Day 135 min

What exactly did you just buy?

Day one asks nothing of your playing. Get to know the instrument, set it up properly, and get one sound out of it.

What is the thing in front of you?

Shops tend to call everything with black and white keys a “keyboard”, but instruments like yours actually fall into three families, and yours belongs to one of them. Knowing which matters, because it tells you what you can reasonably expect the thing to do.

Digital piano

Weighted keys with real resistance, like an acoustic pianoUsually a full 88 keysPiano is the main sound; a handful of others at mostBuilt to get as close to an acoustic piano as possible

Electric keyboard / arranger

Light keys, easy to press; some have no weighting at allUsually 49 or 61 keysHundreds of instrument sounds, plus backing rhythmsBuilt for making all sorts of music, not for imitating a piano

The third family is the synthesiser, which is more about sculpting sounds than playing pieces. If your instrument is covered in knobs and the panel says things like OSC or FILTER, that is a synth.

If your instrument...then it has
feels heavy, with resistancehammer action or weighted keys — close to a real piano
springs back fast and feels lightsynth action — quick to play, harder to control dynamics on
gets louder when you press hardervelocity sensitivity — you can shape dynamics with it
sounds the same however hard you pressno velocity — every lesson still works, but you cannot practise dynamics on the instrument itself
Press a key gently, then firmly, and compare. You will know immediately which kind you have.

Getting set up to play

There are four things worth checking before your first session. It takes under five minutes, and skipping it causes a lot of low-grade irritation later.

  1. Plug it in and switch it on, then set the volume to about halfway
  2. If you have headphones, use them. You can practise at any hour without bothering anyone, and you will hear far more detail in your own playing than the built-in speakers give you
  3. If a sustain pedal came in the box, plug it into the socket marked SUSTAIN or DAMPER — but do not use it yet. It properly arrives in level 4
  4. Select the piano sound. It is usually voice 001, or a button simply marked PIANO

If your instrument has a socket labelled USB TO HOST, it can talk to a computer — which means this site can see every key you actually press, with no need to click on screen. We will come to that on the keyboard page; there is no rush to connect it now.

White keys, black keys, and your first sound

Look down at the keyboard. There is a long unbroken row of white keys, with black keys set above and between them. The black keys are not evenly spaced: they cluster into groups of two and groups of three, alternating all the way along.

group of 2group of 3group of 2group of 3
Look carefully: two, then three, then two, then three — forever.

That two-and-three pattern is your map. Tomorrow we will use it to find every note on the instrument without memorising anything. Today, just fix the picture in your mind.

Press anything you like — nothing here is wrong. Run from left to right and listen to which way the sound moves.

Play from the far left to the far right and you will hear the pitch climb steadily. That is the one rule to take away today: further right is higher, further left is lower.

Your first sound

Press all three highlighted keys. On screen, on your computer keyboard, or on your real instrument — whichever you like.

CEG

Press them one at a time, following the highlight

C · E · GThis is the sound of a C major chord.

Put in the reps

The first drill is four white keys side by side, C D E F, one finger each from thumb to ring finger, and the hand never moves for all five rounds. Only one thing in it is new: a note has to sound when the click says so, not when the finger feels ready.

Four white keys, four fingers

The F under your ring finger tends to overstay its beat, because that finger is the slowest of the four to come back up — you will hear it still sounding as the next round starts on C. The second round moves the whole hand up to begin on G, the white key between the first and second black keys of a group of three.

52BPMCurrent tempo
Ckey 1 of 2
0/4Tempo rungs cleared
0/5Clean reps in a row
C1D2E3F4

Loop it in time with the clicks. 5 clean reps in a row moves you up a rung; one slip starts the count again · from 52 up to 76 BPM · after the first key it moves through 2 more

Today's minigame

Find the black-key groups

A key lights up and you name it. Multiple choice.

Trains: reading the keyboard from the shape of the black-key groups, not from labels

Homework

Go to homework
Know which kind of instrument you haveAnswer a question on the difference between a digital piano and an electric keyboard. Repeat it until the answer is automatic.
Climb from low to highPlay five notes in ascending order, training your hand to associate left with low and right with high.
Take the pattern up to tempoToday's loop, a notch faster than the lesson version. Repeat it as often as you like — it comes back on its own when it is due.

All homework lives on the homework page. Repeat it as often as you like — anything you're still shaky on gets pushed back to the top by itself.

SummaryA digital piano has weighted keys close to a real piano; an electric keyboard is lighter but carries far more sounds; a synth is for building sounds yourselfEvery instrument lays its keys out identically, so every lesson here works on all of themBlack keys alternate in groups of two and three — that is the map you will use to find notes tomorrowFurther right is higher, further left is lowerYou played a C major chord on your very first day
Done with day 1?

No rush. If you're not confident yet, run the minigame above once more before marking it done.

  • Read every part · 0 of 4
  • Take the drill up to target tempo · 0 of 1
  • Clear 60% of today's minigame · 0 of 1
  • Come back and practise again later · 0 of 2 sittings