Piano | The Instrument

The Instrument

You may be surprised to learn that piano exists within the rhythm section, specifically the tuned percussion family of the instrument world. With its 88 hammers striking strings, the piano offers one of the widest note ranges and is used in both a lead and supporting role. It is due to such versatility that piano is found in classical and contemporary music extensively.

With such versatility, this offers both its opportunities and challenges. Understanding how to play the piano promoting the various harmonic and percussive roles is at the heart of piano method.

Various instrument & vocal ranges in relation to the piano

Illustration of keyboard topography and treble and bass alignment.

Keyboard Topography

The piano keyboard is twelve notes repeated up seven octaves. Ok, there are three additional notes included for some reason, but for simplicity's sake, let's understand it as seven octaves. The keyboard is made up of both white and black keys with two different groupings of the black keys: one cluster of 3 and another of 2 black keys. This repeated pattern of black note groupings allows us to orient ourselves and identify each note from each other. For example, all the C-notes across 7 octaves are all the white keys immediately below the grouping of 2 black notes.

Because of the piano's unique design of white and black notes when we begin to learn to co-ordinate our fingers up and down the keyboard various challenges arise. Dexterity is the ability to navigate these challenges quickly and accurately. Moving from a white note to another white note requires different finger coordination compared to when moving from a white note to a black note. Various chord structures may have different challenges depending on the shape of the chord across the specific white and black notes. With each key signature, different white and black note combinations exist, and thus, irregularity exists. Understanding that this irregularity occurs is why we need to practice and expose our minds and actions to the different demands of music.

Treble & Bass alignment

It is helpful to see how the treble and bass clefs visually align with the piano keys. The diagram above illustrates how an ascending C major scale travels through the bass and treble clef over 5 octaves.