The Piano

There are different kinds of pianos. The biggest, prettiest one is called a grand piano.

Another kind is an upright piano.

A smaller kind of piano is called a spinet piano.

Here is what the inside of a grand piano looks like.

When you press a piano key, it makes a hammer hit a string. (video)

A full piano keyboard has 88 keys!

Here are some piano keys.

In the middle of the keyboard is a note called Middle C.

The other keys have names too— C, D, E, F, G, then A, B, then C again.

How many Cs can you find? How many As? How many Fs?

You make music with a keyboard by playing the keys.

You play the keys with your fingers, of course,

with your thumb on Middle C. (That’s #1 in this picture.)

The black keys are called sharps and flats. The white keys are called natural notes.

The black keys come in sets of two

and in sets of three.

Do you see the sets of two and three? They go 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3…

Down at the bottom of a piano are pedals.

If you ever want to learn piano, you need to play often and carefully. The word for this is practice.

A piano teacher can help you learn. You can take lessons.

A piano player is called a pianist.

There have been many famous pianists. Franz Liszt was very famous both for playing the piano and for writing music.

Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin were all famous as pianists.

Another famous pianist, who also wrote music, was Sergei Rachmaninoff. You can still hear his music.

You can also still hear the music of Josef Hoffman,

Arthur Rubenstein,

Vladimir Horowitz,

Sviatoslav Richter,

Glenn Gould,

Martha Argerich,

Marc Andre Hamelin, and Lang Lang.

The End