So you have decided to learn the piano/keyboard but not sure whether you want to go to a music teacher yet. This is a dilemma which most of us face as beginners and it is understandable to an extent. Before committing money/efforts on books and teachers it is good to get an idea of what is involved in learning the piano. It will in fact help you later when you decide to go to a teacher since you would have an understanding of the various topics that you would be supposed to learn.

Black & white Keys

Finding basic information is not a problem at all as there is so much stuff floating around on the internet that you should be able to start on your own initially. The most obvious topic to start with will be to know the notes on a Piano. It is very important to know how the various keys on the piano are named, since there are so many of them. Besides, there are white as well as black keys so you need to learn how to differentiate them.

Names of the Notes?

The thing is though it looks daunting, there is basically a pattern to it. Basically there are only seven Notes - C D E F G A B. This same set then gets repeated throughout the keyboard from left to the right. All the white keys are named this way. And what about the Black keys? Those are derived from the white key, you need to add a "Sharp" or a "Flat" to the name of the white key.

C D E F G A B (Basic Notes)

Read Music

Once you know the names of the notes on the piano, you will also need to learn how to recognize them on written music. The keyboard of a piano is basically depicted on written music by using Clefs - basically the Treble clef and the Bass clef. The various notes of the song are then depicted on the sheet music which you will need to recognize and play on the piano.

Suresh Bist
http://www.piano-education.org/