and how to read letters. That's knowing chords for chord charts and the basics of sheet music. So whether you're presented with a chord chart, someone writes out letters for you or hands you a piece of basic sheet music, you can work from there and move on to other concepts on the piano, intermediate, advanced concepts. There's a course I did down in the description that covers beginner through advanced chords or how to work through something called modes on the piano, which help us to solo and do some crazy stuff. The chords course has specific styles of chords, if you want to play blues or jazz piano as well. But you've done it. Hopefully, that answered everything for you and you feel that you're in a good place to keep going. Again, you are always welcome to leave a comment, ask a question. I'm active. I love answering questions. Or you can send me an email if you don't want to ask publicly at Jacob at lamblssens.com. But leave a like, subscribe, and I'll see you in some different videos.