Lesson 1 - Preparing to Play

• be seated comfortably and sitting up straight at your piano
• position yourself so you're squarely facing the center of keyboard
• relax your arms from the shoulder and place both hands on the keyboard
• you should be seated at a distance so that your hands easily reach the keyboard but aren't so close that your wrists are bent
• your fingers should be curved to play the keys with their tips
  
• your thumbs should rest on the keys alongside the other fingers
• the backs of your hands should be level so that a coin could be balanced on them while the fingers play
  

Traps to Avoid

• flattening your fingers on the keys
• curling fingers (particularly the 4th and 5th) tightly when they're not being used to play
• thumbs dropping away from the keys when other fingers play
• fingers sticking straight when not being used to play

Music Note Names

A piano keyboard commonly has 88 black and white keys but there are only 12 distinct notes we manipulate to make music. Furthermore, there are only 7 letters of the alphabet used to name those 12 notes. They are:

A B C D E F G

The notes named by these 7 letters are all white keys on the keyboard. To locate them, we use the pattern of the black keys.

The black keys are arranged into a repeating pattern: a group of two and a group of three. The white key located between every pair of black keys is named D. The white key to its left is C and the white key to its right is named E.

Activity:

• Locate and play all of the Ds on your keyboard
• Locate and play all of the Cs
• Locate and play all of the Es

Once you feel comfortable you can find each of these easily, repeat the activity with your eyes closed.

• Use the feel of your fingers to guide you firstly to all the Ds.
• With your eyes still closed, listen to the sound of each D you play
• Notice the similarity in the sound of all the Ds
• Listen to the difference in their sound - the further down to your left you go, the "lower" in pitch they sound. Moving up the keyboard to the right and all the Ds sound "higher" in pitch.
• Notice how much your hearing feels like it improves when you close your eyes
• Enjoy that feeling!
  

Useful Tips & Practice Strategies

• Whenever you're learning anything new to play on the keyboard, experiment and play around with it until you can do it with your eyes (literally) closed
• Experiment by learning to play things equally well with both hands (separately first, and then hands together)
  
• LISTEN to everything you play!