Guides › Piano Note Names: How to Find Every Note on the Keyboard
A piano has 88 keys: 52 white and 36 black. That’s enough to be intimidating! But relax, you don’t have 88 keys to memorize. The keyboard is made of one pattern of 12 keys (7 white, 5 black) that repeats from one end to the other. Know that pattern, and you know the whole keyboard.
The secret is to never count keys: you find your way by the black keys. Here’s how, with exercises to make it second nature. It works on an acoustic piano just as well as on any digital keyboard, whatever its number of keys.
Look at the black keys: they aren’t spread out at random. They come in twos, then in threes, then twos, then threes… all along the keyboard. These groups are your landmarks: every white key is defined by its place around them.
First exercise: play every group of two black keys, from the low end (left) to the high end (right), with fingers 2 and 3 of your right hand. Then every group of three, with fingers 2, 3 and 4. Do it again with your eyes closed: the black keys stick up, so you can feel the groups with your fingertips.
Tip: You can do this exercise right now in Pianamo’s lesson 2, free and without an account, on the on-screen keyboard or with your MIDI keyboard. It ends with an improvisation on the black keys.
Around each group of two black keys, there are three white keys. From left to right:
Tip: Exercise: find every C on the keyboard, from lowest to highest, looking for a group of two black keys each time. Listen: they sound “the same”, just lower or higher. Then do the same with every D, then every E (lesson 7, lesson 8).
Around each group of three black keys, there are four white keys. From left to right:
Tip: Notice the resemblance: C and F both sit just to the left of a group, E and B just to the right. To tell them apart, look at the size of the group: two black keys for C and E, three for F and B (lesson 9).
The musical alphabet only has seven letters, from A to G, and it loops like the days of the week. On the piano, the natural place to start is C: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, then back to C. Going right, you move up the alphabet; going left, you move down it: B, A, G, F, E, D, C. Play all the white keys from one C to the next: that’s the C major scale.
Practice saying the alphabet backward, fast: that’s what you’ll need for melodies that go down. Then play it on the keyboard: the note just above E (F), just below C (B), two notes above A (C)… That’s what lesson 10 is all about.
Middle C is the C closest to the middle of the keyboard, usually roughly in front of the piano’s brand name. It’s the starting point for reading music (see how to read treble clef notes): your right and left hands organize themselves around it. On an 88-key piano, it’s the 4th C from the left; on a 61-key keyboard, it’s usually the 3rd.
From one C to the next, there are eight white keys (C D E F G A B C) and twelve keys in all, counting the black ones: that’s an octave. Two notes an octave apart have the same name and blend into each other: one is simply higher than the other.
To tell the Cs apart, they get numbers. In the most common system, called scientific pitch notation, middle C is C4: the C an octave lower is C3, the one an octave higher is C5. The lowest key on an 88-key piano is A0 and the highest is C8. And the A that orchestras tune to, the first A above middle C, is A4 (440 Hz).
Tip: Heads up: some manufacturers and music software call middle C “C3”. When in doubt, trust the keyboard itself: it’s the C closest to the middle (lesson 11).
Letter names don’t stop at single notes. Songbooks, lead sheets and chord charts use the same letters to name chords: a letter on its own means a major chord built on that note, and a small m means minor. Once you know where the notes are, you can already find the notes of the most common chords:
Tip: You’ll see these symbols everywhere, especially in chord charts for songs. To see them on the keyboard, open the page for the C major chord (C) or the A minor chord (Am), and read piano chords for beginners to know which ones to learn first.
Between E and F, and between B and C, there’s no black key: these notes are neighbors, a half step apart (also called a semitone), the smallest distance on the piano. Everywhere else, a black key sits between two white ones.
The black keys take their names from their white neighbors. A sharp (♯) raises a note by a half step: C♯ is the black key just to the right of C. A flat (♭) lowers a note by a half step: D♭ is the black key just to the left of D. Notice anything? It’s the same key: every black key has two names. F♯, for example, is the first black key in the group of three, and B♭ is the last.
When do you use one name or the other? You’ll find out in lesson 37 and lesson 38. For now, just remember the movement: sharp, a half step to the right; flat, a half step to the left.
Tip: To make all this second nature: every day, pick three notes at random and find them as fast as you can, in every octave. The lesson 12 challenge does exactly that, against the clock.