Music Theory 101: Structure of the Piano

I'm not sure if I'll be posting Music Theory 101 weekly, so I'm still working out an official schedule of when I will be putting up posts... I will say to expect youtube videos every week, whether it be covers, tutorials, or lessons, so feel free to subscribe to my youtube page Here to stay updated on some good stuff! I have a couple videos up there already so definitely check them out :-) I'm still testing the waters on what days are best to share videos, but soon I'll have a consistent schedule on that as well.

Anyways, I want to start at the bare bottom for those who are pure beginners. Some of you may know some of this material, so feel free to wait on a Music Theory 101 post that will show you something new! By the way, these theory lessons are revolved around the piano lessons I'll be giving, so you'll see me use the piano a lot to explain theory.

Speaking of piano, we'll start with the structure of it. For those of you who do not know, the keys are identified by letters of the alphabet. If you can recite up to the letter "G", you can learn piano. Let's Check this guy out:

When you see an 88-key piano, you're really looking at 12 keys repeated over and over again. If you're looking at your piano or keyboard right now, the first thing I want you to notice is the pattern of the black keys. The black keys are separated into groups of two and three, with each group being separated by two white keys, as seen with the two/three black keys above. This was important for me because I used that pattern to navigate through the white keys. For example, since the first key/note you will learn is "C" (the sequence begins with C and goes D, E, F, G, A, and B, then C again, as shown above), you will find C as the white key that is always to the left of the set of two black keys... as shown above. That goes across the board (no pun intended). Now take a minute to try to find all the C's on your piano. If you go up the letters that come after C, you will discover that you will end up at the next C, which will also be right next to the next set of two black keys.

Piano gets about as simple as that. Now, if you want to do some exercises with key identification, there's a great website/app I use for my current students (yep.... I teach private piano lessons... Feel free to check out my tab above that talks about lessons over skype). The website is www.musictheory.net. The direct page for the exercise for key identification is http://www.musictheory.net/exercises/keyboard. Make sure you go to the "Customize" Bar, click on "keys" and uncheck the # and ♭ notes if you don't know what they are. Then you can go back and do the exercises. The guy who created the website was so gracious to create a mobile app called Tenuto, which you can download and use to work on those exercises offline. It's a bit expensive (like, $5 or so), but it's a one-time fee and it's worth it for someone like me who's serious about musicianship.

Until my next Music Theory 101 post and/or youtube video, here's a cover I did for Bruno Mars' "Just The Way You Are". My channel has a bird's eye view tutorial for my cover, along with the sheet music which is available for download (for my more advanced musicians). Enjoy!