Piano Beginner

Bartolomeo Cristofori first created the piano in 1709. He executed a different mechanism by placing a keyboard over the wooden frame of the harpsichord. Over the years, pianos with various types of functionality, design and sound have been developed. The modern piano was first built in the 13th century. The piano is one of the most extensively used musical instruments due to its flexibility. It can not only be used as the only instrument but can also be an enhancement to various other musical instruments.

Before we learn to play the piano or as a piano beginner, we should be accustomed to the technical terms and the physical parts of the piano that would be used.
Parts of the piano for the piano beginner are as explained below:

Keyboard: The keyboard is the horizontal row of keys that is used by the player to create sound and music. This horizontal row of keys, when not in use, is covered by a foldable lid that is closed over it. The keyboard consists of a total of 88 keys – 36 black notes and 56 white notes. These keys constitute the seven octaves and a minor third.

Keys: As a piano beginner, you should know that keys are the units which are pressed to play a note. They are a set of black and white keys aligned horizontally. In the olden days, the white keys were made from ivory and the black keys were made from ebony. Nowadays, the keys are made of plastic due to safety concerns related to the species producing ivory.

Pedals: The full-sized pianos are made with three pedals at the bottom. The first key to the left i.e. the Soft Pedal or also called the Una Corda, is used to shift the keyboard slightly to the right, thus modifying the sound of the note making it softer. The middle pedal i.e. the Sostenuto approves only those keys that are pressed with the pedal stepped on. The last pedal i.e. the Sustain Pedal is used more often to remove the hindrances that cause vibration while paying the strings of the piano.
Music Rack: It is used to keep any kind of manual, music sheet, or paper, to refer to while playing the piano, especially as a piano beginner.

Piano Bench: This, as we all know, is the place where we sit while playing the piano.

The technical terms used are:
Octave: In musical terms, the interval of twelve keys formed between two notes of the same musical value is called an Octave. Even though the notes of exclusive octaves are at varied frequencies, they all sound the same to us. The piano keyboard consists of seven octaves, which means every individual of the seven notes appear in seven different places on the keyboard.

Pitch: The word pitch means how high or low a note sounds. When a note is struck, the pitch is decided upon based on the frequency of the sound wave produced. The key at the extreme left is tuned to have the lowest pitch and it gradually increases with the last key on the right having the highest pitch.
For piano beginners, it is very important to be savvy with these terms.