How to Start Playing the Piano As a Beginner

By Erik Koller

Starting to play the piano as a beginner can be difficult. Especially if you don't have a piano teacher telling you want to do. This article will give some tips to get you started.

First off, you need to have an idea of what you want to accomplish. What do you want to play? Is it a popular piano song you heard in a movie or the radio? Or is it a Chopin Etude? The two both require very different piano skills.

The Basics of Piano
Either way, as a beginning piano student you want to focus on the basics. The bare bone necessities to piano playing. If you get these down solid, you'll be able to play even the easiest pieces impressively. There's nothing worse than hearing a beginner play a hard piece with awful technique. This is because of a lack of proper basic piano skills.

The first piano skill is how you sit down at the piano. Although I can't describe it exactly with writing, I can outline what you need. You need to be sure that you are sitting in front of middle C and have a straight but relaxed posture. You want your knees to line up with the edge of the piano keys. Also, you want to lean slightly towards the piano but not too much.

Hand Positions
You want to make sure that you are using your hands the right way as well. Be sure that it is arched. A good idea is to pretend that you are holding an imaginary ball in your hand. You want a relaxed hand position that does not have strain on it. If you have tense hands or any part of your body, you can get injured. Or worse...develop bad habits!

There are many options for learning the piano. You can get a private instructor that teaches you weekly. You can also teach yourself from various books and online resources. If you don't have the basics down though you'll sound like a little kid playing the piano.

As a beginner you want to get down the basics of music as well. Music is a language that every instrument follows. This includes learning scales, chords, notes, accidentals, and reading music. Many students want to learn chords before they even know notes! That's called learning the wrong way and makes for bad piano students that need to be corrected.

The best way to start is to first learn the notes of the piano, then how chords are made. There are simple formulas for all of these things in music. When you figure out, for example, how to make a chord you can make any chord you want!

This may sound like a lot of information to learn because it is! The key to learning an instrument is to take it one lesson at a time. This is the benefit of online piano lessons for beginners. You control how fast you progress. And if you forgot something, you can just repeat a lesson!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Erik_Koller