A piano notes chart serves as a very useful tool for beginners, which provides a visual representation of the keyboard and its corresponding notes. The piano keyboard is actually a pattern, which you should learn as a beginner. Fortunately the pattern is pretty easy to learn and to remember with a few rules. So, let’s learn how the notes on the bass and treble clefs correspond to the notes on your piano keyboard.
How to identify the piano Keys
The easiest rule, which most of us probably know is that the piano key notes go from low to high. So, when sitting at the piano, the low notes are to your left and the high notes are to your right.
Regarding the keys they are organized into two main categories: white keys and black keys. The white keys represent the natural notes of the musical alphabet – A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. And these notes keep repeating over and over.
If you take a closer look at the piano keys, you will see that the black keys are in sets of twos and threes. This pattern repeats across the entire keyboard, allowing pianists to easily identify and navigate between notes regardless of their position on the keyboard.
Another important thing to notice is that every key immediately to the left of a set of two black keys is a C. The other white keys follow in this sequence: D, E, F, G, A, B, and then it starts over with another C. This pattern continues across the keyboard. Similarly, the key immediately to the left of a group of three black keys is an F. Following F, the white keys proceed as G, A, B, C, D, E, and then repeat with F. This sequence repeats throughout the keyboard.
Since you know now how identify the white keys, let’s get to the black keys. The black keys represent the sharps and flats (the “#” symbol means “sharp”, the “♭” means “flat”), which are the raised or lowered versions of these natural notes. To be more precisely, sharp means a semitone higher, and flat means a semitone lower. Black keys correspond to more than one note name. For example, the black key to the right of C is called C sharp. But that note is the same as D flat. Because it is one semitone lower than D, it can be called D flat as well.
To make it even easier to distinguish the different notes on the piano, you can use different colors for the notes. For example, you can quickly find all C notes that are red.
And every piano key has a corresponding note in sheet music. When playing piano songs with sheet music, this is something you have to learn, and again, it’s easier for children and beginners to use colored notes in the beginning.
Exercises for Learning Piano Notes
Identify Random Notes: Randomly select notes on the piano keyboard and test how quickly you can name them.
Keyboard Diagram: Get our blank piano keyboard template and label each note on it.
Play All Instances of a Note: Play every C, D, E, F, G, A, B note across the entire piano keyboard.
Musical Alphabet Exercise: Write each letter of the musical alphabet on sticky notes or small pieces of paper, turn them over, and then identify and play the corresponding note on the piano.
Play Piano Chords: A piano chord is a combination of notes played simultaneously to create a harmonious sound. You need normally three different notes to make up a piano chord. This is also a great exercise for memorizing the different notes on the piano. Check out our piano chords chart to learn more about it.
Piano Notes Chart Printable PDF
In order to learn and teach the piano notes on the keyboard, feel free to use our piano notes printables. There are two versions, one with the keyboard and the labeled keys and another one that also includes the corresponding music notes on the musical staff. You can also use piano keys label stickers in order to have the visual aid directly on the piano keys. If you want to practice that with your students make sure to check out our blank staff paper printables.
