I know most of you probably already know what is covered in this article, but this is meant for the newbies. You might call this Level 1 of learning to play your piano or keyboard. With 88 keys on the piano, it may seem very difficult to learn, but fear not! Notice I show the picture of just one octave. There are 7 white keys and 5 black keys = 12 total. This repeats 7 times on the piano. So the only way you know your way around the keys is by the pair of two black keys followed by a set of three black keys. I will teach more about the black keys other posts, but for now we will just focus on the basics. Read the rest of this entry »

I also have a post where I made a diagram of the notes that should be played in each scale. It will really help those who are already getting tired of counting the half and whole steps, lol. You can can see that post here. Also you can see this in a flash program in this article.
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I am proud to help you learn the twelve major scales! What exactly is a scale? Well, think of one of your favorite songs-if you try to play it on the piano, there are some notes that sound horrible and don’t fit!…because they are not apart of that songs “key” or scale. There are certain notes that can flow together and others that are just out of place. You probably already know the C major scale. They are all of the white keys!

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Turn your speakers up! The following flash program is an excellent tool to help train your ears! A series of two notes will be played one by one. You are trying to figure out the distance between the two notes. You will not know the exact notes of the keys that are being played, but that is not important with this exercise. The intervals between the played notes are important.  Read the rest of this entry »