Welcome to "PianoNanny.com." The graphics in this tutorial will be minimal so that the loading speed into your browser will be as fast as possible. You will need to have at least a small portable keyboard in front of you as you go through these lessons so that you can look at it and become familiar with it. Learning a keyboard is like typing. You need a typewriter keyboard in front of you to learn to type. The same is true of the piano. You need a piano keyboard in front of you to learn to play piano. A small Casio or Yamaha portable keyboard with built-in speakers would work just fine.

As you first look at the piano keyboard, it looks like there are lots and lots of notes to learn. Not so! You only need to learn 12 notes. The shaded area on the keyboard above shows the 12 notes you will need to learn. Notes on a piano are grouped in sets of 12 notes.

Each group has 7 white keys and 5 black keys. Look at the keyboard above and count the 7 white keys and 5 black keys in the shaded area. This is one group. This group is repeated over and over, up the keyboard and down the keyboard. Each group starts with a "C" note. See the note labeled "C" above? On any keyboard, "C" is always the first white key that is to the left of two black keys.