In this short video I'm going to show you the very basics of how to identify and
figure out which note is which
on a piano or keyboard or organ.
Hi, I'm Scott Houston. Have you ever looked at a piano keyboard and thought
Whoa! Scary! All those notes! How can you keep straight which one is which?
right
Looks like a bunch of teeth staring at me. Grrrrr!
well let me give you a few quick pointers so that's never going to happen
to you again
let's dig and let me show you my piano now here's the deal
no matter how many note you may see all the way up and down a piano
there's really only twelve different notes that just repeat over and over and
over
depending on how big or small your keyboard is alright, now one of the great
ways to kinda
keep track of where you are on a keyboard is the fact that the Black Keys
come in sets of three
or two okay so you'll notice here's a set of 3
here to set of 2. They just keep doing that all the way up and down a
piano right
well by knowing that if you can identify a set of 2 black notes you can always
find a c-note
really simply and here's why: The C
note is the first white note down and to the left
,right, it's lower, meaning lower this way (left) on a piano as opposed to higher (right) not
up or down but
down the keys or up the keys. if you find any set of two
black notes
the first white note to the left is a C.
pretty straight ahead not hard to do that now
obviously because this is just such a rocket science if I go up one white note
from C
what do you think it is? Well that's right it's a D.
Really clever the way they figured this out isn't it? And you just keep moving up
that way
you can just keep saying well that one's an E, right, that's an F
we're just counting right up the alphabet right there's a G
and then you get to this one that's an H no no no!
That's not an H, that's an A so here's the deal: The musical alphabet
only goes from
A through G G so once you get to A you need to start over so that - excuse me! - Once you
get to G you need to start over
so that's an A and then we just keep going, a B
C,D,E and what not, so, from the time if you started here on a C and you went: C-D-E
F-G-A B-C
well that's it! You know, now you just keep continuing it, and if you want to go
backwards it's exactly the same thing if you're on a C and you go down one white note
what would that be?
well it's a B obviously, and then one below the B
is the A
and then one below an A
is a G. Then F,E,D,C on your way down so
it just repeats like that. That's how you can find it , so you really need to
start thinking about it like sets of
sets of A through G or in this case C through B if you are thinking about starting on
a C
doing it that way. So remember, there's only twelve notes
you know different notes no matter how big or small your keyboard is just
different sets of them to keep repeating up and down
okay now the next question is probably what about the black notes right we've
got black not all the way up and down a keyboard
how do you deal with those now we know the names the white notes how you figure
that out
well let's do it. Here's the deal, now again the black notes come in a set
of 3 and 2 like that so here's the way that you figure it out
each one can have 2 names so each black no can have two different names
and it depends on whether or not you're going to describe that black note
as being higher than the white note that's below it
or you're gonna describe the exact same note as lower than the one that's above
it
Now I know that's kind of a mouthful, but it's pretty straightforward you know if
I want to try to describe this key, and I never had an ounce of piano lessons in my
entire life
I could walk in and there's two different ways I could look at this like it's a
well
if I knew all the notes here I could say "Well that's easy Scott, that's the first
note that's higher than the C" Well that's pretty true it is...
that's the closest note higher than the C that we know what it is
but the next person could walk into the room and say the exact same thing and
say
well no no no no that's not true actually this is the first note that's
lower than a D
Ha! Well that's true too so the reality is
these these black notes can have two names depending on how you want to
to name it that will determine whether you call it either a sharp
or a flat. So here we go if that's terms you haven't heard before
sharps go up and flats go down
You can remember that like a flat tire goes down, right, so
if you want to describe this note as being the closest note
higher than the C you would call it a C-Sharp
C#
if for whatever reason you want to describe this note as the closest note
lower than that D you would call the D-Flat
So that's it. Similarly this one would be either a
B-Sharp or E-Flat and this one would be either a
F-Sharp or G-Flat and ssimilarly two more of them a
G-Sharp or an A-Flat and then this top one on a set of three is either
an A-Sharp or a B-Flat.
So that is it. You know that's it the reality is that all you need to know as
far as trying did
to to know what the notes are don't ever let that get tougher than that
just spend a few minutes playing kind of a mental game with
yourself of
pointing to a key and quickly identifying it saying a
That's a C - That's an E-Flat or whatever it may be
and you'll now know or the rest of your life how to very easily
identify and recognize
any key on a musical keyboard. So now that you know this
if you wanna know how to figure out which key on the keyboard correlates to
the printed notes in sheet music and lead sheets
I'm gonna show you how to figure that out in another video but hopefully if
YouTube hasn't changed things since we shot this you should be able to see a link
somewhere on this video to that next video right now
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its in my admittedly biased opinion by far the best way for you to finally knock
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"I wish I could, I wish I could!" list right?
Just remember, you CAN play piano and it's never too late to start!
Have fun!
Sneeze! Sweet ... Click. :-)