Congratulations, you're almost on your way to reading music! First, let's look at scales. A scale is made of eight consecutive notes, for example, the C major scale is composed of C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. The interval between the first note of your C major scale and the last is an example of an octave. The C major scale is very important to practice, since once you have the C scale down, the other major scales will start to fall into place. Each of the notes of a C major scale corresponds with a white key on your keyboard. Here's how a C major scale looks on a staff and how that corresponds to the keys on your keyboard:
You'll notice that as the notes ascend the staff, and move to the right on your keyboard, the pitch of the notes gets higher. But, what about the black keys? Musically, whole tones, or whole steps between the note letters, would limit the sounds we're able to produce on our instruments. Let's consider the C major scale you just learned to play. The distance between the C and the D keys in your C scale is a whole step, however the distance between the E and the F keys in your C scale is a half step. Do you see the difference? The E and the F keys don't have a black key in between them, thus they're just a half step away from one another. Every major scale you'll play on a keyboard has the same pattern, whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half. There are many other types of scales, each with unique sounds, like minor scales, modal scales and more that you'll come across later on, but for now let's focus just on major scales and the major scale pattern.
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Learning Piano Notes and Keys
Non-FictionA quick and easy guide to how to play beautiful music on piano! Whether you're learning to impress a special someone, or just to play the notes from that song you love, here's a simple way to learn! Good luck!~
