Five Steps to Playing Piano

Your Posture

• When you sit down in front of a piano, remember that your posture is crucial to your success. Sit up straight, and balance your body as well as your hands. This will help you play with ease and comfort.

Fingers

• Keep your fingers flexible on the keyboard, remembering that a piano has upper and lower sets of keys. This entails coordinated movement across a wide range of actions, which span 180 degrees for each hand. Hold your right hand in an arch over keys C, D, E, F and G, with your thumb over C and your little finger over G. Let your fingertips rest lightly on each key. Hold your left hand over the same keys on the left-hand side of the keyboard but in the reverse order. Your little finger will rest on C, and your thumb on G.

Understanding the Keyboard

• Although a piano has 88 keys, there are only seven notes. These are lettered A through G repetitively across the keyboard. The black notes are semitones, which represent the tonal distance between two notes.

Reading Music

• It is perfectly possible to learn to play the piano "by ear," which means using your knowledge of the keyboard and its sounds to produce a spontaneous tune or repeat what you have previously heard. However, if you don't have this ability, you'll need to learn to read music.

Lessons and Practice

• It is difficult to make progress playing the piano without lessons and impossible without practice. Lessons come in various forms. You can hire an instructor, use a CD or even follow an online course. Practicing for at least 15 minutes every day will help you develop your ability and become a better player.