- Hi, and welcome to lesson one
of this rather exciting piano course.
And hopefully, you've got access to a piano,
or perhaps to a keyboard,
because, obviously, you're going to need an instrument
to work with while we're going through this course.
And the first thing we're going to do today
is just have a look at the keyboard.
You can see it in front of you at home,
or, if you look on the screen,
you can see a picture of the keyboard.
And you'll notice that there's a pattern
of how the keyboard is organised.
We've got black and white keys,
and the black keys are organised
in groups of two and three.
Let's just have a look at that.
If I start down here,
I've got two black notes together here,
I've got three together here,
two,
three,
two,
three,
two,
three,
two,
and so.
And knowing about the twos and threes with the black keys
is going to help you
find your way around the keyboard
and find the notes that you need.
Now we're going to learn one note in this first lesson.
And the note we're going to learn is called C.
Just before we get to that,
it's quite a helpful thing to know
that in the musical alphabet,
we only use seven letters,
A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
And when we're finished with G,
we go back to A again.
So it's useful to know your alphabet as far as G,
but don't worry if you don't know the alphabet after G.
It's also useful to know
the first seven letters of the alphabet backwards.
And that's a little exercise that you could practise.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, going forwards,
and going backwards, G, F, E, D, C, B, A.
G, F, E, D, C, B, A.
That's a really useful thing to practise
until you can just say those seven letters,
forwards and backwards,
without having to worry about
which letter comes next.
So, how does this work on the keyboard?
Well I'm going to start at an A,
and just show you how the alphabet works.
So this note is an A.
As we go up, it goes A,
B,
C,
D,
E,
F,
G, then we go back to A.
A,
B,
C,
D,
E,
F,
G, then we go back to A.
A,
B,
C,
D,
E,
F,
G, and so on.
So you see how these seven letters of the alphabet
are used on the keyboard.
We just keep repeating them over and over again.
You might have noticed other things
while I was just playing that.
That as I'm at the left of the keyboard,
down here, the notes sound low.
When I'm at the top of the keyboard,
up here or beyond, the notes sound high.
So the further we are to the left,
the lower the note sound.
And the further we are to the right,
the higher the notes sound.
Okay now, I said that we were going to learn
about one note today.
So let's get straight to this note,
and it's the note, C.
Which, of course, is the third letter
in that pattern, A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
Now C is always the white note
on the left hand side
of two black notes.
Let's see if we can find some.
So here are two black notes.
So if those are two black notes,
then the note to the left of those must be C.
So that note is C.
Let's see if we can find the next C.
Well we've got two black notes here.
So this note on the left there, must also be C.
Then we've got two black notes here,
which means that this note must be C.
We've got two black notes here,
so this note is C.
Another two black notes here,
so this note must be C.
So one thing you could do is to see
how quickly you can find all the C's
on your own piano or your own keyboard.
So we've C,
C,
C.
Now when you're in the middle of the piano,
or the middle of the keyboard,
we have a C that's called, middle C.
You can see why it's called middle C.
It's not exactly in the middle of the piano or the keyboard
but it's the C that is nearest to the middle.
So this note here,
right in the middle, is middle C.
And that's the one that
we're really going to be focusing on today.
And we're going to learn to play a piece of music
that uses this note, middle C.
Now just before we get playing something,
I just want to say a little bit about
how we sit to play,
and where we put our hands on the keyboard.
Now the first thing is to sit
reasonably tall, but comfortably.
So that it doesn't feel as if
you're completely upright and uncomfortable,
or completely slouched down here,
but just feeling comfortably upright,
and make sure that your shoulders are nice and relaxed.
Especially when you bringing your hands up to play,
there's always a danger that
when you bring your hands up to play,
the shoulder goes up at the same time.
So when you bring your hand up to play,
just try and keep the shoulders relaxed.
And if you feel any tension in the shoulders,
just roll those shoulders a little bit
and then relax them.
And then try to keep relaxed at the elbow,
and relaxed at the wrist as well.
If you're not careful, when you come to play the piano,
you're so bothered about trying to find the right note
that everything locks up,
and it becomes quite stiff here.
But we need to have a nice
flexible bouncy wrist like that.
And just doing that little exercise,
just bouncing the wrist,
just helps to relax your fingers as well.
So you end up with this kind of droopy hand.
Now, when we put the hand on the keys,
let me just do that,
you'll notice what's happening here.
My fingers are nicely curved,
and I'm going to play notes on my fingertips,
do you see this?
Fingertips for these notes.
When it comes to the thumb, of course,
you can't really play on your fingertip.
I'll show you this in the left land,
because then you can see the thumb nice and clearly.
All the other fingers are lined up,
so we can play on the fingertips.
The thumb, we're just going to play
on the side of the thumb, like this.
You don't want your thumb to be
pushed out and stretched like that,
you don't want it to be locked in like this.
You just want it comfortably relaxed in the middle there.
So the thumb can just play on the side of the thumb,
and then these other fingers,
can work on their fingertips.
And that will be the easiest way to play.
You might wonder why we do that.
Well, if I let my fingers collapse and go flat like this,
it's actually quite difficult to find the notes,
because I've got my fingers all tucked in
between the black notes,
and that's really quite awkward.
But if I get my hands so that the end of my thumb
more or less lines up with my fingers,
then they're all going to touch the keys
at about the same point.
In other words, just this side of the black keys.
So there's the hand position for you to get used to.
Okay, well let's think about our piece
that we're going to learn today.
And this is a piece that I say is all about middle C.
So let's find middle C again.
It's just the two black notes,
and we're looking for a white note
to the left of those two black notes,
in the middle of the piano or the keyboard.
So it's this note that you're looking for.
And we're going to play that note with a thumb.
So let's just begin by playing some middle C's.
Have the other fingers in place,
like I've got them on the keyboard here,
and just try to play C with your thumb.
What you might find happens at first is,
as you try to play C,
you put all these other notes down as well,
or at least some of them.
So you've got to get some practise
in keeping these other fingers in place,
but using the thumb
just to play C.
So just get used to doing that
in the right hand
until it feels comfortable.
And of course, any time you want to pause this film,
just to try things out,
that's perfectly possible.
And then you can pick up again.
Now, let's also find out
how this C would be written
in a piece of music.
Have a look at this.
Music is always written on something called the stave.
And the stave has five lines.
So here are the five lines of the stave.
I'll just put that word up here.
That's the stave.
And this funny curly whirly thing
that I'm writing at the beginning of the stave,
is called the treble clef.
Let's make a note of that while we're here.
So there is the treble clef.
Now if you're not used to it,
actually drawing the treble clef
is a little bit fiddly.
So don't worry about that at the moment,
but just get used to the treble clef
and what it looks like.
And for the time being,
when we see music in the treble clef,
that's telling us that we're going to play
notes that are in our right hand, okay?
So for the time being,
if you see a treble clef,
that means, use the right hand.
Now, the next thing I'm going to do
is to write this note that we're learning today,
middle C.
Now middle C looks like this.
It's a circle that goes underneath
the treble clef stave,
and we put a line through it,
and that tells us that this particular note is, middle C.
And the piece we're going to learn today
is going to have four middle C's in it.
So there's the first one.
And then I'm going to draw this thing
that we call a bar line.
That's a bar line.
And then we're going to have another middle C.
And another bar line.
And another middle C.
And another bar line.
And another middle C.
And then I'm going to have a double bar line,
because the double bar line
tells us that we've come to the end of the piece.
So, what's all this telling us?
There's the stave, the five lines.
Here's the treble clef telling us
that we're going to play in the right hand.
We've learnt that this note is middle C,
and we can now see that we've got four of them,
one, two,
three, four.
So we know that this piece of music
has got four middle C's in it.
Now, we're going to count four on each note.
So it's going to sound like this,
one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four.
Did you notice that, as I'm counting,
I'm keeping that beat really steady.
I'm not counting one, two, three four.
One, two, three, four.
I'm trying to keep the beat really steady.
One,
two,
three,
four.
That's what we want to do when we play this piece.
So, shall we have a go
at playing this first piece of music,
these four middle C's?
I'll count to four for nothing,
and then you'll know when to begin, okay?
So try to get this hand in a good position,
have your thumb on middle C,
all set for action.
And as you put your hand on the keys,
just make sure that we haven't got a position
where the wrist is a bit too high,
or a position where the wrist is a bit too low.
What we really want is that sort of position,
where the top of the hand is flat.
Okay, so.
See if you can get your fingers on the keys,
in the best possible position,
flat at the top of the hand,
nice curve fingers,
and the thumb over middle C.
So I'll count four for nothing,
and then we'll play our piece together.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
Now I wonder how that went for you.
But it might be worth another go,
just to make sure we've got it.
So here we go again.
I'll count four for nothing.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
Now as I say, you can play that as many times as you want to
until you feel really confident about it.
And when you're ready,
you can move on to the next step
that we are about to take.
Because now, we're going to turn this piece
into a little duet.
So you're going to play the four C's,
and I'm going to play something else
that hopefully fits with your four C's.
But don't get put off by what I'm playing.
Because you're still going to count four
on each of these C's.
Shall we see how we get on?
So make sure you're in position,
all set for middle C in the right hand.
Just thinking about where your fingers are on the keys,
thinking about the top of the hand being fairly level,
and the thumb, nicely relaxed,
ready to play on the side of the thumb.
Okay, and now we're going to play our piece again.
So I'll count four for nothing,
and then you can do exactly what we've practised doing.
Okay, here we go then.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
Well I hope we finished together.
Just in case we didn't,
let's try again.
Four for nothing.
One,
two,
three,
go!
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
One,
two,
three,
four.
So there we are,
we are at the end of lesson one.
So congratulations for completing that.
Play it over as many times as you want to,
until you're really sure about
everything we've learnt in this lesson.
And then when you're ready,
look for lesson two.
Good luck.