Okay let’s get started with your first lesson.

First, we are going to look at the keyboard. There are many sizes of keyboard.

Traditionally a full size piano keyboard is 88 notes. Electric pianos and workstation keyboard are normally 76 notes. Electronic keyboards such as the popular Yamaha Tyros are 61 notes and finally beginner keyboards can be 49 notes or less.

In our example below, we will be using a 49-note keyboard. It’s important to know that the size of the keyboard doesn’t matter at this stage, whatever size keyboard you have, everything below applies.

01 Note Names On The Keyboard

This is a typical keyboard. We are going to learn the names of all the white notes. Don’t worry about the black notes we don’t need these for this lesson.

There are actually only 7 notes to learn

Here are the first 3 notes.

Shape 1

Here we have 2 black notes surrounded by 3 white notes C, D and E

Think of it as a shape. We will call this shape 1. Now see how many times you see this shape in the above full keyboard. Starting from the far left you should see this shape 4 times and the 3 white notes in each of these shapes have the same note names C, D and E

Here are the remaining 4 notes to learn.

Shape 2

Here we have 3 black notes surrounded by 4 white notes F, G, A and B

We will call this Shape 2

Now see how many times you see this shape in the above full keyboard. Again this shape appears 4 times and in each shape the notes are F, G, A and B

You have now learned all the white notes on the keyboard. Remember there are only 7 notes to learn.

Now let’s look at the full keyboard again with all the note names inserted.

Here you can see how Shape1 and 2 repeat themselves and so the notes within those shapes repeat themselves. Now try on your own keyboard. You should be able to recognise every white note on your keyboard.

Finally, if you look at the above keyboard, far right, last note. What is its name?

That’s it for the first lesson. In the next lesson, we will look at The Staff.

If you have any comments or questions then why not leave them on my blog you will be helping other subscribers who are also using this tutorial, but as always if you would prefer to email me direct; you can do that as well.

You can get all ten piano lessons in PDF format and download the book to your computer for free. You can get it here:
Learn To Play A Keyboard Or Piano

Here’s to your success

Mike Shaw
Mikes Music Room

Tags: electric pianos, electronic keyboards, piano keyboard, typical keyboard, workstation keyboard, yamaha tyros

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