For many beginners, a keyboard can look like a daunting row of notes that all look alike. There are 88 keys on a full-size piano…it can appear practically endless!

Learning the notes on the piano can feel like an enormous task. Let's eliminate the overwhelm and break it down. 

Following these three simple steps can help you quickly learn every note on the piano. The third step, Anchors, is where the magic is at!  It will help everything click and will make you confident with every single note.

Are you ready? Let’s dive in!

Step 1 - See the Pattern

The piano is organized into a repeating pattern. There are groups of two black keys and groups of three black keys that go back and forth, like this:

This pattern repeats all the way up and down the piano. That means we don’t actually have eighty-eight totally unique notes. Let’s break it down further in our next step. 

Step 2 - Learn The Musical Alphabet

 We give each note a letter name. And here’s the great thing, we only use letters A through G.

The musical alphabet repeats A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, over and over again:

Step 3 - Anchors 

At this point, you might still feel a bit overwhelmed. There are still several notes to learn!

Here is where we can simplify things and give you confidence in learning notes on the piano. 

The trick? Don’t try to memorize everything all at once!  Instead, we want to have anchors that we can build on. 

There are two anchors, C and G. Let’s start with C. 

First Anchor: C

C is to the left of the two black keys, and there are several C’s on a keyboard. 

And here’s the fantastic part, once you learn C, you’ve actually learned three notes! B is to the left of C. And D is to the right.

Second Anchor - G

Now let’s learn our second anchor, G. G is inside the group of three black keys, between the first two, and it looks like this:

Again, here is the fantastic thing. By learning G, we’ve also learned F and A.

That means by learning two anchor points, C and G, we’ve learned almost every white key! The only note to learn on its own is E. 

And just like that, you now have a quick and easy strategy for learning every note! 

Free Resource:

We have a free download with a note names chart, reference images, and your 4-step plan for learning all the note names. To grab your copy, click here!

An extra tip for you:

Learning our play and look away method is the fastest way to get this information nailed down. It’s our number one tip for piano beginners. You can learn more here!  

Bonus Step: Sharp and Flats

You might be wondering, “What about the black keys?”

We call them them sharps and flats. A sharp is the note that is closest to the right, and a flat is the note that is closest to the left.

The symbol for a sharp is a hashtag. (Of course, we used this symbol for sharps long before hashtags were a thing!)

Here is what the piano looks like with the sharps labeled:

A flat looks like a lowercase b. Here is what the piano looks like with the flats labeled:

And now you know every note! Way to go! 

Your next step: Put it in action

Your next step is to start actually playing some notes! We are currently offering our “Beginner’s Bundle” promotion which includes our flagship program, Piano Foundations, along with our Chord Bootcamp and Sheet Music Accelerator programs all for a greatly discounted price! 

We’d love to see you thrive on piano, and we know you can do it. 

We’re here to help and to cheer you on! 

Click here to learn more about the course bundle and enroll today!