Beginner Basics: How to Teach Yourself Piano?

Playing the piano is a work of art that you can’t teach yourself in a day. But before you start taking lessons from an instructor, you should start at your home at the beginning. Why you may ask? Well, at the beginners level in piano lessons many people get overwhelmed when they see the piano keyboard, and we do understand why, as there are 88 keys and countless patterns to memorise. We know that familiarising yourself with all those keys and petters is not an easy task. But you should know it’s worth it and you’ll find that out when you start playing for real and produce some heartwarming music.

If you wish to learn piano and don’t know how to begin? Don’t worry we got you covered. We just need your patience and willingness to learn, the rest we’ll cover with the steps in the following segments.

Why Do You Want To Learn Piano?

Before you pursue your dream to become a great pianist, you must figure out the reason behind it. It makes you set a clear goal about where you want to go with your piano lesson. Just so you know learning the piano takes its toll on your mind and body, and it requires a great deal of patience while getting the hang of it. That’s why we suggest you get familiarised with piano before setting up a piano lesson contract with a professional.

Basic Steps To Learn Piano By Yourself

Now that you’ve figured out why you want to learn the piano, we can now begin teaching you how to start practicing the piano yourself at home. Before anything, ensure that you have a piano of your own. Because otherwise, your learning seasons may hinder having to practice on a borrowed piano. Also remember, a piano is just a tool, you’re the one who’s making it to produce music, that’ll require three things: focus, practice, and patience. Having said that, now we’ll require you to focus on these steps given below while getting familiarised with the piano lessons at home.

Learn Your Way Around The Piano Keyboard

At the very beginning, you can’t get overwhelmed by looking at the piano keyboards. Rather you familiarise yourself with the piano keyboard. So the first thing you need to do is learn your way around the keyboard. You need to familiarise yourself with what’s what and how to get around the piano keyboard.

The first thing you’ll notice is the piano keyboard has black and white keys all around it, and you must learn the way around it. As it’s the core lesson in learning the piano by yourself, and the better you’re at this now the faster you’ll get the hang of it. You’ll notice groups of 2 and 3 black keys on the keyboard, these are to help navigate and create landmarks yourself while playing the piano.

Get Familiar With The Keystrokes

When familiarising yourself with your keyboard is done, now you can begin practicing. Just so you know, the keyboard’s black and white keys are organised in alphabetical order. C, D, E, F, G, A, and B there’s no H in music instruments. It goes like this:

• Do- (C)
• Re- (D)
• Mi- (E)
• Fa- (F)
• So- (G)
• La- (A)
• Ti- (B)

These alphabet words are divided into the left-hand side and right-hand side. And in the centre, there’s the C note at the base of two black keystrokes. So first memorise the C notes on the keyboard then move on with alphabetic order from C to G then A and B.

You can set up landmarks in groups of two and three. The group of two is the base of the C note and the group of three is the base of the F note. There are 7 groups of C and F notes in total on a piano keyboard. So getting comfortable with these notes in this alphabetic order is your first job.

Train Your Arms And Hands For Proper Posture

When you are done with memorising the alphabetic order on the keyboard, now comes the most crucial part, and that’s your proper arms and hands posture. It’s crucial to develop good habits in hand posture while playing the piano. Otherwise, it can cause injuries and overwhelming strain on your hand. The first thing is the way you keep your wrist and palm on the keyboard. You need to make sure you hold your wrist a bit upwards and try to curve your finger while moving around the keystrokes. It’ll allow you to be more flexible while pressing the keystrokes. However, if you keep your wrist and palm flat on the keystrokes not only you’ll lack flexibility but also easily tire yourself. Thus, causing a strain on your hands. Whereas, if you keep your hand posture in a curved finger manner, it’ll allow you to play quickly, accurately and help you to avoid injuries.

Note: if you have big nails on your hand, you need to get rid of them before starting playing the piano, otherwise, you won’t be able to play the piano properly.

Familiarise Yourself With Sharps And Flats

Now that you practice your keystrokes and hand movements, let’s talk about familiarising yourself with the sharp and flat notes. The black keys all around the piano’s keyboard are either sharps or flats and as you noticed they come in groups of 2 and 3.

When you look at the music sheet and see the # and b symbols written on them, it’s normal to wonder about what they are exactly? Well # This symbol means sharp and the b symbol means flat. The sharp symbol signifies raising the notes to a half step from the base, and the flat symbol signifies lowering the note that you’re playing by a half step. Each of the sharp symbols is located on top of an alphabetic keystroke, on the other hand, the flat symbol is located at the bottom of an alphabet keystroke. For instance, the key F’s sharp symbol is called F-sharp, and similarly, Key B’s flat symbol is called B-flat.

We’re aware it can look a little bit advanced at first glance, practice with it until your hands naturally get it.

Set A Practice Goal

Now that you have learned about the basics, now all you need to do is practice and practice more. You can set up a daily end target in mind, it’ll definitely help you make the piano lesson’s progression faster, and also help you keep your daily focus. Don’t try to learn it in a single day, which is not possible. Remember patience is the key to your success.

Start Practicing By Yourself

After setting up your daily goal, the rest is up to how much you practice. Just so you know you’ll get to your desired level at the piano lesson unless you practice your heart out and there’s no shortcut to success. You can start by practicing your fingers, as you’ll notice you don’t get your fingers to do what you want. If you practice more your finger will start listening to you. To do that, you’ll need exercises like placing your right-hand thumb on the middle C note and left hand five fingers on the left side of the C note and start playing 5 notes until you get the hang of it and get the timing right.

The next thing you can try out is to practice your lessons with your friends, it’s great practice especially if you have a music expert as a friend. It’ll give you a better idea about the position you stand in and what you need to do to improve your skills.

You should know every note has a length and count, by listening to others play you’ll get the sense of the length and count. The notes are:

• Full notes (With 4 beats like- one and two and three)
• Half Notes (With 2 beats like – one and two)
• Quarter Notes (With 1 beat like – one and then stop)

Takeaways

In all honesty, in learning to play the piano the absolute requirements are piano, your determination and dedication, and great patience. As it can get challenging from time to time. Sometimes you’ll feel like your hands and your brain are disconnected somehow, you tell your hand to do something but it doesn’t. That can get frustrating and makes you want to give up. But you should stick to it and make it your personal goal to succeed. Don’t forget to spend time on the piano’s keyboard layout, to get used to where the keys are? It might sound simple, but it’s not. It requires time and patience to master completely. And mastering it will definitely help you in the long run.

So what are you waiting for? Start practicing each and every day with the following steps we’ve discussed so far in the earlier segments.