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Piano keys and notes

Eighty-eight keys look like a lot. They are really one small pattern, repeated. Learn the pattern and the whole keyboard is yours.

An upright keyboard with its staff lines; the groups of two and three black keys are lit, and each group of lines is bracketed with its count.232

Meet the keyboard

The piano was invented around 1700 by Bartolomeo Cristofori, who worked for the Medici court in Florence. A modern piano has 88 keys, 52 white and 36 black, running from A0 at the bottom to C8 at the top.

Black-and-white photograph of a painted portrait of Bartolomeo Cristofori in a long wig and coat, one hand resting near a keyboard
Bartolomeo Cristofori, in a portrait of 1726. The painting is now lost; this photograph of it survives. Bartolomeo Cristofori. Unknown painter, 1726. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Close-up of the keyboard of Cristofori's 1720 piano: pale wooden white keys and dark black keys in groups of two and three, set in a plain wooden case
The keyboard of a piano Cristofori made in Florence in 1720, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The groups of two and three black keys were already there. Grand piano by Bartolomeo Cristofori. Bartolomeo Cristofori, 1720, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0.
The whole piano: 88 keys, 52 white and 36 black, from A0 at the bottom to C8 at the top. Each C is labelled with its octave number, and middle C, C4, is lit.A0, the lowestC8, the highestC1C2C3C4middle CC5C6C7C8
All 88 keys, 52 white and 36 black. The octave number goes up by one at every C, so middle C is C4: the fourth C from the left.

The black-key map

The black keys sit in groups of two and three. Use them as landmarks:

Between E and F, and between B and C, there is no black key.

Two octaves of piano keys, C4 to B5. The black keys come in groups of two and three. Every C, lit, is the white key just left of a group of two, and every F is just left of a group of three.CDEFGABCDEFGABtwothreetwothree
The black keys come in twos and threes. C is always just left of a two, F just left of a three.

Octaves and their numbers

From one C to the next is an octave: 12 keys, white and black, each a semitone apart. Each octave gets a number that changes at C, so the notes from C4 up to B4 all belong to octave 4. Middle C is C4, the fourth C from the left.

One octave of the keyboard from middle C, C4, up to C5, with every key named. Each black key has two names, such as C sharp and D flat. The 12 keys from C4 to B4 make one octave.C4C♯D♭DD♯E♭EFF♯G♭GG♯A♭AA♯B♭BC512 keys, each a semitone apart: one octave
One octave, every key named. Each black key has two names: C♯ is the same key as D♭.

The same map on the page

In keyboard staff, the notation on this site, every line is a black key. The bold red line is C♯4, the black key just above middle C, and a dotted grey line marks each place where two white keys sit side by side with no black key between them (E and F, B and C). A white-key note is an oval in a gap or beside a dotted line, so the page looks like the keyboard turned on its side. Both hands share the one staff: notes with stems up are for the right hand, stems down for the left.

Turning the keyboard a quarter turn so the lowest key is at the bottom. On the right, the same octave stands upright, and a line runs from each black key: the bold red line comes from C sharp 4, and dotted lines mark where E meets F and B meets C. Middle C sits just below the red line.CDEFGABCAs you see itturnC4C♯4
Keyboard staff is the keyboard turned on its side. Each line is a black key; the red one is C♯4, just above middle C.

So the groups of two and three black keys you just learnt appear on the page as groups of two and three lines. The How to read page shows one octave with every note labelled.

A two-minute game

  1. Play every C on the piano, from the bottom to the top. There are eight.
  2. Now every F. Then every G.
  3. Close your eyes, put a finger on a group of three black keys, and name the white key just left of it.
  4. Open Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (Easy) and find its first note, C4, on your keyboard.
The first 2 bars of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (Easy) in keyboard staffC34412CCGGAAGCFC
Open the full pieceThe first two bars of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Its first note, C4, is the oval just below the bold red line.

When the map feels natural, how to read piano notes takes you from keys to the page. To keep the map by your piano, print the free piano keyboard chart, and to see how the 88 add up, read how many keys a piano has.

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Sources

Every fact on this page was checked against these.