The piano can be an instrument that gives us a bit of reluctance when dealing with it, but the truth is that when it is played well in harmony, its beauty is unmatched.
Playing any instrument perfectly requires great skill and requires a lot of practice, but with the piano this period can be longer.
If you want to know what the musical notes for piano are like, keep reading this article from doncomos.com where we are going to explain them to you and start practicing with your piano as soon as possible.
The piano
- The piano is considered a harmonic musical instrument of keyboard and percussed strings. There are several types of piano: grand, upright or wall piano, electronic piano, etc. In general, many people and children are beginning to be interested in the electronic piano, since it is the cheapest and the easiest to find in homes.
- In general, all modern pianos have 88 quarter notes, 36 of which are black and 52 are white. On the other hand, modern pianos usually have three pedals, which serve for various effects. The unicorn pedal (one string) is the one on the left and when pressed, the hammers move to one side, so that, depending on the setting, the hammers will hit two of the three strings as well as in the felt area where normally they do not. The central tonal pedal or also known as the sostenuto (sustain) pedal is used to create the effect known as a pedal note, through which it is possible to maintain a certain note for a while. Finally, the resonance pedal is responsible for releasing the dampers of the strings, therefore it is achieved that a note continues to sound even if that key is no longer being pressed. If you have enough skill with the piano, with this pedal you could even create very subtle small effects, such as phrasing, accentuation, singability or expression.
- Sometimes humming songs can help you, to find the right notes and try to play it by ear. For this to go well, you must dedicate a lot of time and patience, especially at the beginning.
Learn to play the piano
- To learn to play the piano, the first thing you should do is have access to a piano, be it yours, a family member, or even from a conservatory. If you cannot afford to have a piano at home since they are very expensive, a good alternative is keyboards. You must also make sure that the piano is correctly tuned, otherwise the notes will be heard distorted and not as they should be, damaging the final melody.
- Once you have the piano in your possession, it’s all about playing the keys and getting familiar with them. You can try simple melodies with the major notes. You could also try doing various scale exercises or with the notes without scale order. Also to start you could assign letters and numbers to each musical note in case it helps you more when pressing the keys.
- Practice, practice. Practice makes perfect, and before learning chords and sounds. The first thing is that you become familiar with the keys, their sounds, their tones and know how to locate them correctly before interpreting melodies and staves. Keep in mind that you will need to spend at least three days a week, an hour and a half each day. There are even those who dedicate at least an hour a day to it.
Musical notes for piano
- If we sit in front of the piano looking at the keyboard, the first thing we see are black keys and white keys. First we are going to focus on the black keys, since they will be the ones that indicate where the harmonic scales begin. If we look closely, the key pattern is repeated, two quarter notes, three quarter notes, two quarter notes, three quarter notes, and so on.
- In this way, the seven white keys in that pattern we find the seven natural sounds, which are DO, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA and SI. As we can see, this group of keys is repeated in the same way together with the black keys, and they repeat the same natural notes, but all sounding differently, or higher or lower.
- You may be wondering why there is a group of two black keys and another group of three. The reason for this is that these groups of keys serve as a reference when we are playing the piano. We have already explained to you that the notes repeat themselves cyclically, so if we are, for example, playing a medium-tone E and we want to play another higher E, we just have to go to the other group of two black keys located to the left of the one we want to play. we are playing to locate the white key that represents that highest E note. Instead, if we look at the group of black keys to the right, we can easily find a lower E.
- These black keys are five accidental notes, and can be either sharp or flat. That will depend on the white key with which it is played. If you look closely, the black keys are between two white keys, that is, between two notes. Therefore, if we press a black key with the white key that precedes it then, it will be a sharp, on the other hand, if it is pressed with the white key that comes after it, the sound will be in flat. This occurs in the octave keys with the exception of between MI and FA and between SI and DO.
- For example, if we look at the first black key that is located between the notes C and RE, pressing the black key will obtain a C sharp or a D flat respectively. The sharp symbol on the staff is #, while the flat symbol is like a small b. Continuing with the example, it would be DO# and Reb. This pair of notes, despite being named and pressed differently, have the same sound, and are called enharmonics, the same happens with the rest of the octave pairs.
- Therefore, taking into account the normal notes and the sharp and flat notes, we have at our disposal a musical system of a total of twelve different notes, since the enharmonics are counted as one, to create melodies. Where 7 notes are natural and the other five are called altered.
- Now we are going to talk about tones and semitones. It is said that if we take into account any two notes that are consecutive between them there is a distance of one semitone. Therefore, between consecutive natural notes there is always a distance of one tone, on the other hand, if we look at the natural note and the altered note that follows it, the distance between them is one semitone.
- We must always keep one thing in mind, between two consecutive musical notes there will always be a distance of one tone, but with the exception of MI and FA, and SI and DO, in whose pairs, the distance between those two notes corresponds to a semitone..
- In addition, you must also be clear that one tone is always equal to two semitones.
- Take the note DO as an example. Between DO and C# there will be a semitone distance, on the other hand, between DO and RE, we will find a distance of one tone. If we were to ask how many semitones there are between the notes DO and FA, then we would only have to count all the semitones that are in between these two notes, which would be DO#, RE, RE#, MI AND FA, so between DO and FA there will be 5 semitones. These 5 semitones would be equivalent to 5 and a half tones, according to what we explained before.
- The central C is the most important, it is a special key since it is our guide and reference to place our hands on the keyboard. In general, this key can be played by either the right or left hand, and tells us that the keys to the left of it will be played by the left hand and the keys to the right will be played by the right hand. right.
- The musical notes of the songs will always be represented by two staves together, one above the other, and each one is to play the notes with each hand. The left hand staff will be given in the clef of FA on the fourth line of the staff, while the right hand staff will be given in the clef of G on the second line of the staff.
- With all this information about how the musical notes for the piano are, you can start practicing and playing melodies with your great keyboard instrument, but remember that this instrument requires great skill with the hands and fingers and for that, a lot of practice is needed. It is not impossible to play the piano, you just have to dedicate a little time to it and have the desire to learn as well as a lot of patience.