Acquire a piano.
Most teachers recommend that you
purchase an actual piano to keep and practice on at home. Pianos vary
widely in style, size, and cost; for most people, a medium-sized upright
piano is ideal, as it takes up less space than a grand piano and has
much better sound than the most compact styles. Bear in mind that
although it's possible to find pianos for cheap and sometimes even for
free, it is dangerous and difficult to move a piano from place to place.
Be sure you have a professional delivery service lined up to help you
move your instrument.
When you acquire a used piano for little or no money off the private
market, it's likely that you'll need to get it tuned and possibly even
repaired before it will be usable. Check your local business listings to
find someone who's willing to make a house call and assess your piano's
condition.
It's acceptable to purchase a high-quality electronic keyboard if
you must (for example, if you live in a tiny studio apartment), but it
isn't recommended.
You'll have more trouble learning proper posture and
hand positioning than you would with an actual piano, and you'll never
be able to exert as much control over the sound of a keyboard as you can
with a decent piano.
Acquire accessories.
Once your piano is set in place
and has been tuned and examined by a professional, it's time to get a
bench and some music to play. Many pianos come with a bench; otherwise,
they can be found at thrift stores and music stores. Try to get an
adjustable bench, as bench height is very important to ensuring proper
posture. Don't use a dining room chair or an ottoman as a substitute
unless it naturally places you at the ideal height for playing.
Ask your local music store for recommendations on basic,
easy-to-play music books. It's likely the clerk will know of at least a
couple of books you can use. Try to get one book that encapsulates
beginner advice in the front and contains scales and arpeggios, and one
book with simple, complete songs to practice, such as old folk songs.
If you have trouble keeping a rhythm, buy a metronome. A metronome
sits atop your piano and ticks like a loud clock at a pace you set for
it. It's a useful aid for maintaining a steady tempo as you begin to get
better at playing.
Set up for proper posture.
Sit on your piano bench
with your music books on the sill of the piano, above the keyboard.
Point your forearms towards the keys until they're parallel to the
floor. If your bench is at the proper height, your fingers should gently
arc downward and rest on the tops of the keys, without you having to
bend your wrists or raise or lower your arms. Adjust the bench height
until you feel no strain in your arms or shoulders when you sit at the
piano.
Rest your feet flat on the ground, a comfortable distance apart,
with the toes pointing straight ahead. Sit with a straight back - your
shoulders shouldn't hunch forward, and your spine should be straight.
Scoot in until your hands rest on the keys without having to stretch
your arms. You should be able to move your feet forward to the pedals
and back again without putting any strain on your upper legs.
If you don't have an adjustable piano bench, or it won't adjust high
enough to make you comfortable, it's acceptable to use pads or pillows
to further raise the height of your seat. Just be sure they're even in
terms of thickness, and stable enough that you won't have to worry about
them slipping as you play.
Double check your hand position. You should be seated
at the center of the keyboard. Each of your ten fingers should rest on
one white key. Your right thumb rests on the white key just to the left
of a group of two black keys in the middle of the keyboard, which is the
C note. Each finger on your right hand rests on the next following
white key, thus D, E, F, and G. Your left hand follows the same pattern
one octave down, only reversed: the left pinky should rest on C, and the
left thumb should rest on G. There should be two white keys (A and B)
between your thumbs.
The C note that anchors your right thumb is in the center of the
keyboard, and as such is often called “middle C.” It's common for
beginning players to use a sticker or a piece of tape to mark middle C.
Just be sure it's something you can eventually clean off as you get
better.
Learning the notes at the center first is conventional because a
pianist must normally sit at the center of the keyboard to be able to
reach every high and low note without standing up and moving.
Learn about the keyboard.
The keyboard of a piano
repeats its notes from top to bottom across several octaves. This means
that the notes change from low (left side) to high (right side), but
don't vary in pitch. There are twelve notes a piano can produce: seven
white key notes (C, D, E, F, G, A, B) and five black key notes (C-sharp,
D-sharp, F-sharp, A-flat, and B-flat). Playing the white key notes from
C through B and back to C creates a regular eight tone octave scale in C
major; playing the black key notes from C-sharp (next to the white C
key) through B-flat creates a pentatonic (five tone) scale. You can play
every key (both black and white) from C to C in order to create a
chromatic or twelve-tone scale.
The piano is tuned for C major, since it's a very common key.
However, other keys can be played by mixing black and white keys to get
the proper sharps and flats for each note. Any of the keys normally seen
in sheet music can be played on a piano, making it a very versatile
instrument.
It's easy to double-check a piano's tuning by playing pairs of the
same note at different octaves. The notes should sound identical; if
they don't, one or both of them is sharp or flat and needs to be
re-tuned.
Play some notes.
Starting with middle C, gently but
firmly push down on a key to produce a note. Take some time and try
pushing slower and faster, softer and harder, until you have an idea of
the kind of control you can exert over the sound of the piano. Without
moving your hands, play all ten notes under your fingers. Note that some
(such as the pinky) are more difficult to play loudly, while others
(like the thumb) take practice to play softly.
Play black keys as well. Generally speaking, black keys are played
by moving the appropriate finger up and to the right, except in the case
of the thumb, since it's difficult to move the thumb up to play a black
key without ruining your hand position. From the middle C position,
your pointer finger can move left and right to play C-sharp and D-sharp,
respectively.
Play scales.
Try playing notes starting with the
pinky C of your left hand, all the way up to the thumb C of your right
hand. Play each white key in order. Once you reach your left thumb,
stretch it to play the next note up (A), and then stretch your right
thumb to play the next after that (B), returning your thumb to middle C
to finish the scale. Practice this until it begins to get easier –
stretching your fingers is just as important as moving your hands, as
your skills begin to improve.
Try playing a different scale. Start on one of the other fingers of
your left hand, and play notes up the keyboard until you reach the same
note on your right hand. Adjust sour notes by using black keys where
necessary. This is how other scales aside from C major are played. For
example, the D major scale is played D (left ring finger), E, F-sharp
(black key), G, A, B, C-sharp (black key), D (right pointer finger).
In addition to learning scales from a teacher or book, it's
important to keep experimenting with them on your own so that you begin
to get a head for them as quickly as possible.
Learn about harmony.
Although it doesn't take a lot
of practice to be able to bang out “Hot Cross Buns” on a piano keyboard,
unlocking all of your instrument's potential requires learning to play
multiple notes at once on it, using all your fingers and both your
hands. To achieve a nice sound with multiple notes, you have to
understand how harmonies work. This is a very in-depth topic that can't
be covered in full here, but you can use these notes to help guide your
practice.
Adjacent notes never harmonize. That doesn't mean they don't have
their place in certain advanced compositions, but for now, remember:
playing two notes right next to each other rarely sounds good. Harmonies
are created by increasing the space between notes.
The space between a harmony's notes is called its “interval.” The
most common intervals in piano music are fifths, fourths, and thirds. To
hear examples of these, play C and G, C and F, or C and E,
respectively.
Harmony intervals go all the way up to the fourteenth interval,
which is considered a compound interval since it crosses more than one
octave. Harmonies can also be altered by introducing flat or sharp
notes, adding support notes, and so on. However, you shouldn't have to
worry too much about these more advanced styles for a while yet.
Playing the same note at two different octaves is called a “unison” harmony.
Related links :
http://www.instructables.com/id/7-Steps-to-Learn-How-to-Play-Piano/
http://www.true-piano-lessons.com/how-to-play-the-piano.html
