Why We Start Beginners on Piano (No Ifs, Ands, or Frets)

Helloooo friends, it's Danny! I get some version of the same question all the time: guitar, piano, drums, bass... If I'm an absolute beginner, where do I even start? My answer comes down to one word: mechanics, ability, muscle control, motor function and coordination. Ok, maybe that was more than one word, but you get the jist.

Fret Not (But Also, Fret A Little)

Let's talk about what it actually takes to get one single note out of a guitar. Your left hand has to fret the string, and not just anywhere, it has to land right in the sweet spot on the fret, but not too on top of the fret! You have to press down hard enough to avoid string buzz and you have to hold down long enough to hold the sound, maintaining that pressure the entire time the note is ringing. All while your left wrist is bent at a 90 degree angle so your finger is coming straight down on the string so you don't accidentally mute the strings around it.

Meanwhile your right hand has to pluck that exact same string, either with a pick or a finger, while avoiding the other 5 strings. Two hands, doing two completely different jobs, at the exact same time, perfectly in sync. That takes real coordination, real muscle strength, real focus and attention. That's a lot to ask of anybody on day one.

Keys To Success

Piano asks for none of that. Whether you're on a keyboard or an acoustic piano, all you have to do is press down a key, and you hear that note. So simple. You want a chord? Press down two or more keys at the same time. That's the whole mechanism. That's it. Press down and immediately feel the validation of hearing a note played back at you.

And that simplicity is exactly why it's the easiest place to start. Before you know a single thing about music, you can already start playing games with pattern recognition by finding notes, looking at the shape of the keys and patterns of the white and black keys and matching them up. The piano just... responds. Press = sound.

C You There

The first step is always the same: find middle C. It's the first note every musician learns. From there, we build the C major scale which is all the white keys, going up, eight notes, starting and ending on C.

Take a Dive-ry Into The Ivories

Here's where piano gets tricky in general: every key you play in, meaning musical key, not the physical key, mixes white and black keys in its own different combination. Every key, except one. The key of C is and will always be only white keys. You genuinely cannot go wrong while playing in the key of C if you press any white key

If a song is in the key of C, you can solo in C major and know, without knowing anything about music yet, that every note you play is going to sound alright. All the chords in the key of C are white-key-only too. So in the very beginning, the best thing to do is find that middle C and just start experimenting by pressing all the different white keys in the key of C major, and exploring from there. ("Lean On Me" by Bill Withers is a great example of this).

Hundreds of songs have been written just in the key of C, without a single confusing black key involved. It's always the best place for an absolute beginner to start.

Sharp Turns Ahead (Eventually)

Once you're comfortable there, we add the key of G, which has one black key, then the key of D, which has two. Those black keys have two names of their own, sharps and flats. Which is a total bummer since you have to memorize two names for the same note... But that's a later problem. Not a first-week problem.

From the very beginning, I'd choose piano. I'd choose the key of C. And I'd just smash those white keys and explore. If you want to see what that actually looks like in a first lesson, that's exactly what our piano lessons are built around, and it's true whether you're 7 or 70 as we see plenty of grown-ups start exactly the same way in our adult lessons. Still weighing piano against guitar or something else entirely?

We get into more of that in our FAQ.