Notes, Scales and Piano Keys

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Learning major scale and minor scale is essential for your training, making it easy for both fingering and music improvisation. Scales let you transpose melodies to different keys without actually reading a sheet of music.

This is the way in which people play melodies "by ear", but before it occurs you need to identify your piano keys. We have discussed the importance of understanding where your fingers have to be posed, now let's find where are their corresponding keys.

Musically speaking, there are 12 major keys, beginning with C major Scale. As you know, the piano has 88 keys, from which there are two different groups of black keys: one group with two keys, and the other with three.

These groups of keys are repeated one after another in the keyboard. The C key is the white key on the left side of each group of two black keys, the very first key on the left side of the piano.

The F key is the white key on the left of each group of three black keys. Since there are only 7 different keys which repeat successively throughout the keyboard, now you will be able to identify the basic notes of the music scale: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C

Middle C is the white key which is located in the center of the keyboard, after two groups of three black keys. The lower end of the piano is located on the left of Middle C and is played with the left hand. The higher end of the piano is on the right and is played with the right hand.

The lower end is that of the bass notes, and the higher end is where the treble notes reside. If you have gathered your learning material, you will not find any trouble associating your fingers with the keys.

Otherwise learning the numbering systems for your fingers in both hands is necessary before we can continue with major and minor scales, so we will discuss the numbering system next week.