How To Learn Piano

This website is designed to give you an understanding of how to learn piano. All the important elements of piano skill, components of piano music, and areas of piano study are included. Ideas for beginners are laid out here to give you an effective way of approaching the whole piano journey with success.

Below, you will find a plan to get you started. But first, if you really want to know how to learn piano... you must make room in your life for practice. In all of the video tutorials on this website, you will see demonstrations of how to practice. And there is even a whole webpage dedicated to how to practice. It is up to you to muster the enthusiasm and the daily dedication of time and energy to the task of working on your piano skills.

Also, to know how to learn piano, you could use a comprehensive guide that gives you an overall big-picture view of what it takes. I found that to include all of the basic details of this kind of guide would require me to either build an entirely separate website, or write a short book.  I chose to write a book.  It is available to you as an ebook (a pdf file) and it is called "Piano Player... You". If you get the book, you will have the "bird's-eye" perspective on your whole piano journey, and you will have a better understanding of how and why you should work on the various things found on this website.

A good plan for how to learn piano starts with the playing of familiar tunes. By learning a few melodies on the keys with both hands, you will accomplish several important firsts: the beginning of keyboard awareness and knowledge; familiarity with piano-finger-numbers; the beginning of basic piano technique. Most importantly, you will be actually playing the piano.

Along with the tunes, you should also start working on some piano exercises. Below, you will find a series of piano exercises for beginners designed to get the fingers working and developing some basic piano technique. As you work through these simple exercises (it should take at least 8 weeks), you should also learn some arpeggios, a cadence, and the arrangements of Twinkle and Burlesque which I use with my students as developmental exercises.

The exercises will lead nicely into the learning of scales. Pianists learn scales because they are the basic building blocks of all of the music we play. Plus, nothing else will so effectively plant the piano keyboard into your hands and your mind as do scales, arpeggios, and cadences. Ultimately, you will help your piano-playing foundation the most by learning and mastering the scale, arpeggios, cadence, and Burlesque (SACB)in all 12 major keys.

As you work on some tunes and some exercises, you can also be heading into the realm of music-reading. You probably already knew that music-reading would be a big part of how to learn piano. Below, you will find a link to a page with a plan for the development of your music-reading skills.

Eventually, you will also be interested in learning and memorizing piano pieces. Thus, you will find a listing of several piano pieces you may someday want to learn, each with music notation and an accompanying video on how to learn it.

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First, Some Basic Stuff

"PRE"-LESSON 1: Piano Fingering, Piano Technique, Piano Posture 


LESSON 1: Know Your Keyboard, part one - the black notes 


LESSON 2: Know Your Keyboard, part two – the white notes

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Now, Some Tunes:
(listed progressively)

Lesson 3: Mary Had A Little Lamb in C, F, & G 


Lesson 4: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star in C, F, & G 


Lesson 5: When The Saints Go Marching In in C,F, & G 


Lesson 6: You Are My Sunshine in C,F, & G 


Lesson 7: Down In The Valley in C,F, & G 


Lesson 8: Frere Jacques in C,F, & G 


Lesson 9: Alouette in C,F, & G 


Lesson 10: Yankee Doodle in C,F, & G 


Lesson 11: The Water Is Wide in C,F, & G 


Lesson 12: Brahms Lullaby in C,F, & G 


Lesson 13: Home On The Range in C,F, & G 


Lesson 14: Danny Boy in C,F, & G 


Lesson 15: Amazing Grace in C,F, & G 


Lesson 16: Simple Gifts in C,F, & G 


Lesson 17: America the Beautiful in C,F, & G 


Lesson 18: The Star Spangled Banner in C,F, & G 


Lesson 19: Greensleeves in A-minor, D-minor, & E-minor

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The Basic Exercises

-Click here to go to the exercises for beginners-

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Arpeggios

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Cadence

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Twinkle

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Burlesque

-click here for the instructions and video tutorial on Burlesque-

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Scales, Arpeggios, Cadence, and Burlesque

-click here to see the whole routine-

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Music Reading

-click here for ideas on reading music at the piano-

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Learning and Memorizing Piano Pieces

Here are a few examples of how to go about learning and memorizing piano music:

Elementary level pieces

The Chicken Dance

Minuet in G (Bach)

Carol Of the Bells

Intermediate level pieces

Fur Elise (Beethoven)

Canon In D (Pachelbel)

Advanced level pieces

The Entertainer (Joplin)

The "Moonlight" Sonata, 1st movement (Beethoven)

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How To Learn Piano: Some Music Theory

-click here for Wikipedia's explanation of music theory (very interesting)-