Alfred's Adult Piano Lesson 3
Level 1 - The Keyboard
Alfred's Adult Piano Lesson 3 is a friendly, helpful guide for students using using the Alfred's Adult All-In-One Course. Feel free to print this and all the tutorials out for your personal use at your keyboard or piano.
You can see the full list of all my free lessons on the Alfred's Adult books here.
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The Keyboard & Keys
Pages 8-9
Page 8 has a nice, simple diagram of the piano keyboard, showing the pattern of black keys. Black keys are grouped in alternating sets of 2 and 3 keys each. If the piano keys have always looked confusing to you, and you didn't know how you'd ever find your way around, this is the first step.
The red arrows show you what is meant by "down" or "up" the keyboard.
Down = to the left = lower sounds (think left is low!)
Up = to the right = higher sounds (think right means height!)
Alfred's Adult Piano Lesson 3
Play the black key groups!
These two exercises, one for the 2-black-key groups and one for the 3-black-key groups, use both hands separately and serve a couple of purposes. As simple as they might be, please don't skip over them!
First, you're learning to visually orient yourself around the keyboard. Not just black keys and white keys, but distance -- between black key groups, from middle to top, and from middle to bottom.
Second, you're learning to play multiple keys with the same hand. Very handy preparatory exercise for chord playing, which is coming soon!
Third, you're already building muscle memory in your arms and hands. You're feeling the weight of the keys underneath your fingers, how far apart your fingers are when you're playing the groups of keys, and how far you have to move your arm to reach the next set of keys.
See, you didn't know these little exercises were so important, did you?
Alfred's Adult Piano Lesson 3
Name that key!
On page 9, you learn the musical alphabet:
A B C D E F G
Not only piano keys, but all of music and every instrument plays these notes! It's how musicians all "speak the same language."
As you can see from the keyboard diagram at the bottom of the page, every note has a place on the white keys, and those same 7 letters of the musical alphabet are repeated over and over.
In the middle of the page, you'll find pictures that have letter names in red on white piano keys. What's great is that each letter has it's own place, and each time it repeats on the keyboard, it's the same. This is the second way that you learn to find your way around the keyboard. So, let's take the piano note C.
C is found on a white key, directly to the left of any group of 2 black keys. There are lots of C's on a piano keyboard (8, to be exact)! Can you find all of them? First, find those groups of two black keys, then find the white key to the left.
The middle of page 9 shows you where each note name is located on the keyboard. In no time, you'll have learned where each letter of the musical alphabet fits on the piano keyboard!
The super-easy piano key name game!
My favorite way to practice learning the note names and places on the keyboard is simple, and it's great even if you're a really busy adult. Ready?
Every time you walk by the piano (or the room with the piano), walk over and put your finger down on a key. Name it. Do it 3 or 4 times. Then go back to what you were doing before!
If you do this several times per day, in only a couple of weeks you'll be able to name the keys almost instantly. Playing songs is SO much easier when you don't have to think so hard about which notes are which keys - when it's just instant.
Congratulations! You're learning your way around the keyboard, and now you know the language of music - the musical alphabet! I hope Alfred's Adult Piano Lesson 3 has been helpful for you.
Don't forget to keep reviewing your finger numbers, and do your breathing and hand warmups from Alfred's Adult Lesson 1 before practicing.
Have fun!
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