Piano Video Lesson: How to Identify Notes on the Piano

Hi, and welcome to livingpianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin. Today, the question is how to identify notes in the piano. You've got all these keys here and you wonder what are they? Well, I'm sure many of you already know the answer to that question, but for those of you who don't know what the keys are on the piano... I've sometimes seen pianos. We get a lot of pianos in here at Living Pianos, and sometimes somebody has carefully put little letters on every one of the keys across the keyboard and you think, "Oh my goodness, really? Is that necessary?" And the answer is no, it's not necessary. No. How could you figure out all these notes and why do they have black and white keys anyway? I have a video on that subject, and the simple answer is, if they were all white keys, you wouldn't be able to find anything else because you'd have no reference. But if you look at the way the piano keyboard is oriented with groups of two and groups of three, on and on and on and on, it's a repeating pattern.
Now, here's how to find the notes on the piano. You have groups of two groups of three. Any group of two, if you go to the white key just to the left of it, that is C. Now, what is so significant about that? Well, from there you can go up to the alphabet on the white key. C, D, E, F, G. All right? And then it continues on starting with the first letter of the alphabet. A, B, C. And you notice the octave higher C is also below two black keys. So now you can find all the Cs in the piano. Anytime you have two black keys, there's another C. There's two black keys. Now, this one you might not know, but this is also a C. So now you've learned something, and you can find Cs going lower. Below two black keys here. Below two black keys here, and that's the lowest C on the piano.
So that is the long and short of it. You can find any note on the piano simply by going through the alphabet. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Once again, find your C. C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. There really is no need for writing in the names of the notes, the letters. All you have to remember is C starts on below the two black keys is always C. And from there you go up or down to the alphabet. So if you wanted to go C, B, A, counting backwards to the alphabet. And then of course, starting with the last letter of the alphabet, G, F, E, D, C. And you could find any of the notes in the piano. So if you wanted to find all the Ds, well you notice the D is right between a group of two black keys so you could find all your Ds.
So that's the whole deal, really not the hardest thing about a piano. I hope that's helpful for those of you who don't know or didn't know what the names of the notes are on the piano. Now what about the black keys? Well, this is another subject, but I'm going to go delve into it a little bit for you here. The black keys are designated by either sharps or flats, but white keys can also be sharps or flats. I have a video on this subject, but let me cover it for you quickly here because I think you're probably interested in what these keys are named.
Any two keys that are next to each other that's black or white are all called half steps. Now, avoid doing it on this part of the keys, because it could be confusing. But if you're in here, this part of the keyboard, these are all what are called half steps between any two adjacent keys, two keys together with no keys between, that's a half step. Any of these. You can see sometimes white keys are a half step apart. Those are all half steps. So what's the significance of this? A sharp raises a note a half step. So if you had middle C, but it was a C sharp, it raises it a half step. And that's called C sharp. So here's D. If you had D sharp, it would go up a half step to that key. If you had an E sharp, yes, you can have an E sharp. It would be the same key as F on the piano because a sharp raises a note by a half step.
There is also flats, which lower notes by a half step. It's the same principle. So if you had a C flat, it's the same key as B on the piano, but it would be indicated in your score as C flat. And a B flat would be a half step lower than B, and et cetera, an A flat. So that is the way black keys are designated on the piano. You may wonder why white keys would sometimes be indicated with flats. Well, this is a good subject, a good theory idea, which is that scales are written diatonically with all the letters in order on all the letter names without skipping or repeating any. So on the staff they appear on line, space, line, space, and are actually easier to read that way, believe it or not. I hope this is helpful for you. And now you all know all the notes on the piano. You can figure them all, all 88 out just from that little brief tutorial. Address your questions to Robert@livingpianos.com here on your online piano resource. Thanks to the thumbs up and subscribing. We'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-identify-notes-on-the-piano/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---