How to Play Piano and Easy Piano Songs for Beginners

I started learning piano a few months ago, so I looked for piano lessons for beginners and easy songs to play on piano.

It is the secret for a successful learning: staying motivated because you can play easy piano songs quickly. Not "kids songs" but popular songs that sound really good on piano.

I share here my little experience for beginners. I kept only the essential, just what you need to play piano quickly.

You can find more details and piano tutorials on my website:

www.piano-tutorials.com

Step 1: Piano Posture

If you enjoy playing piano, you will play for hours. First of all, you must learn the correct piano posture, otherwise it could affect your health with cramps or fatigue, for example.

But also you have to care about your hand position to improve your dexterity and performance.

Sitting at the piano

The basic rule for playing piano is to sit up straight and never slouch. Sit on the front half of the bench, in front of the middle of the piano with your feet on the floor.

Keep your back straight and your arms hang relaxed from your shoulder.

Your elbows should be slightly in front of you. Don't forget to adjust the bench height so that your elbows are slightly higher than keys to better control the volume of your sound.

Hand position

First comes the relaxtion and then all the rest. Relax your shoulders, elbows, wrists and hands.

When you place your hands on the keys, you must keep your hands arched and your fingers slightly curled.

Keep your wrists as flexible and relaxed as possible, this is the secret for achieving an expressive sound.

Step 2: Piano Basics

Before playing piano, you need to understand the layout of a piano keyboard, the horizontal row of keys you use to play the music.

The pedals at the bottom of the piano are also important. It helps you to sound like a pro.

Keyboard

Most of the keyboards have 88 keys (sometimes less) with 52 white and 36 black keys.

If you look at the layout, you will see a repeating pattern: a group of two black keys then a group of three black keys between the white keys. Remember these groups of black keys because they will help us to find the music notes in a next step.

The keys on your keyboard are arranged from the lowest to highest (from left to right). Pick a white key, play it, and go up (to the right) to the adjacent key (whether black or white) and play it.

The distance between the two consecutive keys you have played is called a Half Step. Continue to go up by Half Step until you reach the last key of the keyboard. You will notice that each time you are on a white key, the adjacent key can be black or white, whereas when you are on a black key, the adjacent key is necessarily white.

Now you have learned what a Half Step is, the definition of a Whole Step is very easy. Moving a Whole Step means you move (up or down) two Half Steps from your starting key.

Pick a white key, play it and move to the next white key (on your right for example) and so on. You will notice that most of the time, you move a Whole Step. But when there is no black key between two adjacent white keys, you move a Half Step.

Pedals

You can find two or three pedals at the bottom of your piano. They are played with your foot.

As a beginner, you will only use the right one, the sustain pedal (also called damper). The sustain pedal allows all of the notes to resonate after your fingers release the keys, for as long as the pedal is depressed.

The best way to learn how to pedal is to just try it out as you play. Place the ball of your foot on the pedal and the heel on the ground directly in front of the pedal. Your heel should never leave the ground while depressing the pedal. When releasing the pedal, be sure to do so gently.

Step 3: Piano Notes

If you are not familiar with a piano keyboard, the groups of black keys (see previous step) will help you to find any key on the piano. The place to start is the middle C.

Middle C

Middle C is the reference point on the piano.

You can find the position of every key on the keyboard by using the black keys as a reference. The C note is the white key directly to the left of the group of two black keys (see the red line above). As you can see, you have more than one C. The middle C is the one in the center of your piano keyboard.

White notes (also called natural notes)

All the white notes use the first seven letters of the alphabet. Moving up from C you have the notes D, E, F, G and you go back to the beginning of the alphabet with A, B, C and so on.

The group of seven white keys from C to B, with the five black keys between, is called an octave and this pattern repeats itself on a piano.

When using the black keys as a reference, you can find the F note directly to the left of the group of three black keys (yellow line). To find the A note, imagine a line in the middle of the group of three black keys (blue line).

Black notes (also called accidental notes)

The black keys on a piano are arranged in groups of two and groups of three. Their names are based on the white keys near them and the Sharp (#) or Flat (b) symbols.

A Sharp means to go up to the next key by a half step (see previous step), a Flat to go down.

So the black key immediately above D becomes D sharp or D# and the black key immediately below becomes D flat or Db.

Each black key can have two different names, the sharp and the flat names. It is important to remember them because both the names are used in music. For example, the first black key in the group of two keys is called C# or Db.

At this point, you are ready to play your first piano song.

Step 4: Easy Songs to Play on Piano

You can start by one of these easy songs to play on piano.

Don't forget to use the sustain pedal for these songs. You can let it depressed all the time at the beginning. With more experience, you will hear that the sound is better when you release and depress the pedal just before you start a new serie of notes.

All of Me - John Legend

This Instructable will teach you how to play your first song on piano.

Beginners can learn this song in one hour. You will use only your right hand in the first parts and your left hand, just a little at the end. The tutorial is very easy and the song sounds good on piano.

Heathens - Twenty One Pilots