How You Can Teach Yourself Piano (It’s Not As Hard As You Think!)
I’ve wanted to master piano all my life, but I didn’t have access to a piano during quarantine. Now, though, I do!
And there’s even a ton of sheet music sitting around the house since my landlady is a choir director.
Problem solved, right? So, why am I still at a loss for where to begin?
I played instruments growing up and even dabbled in piano. But I always figured out songs by memorizing the hand movements or approximating the notes by ear.
I couldn’t, and still can’t, read the bass cleft (what the left hand plays), and you can only get so far with the treble cleft (notes the right hand plays).
But, eventually, I figured out a system that worked for me. Here’s how I did it:
Start with what you know: the alphabet.
What did I already know? The names of the keys, AKA, the letters A through G. You can find a diagram online to familiarize yourself; all it takes is knowing the name of one note and its corresponding white key.
I knew that the black keys were always either sharps or flats, depending on the key next to it. The sharp is the black key after a note, i.e., A sharp is the black key to A’s right. The flat is the black key on the note’s left.
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But this can get weird; for example, A can also be called G sharp. Not confusing at all, right?
What if there’s no black key between white ones?
There are some cute little gaps where two white keys are next to each other. This happens between B and C and E and F.
Does that mean B sharp and E sharp don’t exist? Nope! But there are used less often than their other names; B sharp is the same pitch as C, so you usually just call it C. And E sharp is the same as F, so F it is. Woof.
What now?
I wasn’t sure where to go from here. I knew the names of the notes, but what came next?
Luckily, I understood the concept of multiple notes combining to make a named chord from playing guitar. But this knowledge didn’t necessarily translate to the piano since I couldn’t yet name all of the individual notes that make up guitar chords (but I’m still working on it)!
Then, a true life-saver.
I decided to turn to the internet but stayed away from traditional sheet music or those Guitar Hero-style follow-along videos.
I just looked up “Taylor Swift chords” and headed to the first link on the Ultimate Guitar site.
After picking a favorite song, I suddenly realized that right above the guitar chords I was usually looking for, there were little piano pictures with black dots on the keys; they showed each note that made up the song’s chords.
This insight was all it took to play my jams from Folklore. I put my three fingers on the same keys as those with the black dots.
But, just the chord wouldn’t be enough. Then I remembered that most of the simple piano songs I knew had an easy left hand part, usually just one note at a time. And this note was typically the one that the right hand’s chord was named after!
So, if I were trying to play an A chord on the right hand, I would play the three notes with black dots on the page—A, C sharp, and E—and then hit a lower A key with my left hand.
And there it was! The beautiful, full chord that Taylor jammed out on the guitar!
How do you make it sound more interesting than just four notes at a time?
Trade back and forth between left and right hand, playing low, then high in a syncopated rhythm that matches the song.
Experiment with each key in your chord, going up and down the keys with the right or left hand.
And if you hit a wrong note, no worries. You’ll know what sounds good. Then, do it again and again. You might even memorize the chord by accident! Though, thankfully, they’re already right in front of us on Ultimate Guitar.
That’s it?
Yup! That’s the simple trick I figured out to play almost any song I wanted. But there are also tons of other techniques and methods for learning piano, including Youtube tutorials, articles, or even that friend who took piano between 3rd and 5th grade. So go forth, and play on!
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