Lesson 2: Playing Your First Scale

It's time. Actual playing time.

It's time to play your first scale. But what even is a scale, and how do you... play it? A scale constitutes of eight notes up the keyboard and eight notes down the keyboard. There are many different scales - separated into two main categories, major and minor - but right now you'll be playing the C Major scale.

Go back to the hand position that Lesson 1 had you at. It is below if you need a quick refresher.

Now, take your left hand off the piano. We're going to start off with single hand scales, because those are easier than playing both hands together. Press your right thumb down. Like that sound? Pick it back up. See how the sound stopped? Press your thumb down again, but this time press down on the right pedal at the same time. Pick up your thumb, and keep the pedal down. Notice how the note keeps ringing? That's what that pedal does. Now, don't pay any more attention to the pedals. Take your foot completely off. It's not important right now.

Press your thumb down again, for the third time. Lift it. Press your index finger down. Lift it. Press your middle finger down. Lift it. Guess what comes next? No, not the ring finger. This is where it gets tricky. Cross your thumb under your hand so that it lands where your ring finger was. Press down, and then lift up. Follow suit with the rest of the hand, with no crossing over this time. Look below if you're having trouble following what I mean.

Now the cool part! Do exactly everything above, except in reverse! It's truly not that hard. Just make sure, when you're at the crossing over part, that you cross your middle finger over your hand this time. Once you have that done, you're a pro!

Okay, not really. But at least it's time for the left hand scale! I'm not going to show any picture this time, because at this point you should pretty much understand what's going on. Basically, put your left hand in it's position (first picture of the post), and play the first five fingers straight without any crossing over. Once your reach your thumb, cross your middle finger over your hand. Sound familiar? The left hand scale is a sort of warped mirror image of the right hand scale. At least, in terms of fingerings. Once you're done with that, try playing them at the same time.

Hard? Try this - the staff below. It's basically exactly what I've been telling you this whole time, except written a bit differently. And now that we've reached this point, I think that it's time to explain what notes are. You know, the basics. The first note on here is C, the next is D, followed by E, F, G, A, B, and then C once again. It cycles over and over up the scale.

You can see the cycle more clearly below.

And once you have that, you have finally played your first C Major Scale! Which is, like, really cool! Playing scales may seem very pointless at first, but as more sharps and flats are added into the key signature (we'll cover all this later) they will eventually help out with sight reading and learning harder pieces. Everything's relative.

Ha. Relative majors. I just made a pun. Sorry. Well, anyway, I know this is a lot to take in at first glance, especially over the internet and through a blog. However, you probably have it right! If you want to double check, you can either Google or YouTube some videos. Be aware, however, that the instructors in any video you find will most likely have a more flowing - or legato - sound to their scale than you currently do. Scales take practice, as does everything else on piano. Just remember that. Also, many of those videos will show two octave scales, which is not what we're doing just yet. You can jump ahead to them, if you want, but it's not advised.

Now, go! Play your scale for everyone to hear! Progress is being made!

Why Learn?

Piano takes so much work that it's not even funny anymore. Ten plus years later, and my fingers are aching, my brain hurts from practicing almost every day, but I'm still playing the piano. Why? Why put in all this effort if it hurts so much, if it feels like agony to slow down sections of pieces time and time again, if all my patience feels like it has run out but I still have to dig down deep to find more to muster through a practice session? Why do I do this to myself?

Everyone has that one thing that they use to calm themselves down. People use anti-stress balls, and yoga, and meditation, and casual ten hour rainfall videos off of YouTube, but what works best for me is piano. Music. Anything like that. I have my regular songs that I listen to during my Internet browsing sessions, and most of those songs I have sheet music of, and that's what I use to calm me down. It's like a free version of visiting a psychiatrist. That's how my teacher described it in one of our conversations, at least.

There are so many different things you can take from the piano. So many different motivations. Find the one that appeals to you the most, and run with it. Have a motivation in mind, otherwise you'll just be frustrated with yourself two hours in and just quit. Why do you want to learn?

And maybe it'll help you if I explain why I began piano in the first place, and why I stuck with it for ten years. It's not that dramatic of a story, if that's what you're expecting. When I was about six, all three of my older siblings were going to my current piano teacher for instruction on the instrument. As I saw them jamming up tunes at home, I became kind of jealous, that they got to make such wonderful sounds just by tapping their fingers on some keys. So my mom signed me up, and I started taking half hour lessons. It was fun at first, but then it started getting really hard. I wanted to quit. And that was just with the beginner version of 'Ode to Joy.' My mom pushed me to keep going, but her (harsh) enthusiasm sort of stifled my liking of the piano. However, as a six year old, I was completely unable to make the choice to quit, so whether I liked it or not, I had to continue, and continue I did.

I don't know when - it was probably at my discovery of Noteflight.com - but I started liking piano again eventually. So I guess the moral of this story is find pieces that you really want to play, or just really like the sound of the instrument. Pick out a musical piece that you really want to learn, and utilize this blog to help you learn it. I guess. That works for me. Let's see if that works for you, too.

Lesson 1: Sitting at the Piano

Right now, what I'm expecting of you is that you own a piano or keyboard. (What's the difference?)

Sit in front of it. Don't do anything yet. Just sit. Take a couple deep breaths, and just stare straight ahead. Rest your hands on the keys. Just put them anywhere. Don't care about hand position or posture or any of those things yet. Just sit and take it all in. Breathe in, breathe out. Good.

Now. Sit up straight. Don't sit so straight that your back hurts, but at the same time, make sure that you're not hunched over. Your neck shouldn't be arched and your shoulders should be relaxed. Take some more breaths, and just get used to it. Your eye level should hit right about where your music sheets would be, if you have any. If your seat has you sitting too high for that, or too low, consider getting a different chair.

Reach your hands out in front of you. Your tips should be touching the music stand thing. Adjust the placement of your chair until your fingertips are doing the thing. Don't worry if you think you're wrong. Correct posture takes time, and nobody gets it right on the first try. Also, as a beginner pianist, it's not terribly important yet, so you're fine for a while until you get to harder music. If you're truly concerned about your posture, you can look up some images on Google and see what you're doing wrong.

Okay, now the hard part. Hand position. We're going to put your hands into position for a C Major Scale. You don't need to know what that is, yet, but you will eventually. If you already know, great.

Find the white key in the middle of the keyboard that looks like the one highlighted in the picture below. Put your right thumb (or 1) on it. This key is called Middle C. Put the rest of your right hand fingers on the four keys following to the right of it. All your fingers should be on only white keys right now.

Now, for the left hand. Count down eight keys, starting with the highlighted key as 1. You should have counted to a key that looks pretty much identical in location to Middle C. You just counted down an octave. Put your left pinky (or 5) on the key. Place all the rest of your left hand fingers on the keys following to the right of it. All your fingers should be on only white keys right now. Check below to see if you got it right!

Very good. Now for the hard part. Curve your fingers. This is the part that I still have trouble with, to this day. It's the absolute worst. But it's a necessary component of good piano playing. It's almost impossible to play piano without curving your fingers. So that's why it's very important to start with curving your fingers at the very start of your piano training. Make it a habit. Just do it.

How do you curve your fingers? I wish I could say it's easy. And it is. Sort of. But it's just something that needs to happen all the time, and that you can't just forget about. You need to concentrate on it forever until it becomes a habit, and even afterwards, you need to check up on it from time to time to make sure you've still got it. So let's get started!

Take your hands off the piano, and find something like a baseball. Or just pretend that you have one in your hand. Hold it (or 'hold' it, if you don't actually have one). Notice how your fingers curve around to hold it. That's the position you're going to want when you play.

Put your hands back on the piano, same position as before. You can check back up at the pictures to make sure you've still got it right. This time, curve your fingers. Your palms should definitely not be resting on the edge of the keyboard. They should be up in the air. Not way up, but up. The back of your hand should make a straight line with your fore arm. It doesn't have to be perfect right now. Again, correct hand positioning takes time and practice.

Now, time for the third and final positioning challenge of the lesson - feet positioning! If you have a keyboard, and no pedal attachment (yes, you can buy those, and I definitely urge you to do so eventually), you can just skip this part. As for those of you with pedals, it's time. Leggo. Put your right foot on the rightmost pedal. Your heel should rest on the floor. Don't press the pedal down. Just let your foot rest on it. And there you go. You're done. It wasn't that hard, was it?

There you have it. Posture, hand position, and pedals. You can try these things out over and over, if you want, as they are very important. But if you're ready for some actual piano playing - check out Lesson 2: Playing Your First Scale.

Piano vs Keyboard

Pianos and keyboards are basically the same thing, when examined from very far away. They perform the same basic functions - they emit sounds that combine together to form music. However, every instrument does that. But what makes these two instruments so similar that they're so often mistaken for each other?

A keyboard is basically half the piano. It's electronic. I don't think I've ever seen a keyboard that wasn't. It has no pedals. All it has are the black keys, the white keys, and a couple of switches. The really high-tec keyboards have a full control panel that can be used as a synthesizer. You usually need to go out and buy a keyboard stand for it, and also a music stand or something to hold your sheet music. The pluses for them are that they're a lot easier to transport than pianos are.

A piano is what people usually think of. 'Piano' is the layman's general term for all the different types of keyboards and pianos and organs and everything, but right now what I'm talking about is the flat out generic piano - an upright piano. You can google that if you want, but I think you know what I'm talking about. I have two upright pianos, one electric and one acoustic. Honestly, I like the electric one better. But that's not we're talking about right now. Upright pianos are basically like keyboards, except they have pedals included in them, and they're a lot heavier. Also, they have a cool built-in stand for your sheet music. The keyboard is just the general term used for the 'board of keys,' so I guess that's a way to tell the difference if you ever forget for some reason.

If you don't already have a piano or keyboard, and you're looking here to figure out which one you want to buy, just think about a couple questions. Do you not have a lot of space where you're putting it? Do you intend to transport it constantly? Do you have a low budget for it? If your answer was yes to all of those, you should probably think about getting a keyboard rather than a piano, but you should also probably think about doing more research into it than just answering three simple questions about it. Buying any instrument takes a lot of research, and cutting corners will only help guide you into a mess. There's nothing worse than ending up with an instrument that doesn't work for you.

Start

Have you ever wanted to play the piano, but thought you couldn't, so you didn't? Try again. Nothing's impossible. Look no further than right here (and all the rest of this blog, tbh) to find out all the secrets to becoming a pianist in no time! Well actually it's going to take quite a bit of time. Everything takes work. But you'll be playing piano and that'll be cool so yeah. Just take a chance, m8.

As this is the first post, I'll begin by doing a lot of introducing myself and the blog and all that amazing boring stuff that people do. I really recommend reading this so that you can fully understand me and my background, and see if you like where I'm coming from. Music is a very organic topic, in that it's what you want it to be. There's so many different types of it, and I come from a very small part of it. If you aren't sure if I'm going to be giving you all the tips you need, I'd suggest reading further. If not, and you feel very confident in the advice of a complete stranger on the internet (which is, admittedly, quite fine with me) continue on to the next post. I guess. I dunno. Make your own choice. Leave. Stay. Okay.

As of this first post, I'm a sixteen year old girl from a New York family of six people and have been playing piano for about ten years at this point. I'm classically and professionally trained, which, for all you newbie music lovers out there, means I learned classic music (like Mozart and Beethoven) from a professional teacher. People describe me as being a bit condescending - that means I talk down to people. That was a joke. Ha ha ha. Very funny. See. I'm also very sarcastic and I like to write with humor. I'm a teenager, after all.

And I am a teenager. That's an important fact to remember. By no means do I consider myself completely educated on the topic of teaching piano, especially by way of blog. But I do know that I have ten years of experience on the instrument, and I'm willing to give it a go. I've always wanted to share my love for the piano with other people, so there will be some tidbits of my own musical growth sprinkled among the 'lessons.'

Ready to start? I know you are. Leggo.