How To Play Piano – EASY First Piano Lesson!

have you ever wanted to learn piano but you don’t know how to get started well you’ve come to the right place because today i’m going to teach you the very basics of piano i’m gonna love you unconditionally take your pain take your hey guys it’s dylan lane and today i’m going to be teaching you the very basics of piano so that you can get started in this lesson you’ll learn 10 things you’ll learn your finger numbers the piano key names how to find any note on the piano correct hand positioning the difference between a whole step and a half step how to play any major or minor chord and how to play some of the most popular and easy piano patterns so that you can then take those and apply them to any chord for any song you want to learn before we get started i’ve made you a cheat sheet to go along with this video it will have everything i talk about in this video typed up so that you can download it and have it on your computer or your device or you can print it out to have right in front of you whenever you’re practicing i’ll post a link to that cheat sheet in the description box down below first let’s talk about the piano itself a piano or keyboard traditionally has 88 keys there are some varieties that will have under 88 keys but this is just the standard number of the 88 keys on the piano 52 of them are the white keys and 36 of them are the black keys if you don’t have an 88 key keyboard or piano you’ll still be able to apply the majority of this information from this lesson now let’s talk about the names of the keys on the piano quick side note i may use the word keyboard as well as the word piano throughout this tutorial and just know that anything i teach you in this tutorial could apply to both the keyboard and the piano rather than label each of the 88 keys on the keyboard with numbers 1 through 88 we label them with letters the letters used to label the piano keys are a through g a b c d e f g when we get to g we start back over at a so this gives us seven letters how do you know which of those seven letters are assigned to which keys on the piano well first of all it’s important to remember that if we have 88 keys on the piano but only seven letters to work with that means we will be repeating letters throughout the entire keyboard for example as i showed you earlier if we start on a and go b c d e f g the alphabet starts back over a so this would be a and then that would repeat all the way up the same rule applies when going backwards on the piano so if we start at a and then go to g then f e d c b a it would start back over again at g f and all the way down so how do we know which letter goes with which piano key first take a look at all of the black keys and notice how they’re in groups of two and three two three two they alternate between groups of two and three two three two here’s a trick go to a group of three black keys find the middle one and then go directly to the right and that’s an a if you know a on the piano that means you can find any other note as long as you know the alphabet forwards and backwards check it out if i play a then i just go up the alphabet b c d e f g and then what do we do we start back over at a a b c so let’s try that trick again here’s a group of three black notes find the middle one go directly to the right and there’s a now let’s go backwards a g f e d c b a and we can confirm that’s a because we’re at another group of three here’s the middle one go directly to the right there’s a one more time just in case it wasn’t clear for any of you to find any note on the piano we’re first going to find a group of three black notes play the middle black note go directly to the right which is this way or you could say up the piano and that’s a then the very next note to the right would be the next letter in the alphabet which is b then c and so forth or if we go back to a and we go this way if we go left or down the piano then we’re going to go down in the alphabet so what comes before a in the musical alphabet g f e d c by this time you may be wondering what about the black keys you can think about the black keys as an extension of each white key for example let’s go back to a there’s a black key directly to the left of it and directly to the right of it think of these black keys as an extension of this white key a welcome back to that really quick i want to teach you that for every white note on the piano there’s a sharp note and a flat note now take that information and let’s go back over to our two black notes so here’s a this black note directly to the left is a flat and this black note directly to the right is a sharp if we play the a note and go directly to the black note to the left that’s an a flat now if we play a and go directly to the black note to the right of a that’s a sharp because all three of these notes start with the letter a that’s why i want you to think of the black notes as an extension of the white note so again we have a a flat a a sharp let’s take a look at another key to help further explain let’s go from a to d a b c d now that we’re at d we see that there’s a black note to the left and a black note to the right [Music] we know that these two black notes are an extension of d and that one of them is a flap and the other one is a sharp the one directly to the left is a flat which makes it d flat the black note directly to the right of d is a sharp which makes it d sharp while it’s true that all white notes on the piano have a sharp and flat it’s not always the case that the sharps and flats are the black keys for example let’s go to c as you can see there’s a black note directly to the right but when we go to the left there’s a white note in that case we would say that the black note directly to the right is still the sharp which makes it c sharp and the white note directly to the left would be the flat which is c flat i know this might sound a little confusing because we just learned that this note is b right well some notes can have multiple names so this could be called b but it could also technically be called c flat now that you understand the names of the keys on the piano let’s talk about the difference between a whole step and a half step it’s important to understand this because it will help you with your chords as well as your scales why are chords and skills important because those are the things that you’ll be using whenever you’re learning your favorite songs a half step is a term that we use whenever we play a note directly to the left or the right of the note we were just playing for example let’s look at g a half step above g would be g sharp which we just learned let’s go back to g a half step below g would be g flat let’s go to another key for example let’s go to b flat a half step above b flat would be b back to b flat a half step below b flat would be a moving on to whole steps a whole step equals the combination of two half steps so for example if we play g a whole step above g would be the equivalent of two half steps so let’s go one half step up which is g sharp now let’s go another half step up which would be a therefore a whole step above g would be a let’s do another example let’s go to c so if a whole step equals two half steps then let’s go a whole step below c so in order to go a whole step below c we need to go two half steps below so a half step below c is b and another half step below b would be b flat therefore a whole step below c would be b flat if we wanted to find a whole step above c we would go c then one half step up which is c sharp then another half step up which is d [Music] meaning that a whole step above c would be d all right we’re getting closer to the part of the tutorial where you actually get to play something but before we can play we do need to know our finger numbers the easiest way to remember finger numbers is to memorize that your thumbs are always one if you know that your thumbs are one which kind of rhymes then you can just count two three four five so thumbs are one then two three four five thumbs are one then two three four five thumbs are one then two three four five try that out and i promise you’ll have it memorized in no time so just to be clear your thumbs are number one your index is number two your middle fingers are number three your ring fingers are number four and your pinkies are number five it’s time to get our hands on the piano which means we need to talk about hand positioning the first step is to gently rest your fingertips on the piano keys next imagine that there’s a small ball underneath your hand which means you would need to curl your fingertips in order to put your fingers around it you’ll also want to make sure that your wrist is up instead of down and resting or arched because that’s a little extreme but you want to make sure that your wrist is nice and even with your hand that your fingertips are curved as if there were a ball around your hand and that your fingertips are gently resting on the keys it’s time to talk about chords and patterns which will set you up to play some of your favorite songs in this tutorial i’m going to teach you four of the most popular chords that you hear in a lot of popular songs on the radio today those chords are c g f and a minor if you don’t already know a chord is the combination of three or more notes if i play the c key on the piano that’s a note if i play c e and g that’s three notes making it a chord so if the c key is a note but we want to play a c chord and we need three or more notes to make the chord how do we know which two additional notes to play besides the c note remember earlier when we talked about whole steps and half steps this is where that comes in handy we’ll use half steps and whole steps to help us figure out which notes to use for major and minor chords in order to construct a major chord you’ll first need to start out with your root note what is your root note well if you’re playing a c chord then c which is also the name of the chord is your root note let’s put our left hand finger five on the root note of the c chord which is c now that we have our root note we’re going to find our second note by counting up four half steps so one half step up from c is c sharp second would be d the third would be d sharp and the fourth would be e that means our second note in the chord is going to be e which will play with our left hand finger three in order to find our third note that will make up the c chord we’re going to now count up three half steps so one half step up from e is f the second one would be f sharp and the third one would be g so let’s use our left hand finger one on g if you play all three of these notes at the same time you play a c chord now i know what you’re thinking can we apply the same thing to any single note and chord on the piano and the answer is yes and that’s why it’s fun because if you know that trick you can make any chord on the piano just find your root note so let’s pick a crazy one let’s pick b flat so b-flat is right here how do i know that well if i know that this is a using our trick from earlier finding three black notes playing the middle going to the right a then we know that this is b because it’s the next letter and the alphabet and we know that a flat is the note directly to the left of the white note meaning that this would be b flat okay so there’s our root note let’s play it with our pinky now to find the next note we’re going to go up four half steps one two three four but i’m going to play that with my middle finger finger three and then we’re going to count up three half steps one two three i’m gonna play it with my finger one and there’s a b flat major chord before i move on to teaching you about minor chords i first want to teach you the three major chords that i plan to teach you today which are c g and f so we just learned c which is c e g let’s go on to the g major chord step number one find your root note what is the root note of g g so place your left hand finger five on g step number two is to count up four half steps one two three four play it with your finger three step number three is to count up three half steps one two three play it with your finger one and there’s our g chord now on to our last major chord for today the f major chord step number one is find your root note which is f play it with your finger five now count up four half steps one two three four that’s a we’re going to play it with finger three and then count up three half steps one two three play it with finger one and there’s an f chord now that we’ve learned the g c and f major chords i now want to move on to our fourth chord of the day which will be a minor this means i need to teach you first about how to play a minor chord now for every major chord on the piano there is a minor chord what’s the difference well there’s a difference technically which i’m going to show you but also there’s a difference in how they sound so a major chord let’s play c major a major chord has a very happy sound if we play that same chord with the minor version which would be c minor it has a more dark and sad sound you might have caught the difference on your own between the c major and the c minor but just in case you didn’t i want to go over how it’s technically different so as we saw with the major chords we would find our root note then go up four half steps then three half steps with a minor chord we’re still going to find our root note for the first step so for a minor our root note would be a but instead of going up four half steps we’re going to go up three half steps one two three which is c and then we’re gonna go up four half steps so it’s switched from the major chord instead of going up four half steps and then three half steps we’re going up three half steps and then four half steps so for our third note of the a minor chord we’re going to count up four half steps one two three four which is e a c and e make our a minor chord now i know i told you that i’m only teaching you a minor for the day but because i want to give you another example let’s learn d minor two for d minor step number one is to find your root note which is d then we’re going to count up three half steps one two three then four half steps one two three four and d f a make our d minor chord for the final portion of this video i want to give you two simple easy patterns that you can use for the chords i just taught you which you can then use for songs you want to learn the first pattern i’m going to go over with you uses what we call blocked chords a blocked chord simply means that all of the notes in the chord are being played at the exact same time for example the c chord c e g if i play them all at once that’s a blocked chord the second pattern i’m going to teach you uses what we call broken chords broken chords are the opposite of blocked chords instead of playing all of the notes together we’ll play them one at a time so a broken chord would sound like this and a blocked chord would sound like this blocked chords all the notes are played at the same time broken chords all of the notes are played individually in the blocked chord pattern we’re going to start with the c chord so we’re actually gonna use our right hand finger one on c finger three on e finger five on g then we’re gonna take our left hand and we’re only to play the root note of each chord beat play so let’s put our finger five on c if we play those all together it’ll sound like this now we’re going to count out loud one two three four and we’re going to play the blocked chord in our right hand on every single number but in our left hand we’re only going to play the root note on number one so first i’m just going to do the right hand one two three four now just the left hand one two three four notice that i held down the root note in my left hand for one all the way through four so that it will ring out and have a nice sound now i’ll do hands together one two three four now we’re going to apply that same exact pattern to each of the chords we learned moving on to the f chord we have f a c in our right hand and our left hand will only play the root note which is right here so together one two three four moving on to g we’ll play g b d in our right hand and the root note in our left hand hands together one two three four now for a minor our right hand will play a c e and our left hand will play a which is up here so you’ll need to stretch your thumb just a little bit one two three four and then we’ll go back to c one two three four once you get comfortable with this you can play it without counting for now counting just helps you to have a steady beat while you play now i’ll play the whole thing straight through with counting and then i’ll play the whole thing straight through without counting one two three four f one two three four g one two three four a minor one two three four c one two three four now without counting so all right moving on to our broken cord pattern we’re going to use the same exact chords and fingers but this time it’s going to have each note played individually instead of at the same time let’s get our hands back on the c chord so again our left hand’s only going to play the root note on counts one through four but our right hand instead of playing a chord on each number it’s gonna play a single note like this one two three four so notice i played c then e then g then back to e or you could say finger one three five three we’ll apply that to each chord see one two three four f one two three four g one two three four a minor one two three four c one two three four now without counting and that concludes your first piano lesson i hope you enjoyed it i hope you learned a ton and i hope you’re feeling inspired and encouraged to go learn more and i just want you to know that i’ll definitely be posting more piano tutorials in the near future so come back and keep learning and remember to play write and spread the light of me dancing is …

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