The 88 keys that make up the piano’s keyboard consist of 52 white and 36 black keys. Initially you want to focus on learning how to play the white keys. It’s best if you have a firm understanding of the placement of the white keys before you add in the black keys (sharps and flats) to your efforts.

Initially, you will want to understand how to find middle C. From there, everything builds on itself. Middle C is located almost dead center in the piano. Middle C is the 40th white key when counted from the left hand side of the piano, facing the keyboard. Of course, there are other ways to identify it, which will be essential for learning where the other C’s on the piano keyboard are as well as this note’s relationship to other notes.

To recognize it after you’re found middle C the first time, you have to study the formation of the black keys. These are found in sets. The black keys are arranged with two keys, then two white keys, the then three black keys. The white key that sits to the left of the set of two black keys is a C note.

Once you know where C is, then you can easily start to learn the repetitive scales that are part of understanding the piano. The notes go in order from C. Listed, the notes would be written out as C, D, E, F, G, A, B.

As you start to learn the pattern of the piano, learning to play it is like learning to read a book for the very first time. Start with simple letters, which are represented by the names of the keys. Once you learn the letters then move onto the words (notes) and then you continue to learn the sentences (chords) until you can put the whole story together. It takes time, practice, and a really informative line of information in order to teach yourself to play piano.

Mike Eggers is an amateur musician and piano player who writes about how to Learn To Play Piano. Make sure to check out his other articles, especially if you want to learn to play on piano or want To Learn Gospel Piano Music.

The first thing you should see at the beginning of the first line is the time signature; this tells you about the rhythm of the piece. It looks like two numbers on top of one another. The bottom number tells you what kind of note gets a beat, and the top one tells you how many beats per measure. If you see a big C, that means common time, or 4/4. A slashed C means cut time, or 2/2.

The second thing you’ll see at the beginning of the piece is the key signature. It will look like a group of sharps or flats. If you don’t see any, then there are no sharps or flats, and you’re playing either in C major or A minor. If you see a sharp sign, it means that every time you see a note on that line, you’ll play the sharped version of that note.

Now on to the music itself, each figure you see communicates two pieces of information: pitch and duration. You can tell the pitch from the line or the space on which the note sits. In the bass clef, from bottom up, spaces are ACEG and lines are GBDFA. In the treble clef the spaces are FACE and the lines are EGBDF. Notice that they go in alphabetical order if you write in every letter.

Those names that we just discussed are the names of the white keys on a piano. If you see the sharp or flat sign, then you’ll need to play the next higher black note (for a sharp) or the next lower black note (for a flat). If there is no adjacent black note, play the next white one. For example, B-flat is also C. Remember that if sharps and flats appear in the key signature, then every occurrence is raised or lowered.

The other piece of information you get is the duration of each note, you can tell this from the shape. Remember that you know which note is a single beat from the key signature. In 4/4 time it’s the quarter note. The half note gets two beats, and the whole note gets four. Similarly, Eighth and Sixteenth notes get half and quarter beats respectively. Rhythm demonstration video.

So there is your basic intro to reading music. There really isn’t much more to teach than that, it’s just one of those things that’s easy to learn, but difficult to master.

Mike Eggers is the Author of many articles for students who want to Learn How to Play on Piano. He has also written several reviews of products like Pure Pitch Scam.