Beginner Piano Lessons for Kids

If you want to teach your child to play the piano, there are several ways of doing it - you can find a piano teacher for them, look up how to play piano online or allow the child to lesson to play piano by ear. This is a healthy skill, as it helps the brain to develop. There are several skills your child will need to learn when playing piano or any other musical instrument. The necessary things for playing piano are proper positioning of the child's hands (otherwise bone injury could occur), proper posture, the ability to read music and the ability to sight-read, ie play a piece without practicing it prior. All of these help the child's brain to develop in intellect and creativity, and are critical to music education. The piano takes a long time to truly become proficient, so ensure that your child's up to the commitment.piano player

The keys might look confusing to the child at first, but explain to them that the white keys are normal notes, and the black keys are accidentals. Also, teach them about the musical alphabet: the notes A through G, and tell them the accidentals are the notes between, which is what are played on the black keys. The black keys on a piano won't be used much at first, so start your child off on simple lessons, and teach them proper hand position and posture. Proper posture includes sitting up straight or leaning slightly forward. Also show the child that the fingers need to be relaxed in their natural position. Instruct them to curl the thumb slightly inwards so they're parallel with the rest of the hand.

The next thing for a child to learn on piano is basic scales. The most basic scale is a C scale, so show the child where C is - it's a key just to the left of two black keys. Then show them how to play up the white keys with right thumb, index finger, middle finger, and then repeat the process up to the next C. This is a full C scale.

This is the easiest way for your child to play a scale with one hand, and it'll teach them finger dexterity. Don't bother with anything like sheet music right now - instead, try to encourage your child to play a TV show theme on the piano, something like the basic Spongebob melody or whatever the favored show is. The important thing is to help them figure out how to play the melody by ear, or playing without music and instead just hearing it played elsewhere.

Instruction in reading sheet music can come later on, but it's best to take this part rather slowly. It can be complicated sometimes to a younger child, but as children learn very quickly they can pick up on the basics relatively easily. The child can then learn to read music and play along with it at the same time, and this can provide a healthy sense of accomplishment. At first you may want to consider piano lesson DVD's as they can visually stimulate a child's mind and hold their interest for a longer period of time. Learning any kind of musical instrument, especially piano, is a very rewarding activity for young minds.

Learn more about beginner piano lessons by visiting the homepage of PianoMasteryLessons.blogspot.com, or by reading through some of the other piano lesson articles we've posted on this web site.

Piano Solo

Here is a solo showing you what can be done once you have memorized a few scales and learned to play them with a little bit of speed. Notice how I'm not playing all of the notes with the same duration. There are quarter notes and eighth notes, and it changes up frequently. During practice sessions it's easy to get caught up in playing the scales at the same pace with the same note duration. That's great for practice and developing meter, but musically it isn't as interesting. When playing solos change up the not only the duration of the notes, but the volume of them as well. Let the emotion you feel flow out into the piano.

Watch Piano Solo #2 for more inspirational piano playing.

Ionian Piano Mode

Now I want to talk to you about modes of scales. For every scale there are a number of different modes that you can play it in. The simplest is the first mode, called the Ionian mode, and that is the one we are going to start with. I'm going to start with C major as an example. Since it is the first mode, the Ionian mode simply plays the scale starting with the first note, in our case C. That's right, to play the C major scale in the Ionian mode, you simply have to play the scale as you've memorized it.

The chord that we make from the Ionian mode is the major seventh chord. If you take the first note, third note, fifth note, and seventh note of the Ionian mode, you end up with the major seventh chord. For the C major scale that is the notes C E G B.

The Ionian modes, and modes in general, aren't limited to the C major scale. If we take the G mjaor scale, G A B C D E F# G, and take the first, third, fifth and seventh notes of the Ionian mode (which is the same as the scale itself), we get G B D F#. Those notes make up the G major seventh chord.

Since the first mode is the same as the scale itself, you may be having a hard time understanding the concept. Don't worry, I'm going to teach you all of the modes and things should become a little clearer as you follow along.

For the next lesson, you can review the Locrian Piano Mode.