Course to learn to play the piano from scratch

Welcome to the beginner piano course at buscarinstrumentos.com. Our intention with this course is to complement and improve the contents that are on the net to learn to play the piano for beginners. The more courses you take, the better, so we invite you to practice with us.

How to use this course?

I’m sure you’ll be interested in…

• Ranking with the best digital pianos in quality-price ratio
• The cheapest musical keyboards for beginners
• Learn piano by yourself and for free

The course is grouped in dropdown lists so that you have everything on the same page and don’t get lost among infinite links. You only have to unfold the lesson by clicking on its title. We encourage you to read the lessons in order, at least to start and go slowly. Well, the course is designed to go little by little and you can progress without being overwhelmed and that way always be motivated.

How to learn to play the piano?

In this tutorial we will give you the basic tools to learn the first songs. But it’s important that you then evolve and progress. So if you’d also like to take a look at our resource guide for learning piano.

Sometimes you may wonder how to play the piano. At this point I want to specify that the technique is the same but it is better to go from a piano to a keyboard and the inverse.

There’s another very interesting option. That although they are paid app and interactive programs that guide you in learning the keyboard and are much cheaper than a private teacher. These apps for midi or through their microphone are able to know which keys you are pressing and they correct you if necessary to know if you do it right or wrong. If you are interested visit our guide with apps and webs to learn piano.

Now we’ll leave you our piano tutorial course for beginners. Enjoy it!

LESSON 1 – What do I need to start the course?

Clearly, the first thing you’ll need is a keyboard and time to practice. To begin with, almost any keyboard is good for you, although it should have at least 61 keys and if possible 88 better. There are very cheap keyboards for that price. The important thing when you buy a keyboard is to make sure that it has speakers and do not confuse it with a MIDI keyboard to connect to the computer. There are keyboards that have both, MIDI output port and speakers to sound by themselves, those you can buy without problems. The CASIO brand has very suitable models.

Don’t miss our selection with the best cheap keyboards of the moment:

Practicing a musical instrument requires a certain amount of time each day. You could start practicing for about an hour a day. To play the keyboard look for a comfortable seat, without arms. It can have a backrest but no arms because it would hinder you to play.

Many times it is more important the daily and constant study that the number of hours that you put yourself to play the instrument. You’d better study half an hour a day than three hours a day and then go two days without touching. If you play every day you will see how you progress and get hooked on this wonderful passion that is playing the piano.

Can you learn to play the piano at home without disturbing your neighbors?

Most of the keyboards you can find nowadays are electronic, besides cheap they usually have an exit for headphones. This way you can play and just listen to it without disturbing your neighbors or your roommates.

LESSON 2 – The Proper Posture for Playing the Piano

Maintaining proper posture when playing a piano is vital to avoid future injuries. We are going to spend many hours in front of our piano so it is important to take care of our health in order to be able to enjoy our instrument a lot.

We have to keep our shoulders relaxed and our buttocks as close to the edge of the sidewalk as we can so that we can move correctly along the keyboard. The elbows have to be more or less at the height of the keyboard. That’s why it’s necessary to have a good adjustable stool. In this video it’s explained great:

LESSON 3 – Musical notes and piano keys

Okay, now that you’re in front of a keyboard we’re gonna explain what you’re looking at. You’ll be in front of a keyboard with black and white keys. A real piano has 88 keys, but it’s quite possible that you’re on a 61-key or 32-key keyboard because they’re the most affordable keyboards. Although this is more than enough for the course.

The white keys represent the musical notes do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si (equivalence to C-D-E-F-G-A-B) and each of the keys receives the name of the key it represents. If a DO (C english system) sounds when a key is pressed, that is the name of that key.

You may be wondering, and what are the black keys? Well, they’re variations of those notes. For example the black key next to a C on the right side is called C#. And it’s a little sharper DO. This is a little more complex but for now you just need to know this.

An octave is an interval of 8 notes. For example DO-RE-MI-FA-SOL-LA-SI-DO is the distance from one DO to another DO. As only these notes exist, this interval is repeated along the keyboard, as can be seen in the following explanatory video:

What’s an octave in music?

In order to give a little support to the course and not to concentrate everything on the same post we have extended this topic in our post about the piano keys and the differences between them. Just in case the video and this text aren’t enough for you. If you have found out well with this text and the video continues reading this post.

LESSON 4 – Our First Scale and Let’s Play!

At this point you already know that they are the keys of a piano and even if you don’t understand many concepts you are already able to start playing notes on the piano. The first thing we’ll do is play an octave from left to right. The notes on the left are the lowest on the piano and the notes on the right are the highest..

When we do this octave we are actually doing what is called a scale. For now, let this concept simply ring a bell. In the following video you will see how the C scale is done, so do it on your keyboard in the same way.

LESSON 5 – Chords, what they are and how they are built

First of all let’s answer the question of what is a chord. One of the wonders of the piano is that we can press several keys at once and they will sound at the same time. The sound produced by pressing several notes at once is what is called a chord. So we can say that a chord is a sound formed by several musical notes sounding simultaneously.

There are many chords but basically the ones you have to learn first are the major chords and the minor chords. These chords are formed by three notes and have certain rules to be built.

It is often said that the major chords are cheerful and the minor chords sound gloomy or sad. We’re going to explain how the major and minor chords of the C-DO scale are formed. View in previous lesson.

What is a tone and a semitone?

They’re units of measure. To guide you we will tell you that between a white key and another also white key that has a black key in between there is a whole tone.

When we have two whites in a row with no black in between, there is only half a tone. Just like between a white and the adjacent black keys there is a semitone of distance. We explain it to you in the following image with the DO-C scale. Also in the following image you have an introduction to the American notation. The English world calls notes by letters. You have the equivalence in the image.

The previous image is vital to understand visually in the piano the distance of the notes in tones and semitones. Once this is understood we can give the pattern to form the major chord of OD which is formed by three notes. The main one is the C itself, the second one is 2 Tones that will be E and the third one that will be a tone and a half of E, so if we have the image it will be G. That is to say, the major chord of C is formed by the C-E-G. All this reading from left to right.

If we want to form the D major chord we would count two tones, from D to E are 1 Tone, from E to F half tone, but as they are two tones we get to black key between F and G, which would be the F#, we already have the second note of the chord. To calculate the third it would be from the F# to count tone and half to the right, we would pass to the white one of the G that you would be half tone, by the black one between G and LA that is another half tone and we would arrive at the A. We already have the full D major chord.

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If we set the D major chord to D-F#-A, so that between D and F there are two tones and between F# and A and a half tone. And as you may have noticed when there are white keys together with no black in between, there is a half-tone distance between them.

Well, at this point if you have understood the two examples of E major and C major you are already able to form the major chords, one for each note C-D-E-F-G-A-B but what about the minor ones? Well, they form following another pattern from the original note and we’ll give it to you next

A minor chord is also formed from three notes. And these will be the chords of minor C, minor D, etc. The distance between the first and second note is tone and half the distance between the second note and third 2 tones. The chord of for example LA Minor will be A-C-E.

This course is not intended to overload your brain with music theory. But to get you playing your first song soon. This that we have explained to you is a little the “hard” part of the tutorial. So if you’ve understood, you can go on without a problem. In the following lesson we will give you all calculated major chords and their equivalent in American notation. It’s always good to know. If you have any doubts, we leave you a couple of very useful videos to understand all this.

Lesson 6 – The major and minor chords calculated also with American notation

Major chords:

• C Major: C-E-G, American notation: C
• G Major: G-B-D, American notation: G
• F Major: F-A-C, American notation: F
• C Major: C-E-G, American notation: C
• D Major: D-F#-A, American notation: D
• Bb Major: Bb-D-F, American notation: Bb
• A Major: A-C#-E, American notation: A
• Eb Major: Eb-G-Bb, American notation: Eb
• E major: E-G#-B, American notation: E
• Ab Major: Ab-C-Eb, American notation: Ab
• B Major: B-D#-F#, American notation: B
• Db Major: Db-F-Ab, American notation: Db
• F# Major: F#-A#-C#, American notation: F#
• Gb Major: Gb-Bb-Db, American notation: Gb
• C# Major: C#-E#-G#, American notation: C#
• Cb Major: Cb-Eb-Bb, American notation: Cb

What’s that “b” symbol in Bb?

Well, that symbol represents the flat, which subtracts half a tone from the note. Translated to piano if for example we have the white key “A”, the black key next to the left would be half a low tone. With what we could say Ab, on the other hand if we press the black key of the right it would be to increase half a tone, or to make it half a tone more acute. That black note on the right would be called La# (that symbol means sharp).

As you might have guessed a La# is the same as a Sib or Bb, they are two ways of calling the same note. Why you don’t need to know these two approaches now, we’re introducing you. It’s just to ring a bell in the future.

Minor Chords

• A Minor: A-C-E, American Notation: Am
• D Minor: D-F-A, American Notation: Dm
• B Minor: B-D-F#, American Notation: Bm
• G Minor: G-Bb-D, American Notation: Gm
• C Minor: C-Eb-G, American Notation: Cm
• C# Minor: C#-E-G#, American notation: C#m
• F Minor: F-Ab-C, American Notation: Fm
• G# Minor: G#-B-D#, American notation: G#m
• Bb Minor: Bb-Db-F, American Notation: Bbm
• D# Minor: D#-F#-A#, American notation: D#m
• Eb Minor: Eb-Gb-Bb, American notation: Ebm
• A# Minor: A#-C#-E#, American notation: A#m
• Ab Minor: Ab-Cb-Eb, American Notation: Abm

LESSON 7 – Right Hand and Left Hand Technique on the Piano

Well, at this point we’ve already understood several concepts. We are aware of what we are seeing on the keyboard, we know what a chord is and we know a few. But how do you use each hand?

The aim of this course is that you start playing the piano as soon as possible and fall in love with it so we will tell you the basic technique. The normal way to start is to make the chord with the left hand and with the right hand to play the melody of the song. As if our left hand were the guitar and our right hand the voice that sings the melody.

It’s the great thing about the piano, which allows us to use both hands and that’s very powerful.

First of all you have to work a little independence of your hands because otherwise you are going to make a mess. It is important that you are able to play a chord with your left hand and at the same time play a melody with your right hand. At the same time you do everything in a rhythm.

Don’t get overwhelmed ;)! The important thing about music is to start with very simple exercises and then progressively increase the difficulty. If you start with very difficult things you will get a little desperate but if you do things in the right order you will see how you progress without almost realizing it.

First it begins by the following video in which very basic exercises of fingering and independence of the hands are raised. Work them for a few days until you have them well internalized. In this video you will find exercises for the left hand, exercises to release the hand and everything you need to educate the hand of a piano beginner.

Also watch this video that will tell you about the proper technique to play. How to put your fingers, the right curvature and the perfect hand position.

What we want with this course is to gather the right material in the right order and not go crazy with all the information that there is Internet. We love the exercise that comes after the previous video and here we put it.

The problem with many courses on Youtube is that they jump from one video to another at a very high level, but don’t worry, we’ll select them for you and put them in order so you don’t despair. The following technical exercises will be great for you to start playing something meaningful on the piano. But do not forget before practicing for several days the exercises of independence of hands of the first video of the section.

LESSON 8 – Let’s play our first songs on the piano

Well, already at this point we should be able to play our first songs or themes. Of course they’ll be simple. But now we can think, I’m playing music on a piano! And that sure motivates us to keep going.

In this video you will end playing an easy piano song.

Well, if you’ve managed to play the song you might dare to play a classic piano beginner. Beethoven’s “Fur Elisa”. Although at the beginning for a low quality video do not be fooled and look at the whole video, because what is important and great is how well it decomposes each part of the song. The video explains very well what you have to do with your left hand and your right hand.

It is very important for this video that you have practiced for days the exercises of lesson 7, otherwise it will cost you much to touch the subject and that is not the way to learn. You must have the basis of independence from well-trained hands.

Well, in this section we have already finished the course for beginners and we congratulate you if you have come this far. You still have a lot to learn but we hope that what you learn will inspire you and motivate you to never let the music out of your life. In the following lesson we give you some extra content so that you can deep in your knowledge of music theory.

LESSON 9 – Extras of harmony, inversions of chords and degrees

During the course we have guided you so that you can play the piano without knowledge of musical theory. It is true that we have explained certain basic concepts such as that it is a tone and a semitone. Or how to build a major or minor chord.

If you have reached this lesson we understand that you want to go a little further. So we’re going to give you some content so that you can go deeper into the chords and learn new combinations.

What is a scale and the degrees of a scale?

The scales are groups of 8 notes, in this course we have learned the simplest that is C, composed by the notes C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. But let’s go deeper into the structure of scales and learn the concept of degrees.

Within the scales there are more important notes than others, the tonic is the most important and then there are more notes with other names. The chords are built from these concepts. So look at the following video where this is explained very well.

Well, once we understand the above concepts we can move on to talk about chord inversions, which is a very useful resource to expand our vocabulary on the piano. In the following video we will learn the rules for calculating these investments. It starts very simply by explaining the C-DO major chord (major DO-C triad) and the possible investments for this chord.

If you liked this course don’t hesitate to share it with your friends or people who might find it useful on social networks. Thank you very much for reading us and we invite you to see all the contents of our website, which we are sure you will find interesting.

 

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