How to Play Piano
Play your first melody on a piano or keyboard. Sit at the right height, find middle C, use C position, read the notes on the staff, play Mary Had a Little Lamb, add C and G chords, and set up a daily practice.
You will end up able to sit correctly at a piano or keyboard, find every note on it, read the five notes of C position on the staff, and play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with your right hand while your left hand holds two chords. That is enough to tell whether piano is something you want to stick with.
The steps work on an acoustic piano or on a keyboard with at least 61 keys. If you are buying one, FAQ 1 below covers what to look for.
A piano or keyboard with at least 61 keys A bench or adjustable chair at the correct height A metronome app on your phone A beginner method book or online tutorial
Sit at the right height and distance
Sit on the front half of your bench, not all the way back. Your elbows should be roughly level with the keyboard surface or just slightly above it. If they are too high or too low, adjust your seat. Your feet should rest flat on the floor. Sit far enough from the piano that your arms extend comfortably without locking your elbows or hunching your shoulders. Your back should be straight but relaxed. Check the angle before you start playing. If your elbows are pressed against your sides and bent tighter than a right angle when your fingertips touch the keys, you are too close. Move the bench back a few inches.
Learn the layout of the keys
A standard piano has 88 keys, but they all follow the same repeating pattern. Look at the black keys. They alternate in groups of two and three across the entire keyboard. Find a group of two black keys. The white key immediately to the left of that group is C. Every C on the piano sits in the same spot relative to those two black keys. Middle C is the C the steps below start from. On an 88-key piano, the lowest key is an A, and middle C is the fourth C from the left. On a smaller keyboard the count is different, so look up middle C in the keyboard's manual. Once you find C, the rest of the white keys go in alphabetical order: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, then back to C. That seven-note pattern repeats from the lowest note to the highest.
Good to know: Spend a few minutes finding every C on the keyboard. Then name each white key out loud, from one C up to the next, until you can name any key without counting up from C.
Position your hands correctly
Place your right thumb on middle C. Let your remaining four fingers rest naturally on D, E, F, and G, one finger per key. This is called C position. Your fingers should be gently curved, as if you were holding a small ball. Play with the tips of your fingers, not the flat pads. Your wrist should float at key level, not drooping below the keyboard or arching up high. Each finger has a number. Thumb is 1, index is 2, middle is 3, ring is 4, and pinky is 5. These numbers are the same for both hands and show up in sheet music to tell you which finger plays which note.
Heads up: Watch for flat fingers. If a finger collapses so that its pad presses the key instead of its tip, stop, curve the finger again, and replay the note. Keep that curve from the very first session.
Play the five-finger pattern in C
Starting with your thumb on middle C, play each note in order: C, D, E, F, G. Press each key firmly but gently, then release it before playing the next one. Now play the same five notes going back down: G, F, E, D, C. Do this slowly. Focus on pressing each key with equal volume and releasing cleanly. Aim for evenness, not speed. Once this feels comfortable, repeat it with your left hand. Place your left pinky on the C one octave below middle C and let your fingers cover C, D, E, F, G. The finger numbers stay the same, so on the way up the left hand plays fingers 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Learn to read basic notation
The staff is a set of five horizontal lines. Notes sit on the lines or in the spaces between them. Their vertical position tells you the pitch, and their shape tells you how long to hold them. For the right hand, you read the treble clef. The notes on the lines from bottom to top are E, G, B, D, F. The notes in the spaces spell F, A, C, E. The five notes of C position sit at the bottom of the treble staff and just below it. Middle C sits on a short extra line below the staff, called a ledger line. D sits just below the bottom line, E on the bottom line, F in the first space, and G on the second line. For the left hand, you read the bass clef. Its lines from bottom to top are G, B, D, F, A, and its spaces are A, C, E, G. Middle C sits on a ledger line just above the bass staff. When a piece starts with two 4s stacked on the staff, called 4/4 time, a whole note (open circle) gets four beats. A half note (open circle with a stem) gets two beats. A quarter note (filled circle with a stem) gets one beat. If notation feels overwhelming, Musictheory.net has free interactive lessons, starting with the staff, clefs, and ledger lines, that walk you through each concept at your own pace.
Good to know: Do not try to memorize every note on the staff right now. Start with the five notes in C position and add more as you learn new pieces.
Play a simple melody
Try "Mary Had a Little Lamb" using just your right hand in C position. The notes are: E, D, C, D, E, E, E (hold), D, D, D (hold), E, G, G (hold), E, D, C, D, E, E, E, E, D, D, E, D, C (hold). Play each note as a quarter note, worth one beat. Hold each note marked (hold) for two beats, except the last C, which you hold for four. That makes eight groups of four beats, so count "1, 2, 3, 4" out loud and start each group on 1. If you have a metronome on your phone, set it to 60 BPM, which is one beat per second. Play it as slowly as you need to. What matters is that each note sounds clean, your fingers stay curved, and you keep a steady beat.
Add basic chords with your left hand
A chord is three or more notes played at the same time. This melody needs two: C major (C, E, and G) and G major (G, B, and D). Place your left hand so your pinky is on the C below middle C. To play a C major chord, press C, E, and G all at once, with fingers 5, 3, and 1. To play G major, move your pinky down one white key to B, put your middle finger on D, and keep your thumb on G. B, D, and G are the notes of G major in a different order, so your hand barely moves and stays clear of your right hand. Try alternating between the two chords. Play C major and hold it for four beats, then G major for four beats. Once that feels natural, play the melody from step 6 with your right hand and hold one chord under each group of four beats. Hold G major under the third group (D, D, D) and the seventh group (D, D, E, D), and C major under the other six. Practice each hand on its own until it feels comfortable, then put them together at a slower tempo than either hand needed alone. That way you fix one problem at a time instead of two at once.
Build a practice routine
Practice every day in a short session, rather than once a week in a long one, so that practice becomes a habit. Our guide on how to build a habit explains how that works. A habit forms by repeating the same action after the same cue, so attach practice to something you already do every day, such as clearing the table after dinner, and keep the keyboard open and ready to play. On the days when you do not feel like practicing, commit to 5 minutes. In the habit study that guide cites, missing one day did not materially affect how a habit formed, so if you miss a day, pick up again the next day. We recommend 20 minutes a day, in three parts: 5 minutes of the five-finger pattern from step 4, 10 minutes on a piece you are learning, and 5 minutes on something you already know. Use a metronome for every new piece. Start at a tempo where you can play it without mistakes, even if that means 40 BPM. Our rule of thumb is to raise the tempo by 5 BPM only after three clean play-throughs in a row. If you are serious about progressing, find a qualified teacher. A teacher can watch your posture and hand position while you play, which is hard to judge on your own. The Music Teachers National Association's Find a Teacher directory lets you search for teachers by instrument and location, including teachers who give lessons online.
Good to know: Keep a simple log of what you practiced and for how long. Writing down what was hard and what improved helps you see progress during the weeks when it feels like nothing is changing.
If notes sound uneven or you keep missing keys, slow the metronome down until you play the passage cleanly, then build the tempo back up as step 8 describes. If your fingers flatten, go back to the curve in step 3. If your hands will not work together, play each hand alone again, then combine them at a slower tempo. If you lose the beat, count "1, 2, 3, 4" out loud as in step 6. When "Mary Had a Little Lamb" feels easy with both hands, learn the rest of the notes on the treble and bass staffs, and take your next pieces from a beginner method book or the free lessons in FAQ 3 below. Once a few chords feel comfortable, you can start writing your own music, and our guide on how to write a song takes it from there.
Questions we get asked about this
Answers from experience, not a textbook.
A keyboard is fine for beginners. Look for one with at least 61 keys and touch-sensitive keys, meaning they play louder when you press harder. Weighted or semi-weighted keys resist your fingers more, which feels closer to an acoustic piano. Everything in the steps above fits on 61 keys, which cover five octaves from C to C. Piano music can use all 88 keys, so move up to an 88-key weighted keyboard or a piano when your pieces start reaching past the ends of a 61-key board. If you can, try a keyboard at a music store before you buy it.
We could not find a study that times how long it takes to learn piano, so measure your progress by checkpoints instead. The first is playing the five-finger pattern evenly with each hand (step 4). The second is playing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with a steady beat (step 6). The third is holding the chords under the melody with both hands together (step 7). After that come reading new pieces from the staff and learning new hand positions, which a method book or a teacher puts in order.
Both paths work. A teacher can watch your hands and posture and correct them while you play, which a video cannot do. Hoffman Academy lists more than 400 free video lessons, organized into units that start with posture, finger numbers, and the names of the white keys, and you create a free account to watch them. Method book series like Faber Piano Adventures cost the price of a book. Paid subscription platforms also exist and charge monthly, so work through the free material first and pay only once you know the habit has stuck. If budget is a concern, book a lesson once a month instead of every week, so a teacher still checks your technique from time to time.
There is no age limit, and the steps above are the same at any age. Research on starting age measures something narrower than learning to play. In studies from a lab at Concordia University, musicians who began training before age 7 did better on a rhythm-tapping task than musicians who began later, even when both groups had the same years of experience. A 2013 study of 77 musicians from the same lab found that starting age was linked to performance among those who began early in childhood, and found no such link among those who began in later childhood. None of these studies tested adults learning from scratch, so they do not tell you what to expect if you start as an adult. Regular practice is the part you control, and step 8 covers it.
Each black key has two names. The black key between C and D is C sharp, because it is one key higher than C, and D flat, because it is one key lower than D. The same rule names all five black keys in each octave: C sharp or D flat, D sharp or E flat, F sharp or G flat, G sharp or A flat, and A sharp or B flat. Which name a piece uses depends on its key, and the Musictheory.net lesson on steps and accidentals explains how. "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in C position uses no black keys at all.
Creative Starter Kit
How to Make a Paper Airplane
How to Draw a Dog
How to Crochet
How to Sew
How to Play Piano
← you’re here