"Gotta get to my study room!"

AC #28: Piano Starts Here! Learn The Piano Key Names!

Learning piano key names is among the very first things I have my beginner students do. 

However, many times, during the preliminary stages of working with non-beginner students at varying levels of development, I discovered significant gaps and breaches in such fundamental things as knowing the names of the piano keys and/or the lines and spaces of the grand staff. 

The focus of AC #29 will be about learning the grand staff. The focus of this post is exclusively on learning the names of the piano keys! So, if you are an absolute beginner or someone who may need to go back to the very beginning to review, for whatever reason, this post is for you.

Use the four utilities on this page in their numerical order of presentation to help you drill and thoroughly learn the piano key names starting with the white keys first.

White keys and natural keys are synonymous and, as illustrated in AC #10, white keys were the only keys present on the world’s first piano keyboards. That said, you should earnestly study the natural keys first before moving on to the next step of learning the names of the black keys.

Each red-note question may be answered by using your mouse or qwerty keyboard commands in conjunction with the up & down arrow keys when answering questions on sharps and flats,  i.e. if C# is the question, press/hold the up arrow key first, then answer it with the qwerty C key. If Db is the question, press/hold the down arrow key first, then answer with the qwerty D key. Mouse-click once anywhere in the applet before using the “qwerty” keys to enter your answers.

Since each exercise utility is never-ending and presents questions indefinitely, you’ll want to set  some type of completion benchmark such as answering 100 questions correctly or you might use the clock timer, located at the top of each utility, to set a time limit, such as 5 to 10 minutes. If you use the timer method, be sure to click the Reset Score button when you start each utility. In either case, keep working until you have a success rate that’s between 90% and 100%.

Practice well!

Art

Name The Natural Keys (White Keys)
Keyboard Note Identification #1: Your first mission is to learn the names of the white keys.

Name The Black-Key Sharps
Keyboard Note Identification #2: Your second mission is to learn the black-key sharp names.

Name The Black-Key Flats
Keyboard Note Identification #3: Your third mission is to learn the black-key flat names.

Name All of The Keys Quickly
Keyboard Note Identification #4: Your fourth mission is to name them all quickly!