Piano Lesson #1 - Parts of the Piano and a simple introduction to playing

The piano is the world’s most widely recognised musical instrument and is played by millions of people all over the world. The piano is sometimes referred to as a percussion instrument as the strings inside the piano are hit with mallets. The piano is the staple for creating and composing music as you can not only play the melody but the bass notes too. Whereas playing the guitar you can only have one hand playing notes with the piano you can have both hands playing notes giving you more control over the music you are playing.Usually players of the piano will use their left hand to play the chords of a piece of music and their right hand to articulate the melody of the music.

Above is a anatomy diagram of a grand piano. This is the most traditionally used style of piano seen and heard for classical pieces and performances.Today in homes electronic keyboards have become more fashionable due to the size and broad capabilities of different sounds that are included. On an electronic keyboard you can change between many different sounds that imitate realistic sounding instruments. For example, on an electronic keyboard you could change to a sound that sounds identical to a trumpet horn or change to a sound that sounds exactly like an electric bass guitar. On a traditional grand piano, baby grand piano or upright piano this isn't possible. The sound from these 'acoustic' pianos such as a grand piano are immaculate for referencing classical compositions although are considerably different to electronic keyboards.

Above is an example of a C Major scale played on the keyboard. It is the easiest scale to play on a keyboard as it only requires the player to start from C and then play all the white keys until you get to C again.

Above is an example of a C minor scale being played. The difference between C Major and C minor is that the 3rd, 6th and 7th notes are lowered by a semitone.

The video above is showing an example of how you can play different sounds on a keyboard. This sound is imitating the sound of an electric bass guitar.

Within this example video featured above the sound imitating is a brass trumpet.