Are you ready? Okay, watch me first. Pretty easy, right? Let's try it together. sit facing the middle of your piano or keyboard and find a set of two black keys. You'll notice I'm sure on your piano you have alternating sets of two and three black keys.

So right now we're looking at the two black keys in the middle of your piano or keyboard. Go To the left of those two black keys, and you'll see a white key. That white key is always called C, the letter names C. And the one in the middle of your piano or your keyboard has a very special name. It's called middle C. Can you guess why? Yeah, because it's in the middle. Middle C has a tone that's about in the same range as an adult woman's speaking voice here.

Okay. So that's how you know you're in the right place. So put your first finger which is also your thumb, but in piano, we call them by finger numbers on middle C, and lineup all your other fingers so that each one gets its own white key. As you saw, I played the first finger, then the second finger, and the third finger and so on until I got to the end of my hand. Then I came right back to first finger. Let's do that together.

And because we want to stay together, I'm going to count us off by 1234 Are you ready? 1234 What do you think? Very simple. Practice that I know this is very easy. And you might be able to play it right now without any practice. But remember that we're setting in place practice habits for later on when you'll be playing things that are way more advanced than this.

So by setting up good practice habits, a good system for learning, what you're doing is saving yourself a lot of time in the long run, so that you learn everything with a system and you don't ever come across something where you don't know how to practice it. Okay? So, pause the video here. Practice that by yourself. And then when you're ready, click play to continue. Okay, so the last thing I played was this note.

Now, we're going to play that one again. Watch what I do from here. So now, I started on the first finger, but I didn't play every finger I played every other finger, like this. First finger, done third, then fifth, then third. Then it went back to my fifth finger. lift my hand and back home to your thumb, which is the first finger and then lift again.

Let's try that together. Starting on middle C will be skipping and then fifth finger. First finger 1234. Lift, lift. Let's practice that one more time because it's a little bit trickier than the first thing that we learned. Starting on first finger, middle C 1234.

Number two, lift here. Lift here. What do I mean by lift, I mean, bring up your wrist so that the weight of your arm is no longer in the keys and the sound stops. I don't mean this. To see what I'm doing, don't lift your fingertips, lift your wrist. Your wrist is really what controls the action.

Many beginning pianists don't know this, but it's the wrist that does most of the work, the fingers work underneath, but the risk goes up and down to help them. So pause the video, practice that and click play when you're ready to continue. Now I'm going to put all that together, you already know both parts of it. We're just going to join them. Watch me first. Here's where we start skipping fingers.

Lift your wrist or your wrist, lift your wrist. You want to try that with me. We'll go a little bit slower. So remember, we step up and then all the way down, and then we skip fingers. Middle C first Finger 1234 if you need to practice that with me one more time, backup the video and practice it, but if you're ready to go out on your own, then you know what to do. Click pause, practice and then play.

When you're ready to move on. We're off to a great start. You now know the finger numbers of the right hand 12345 you also know where middle C is. on the keyboard, you find the two black keys in the middle of the piano or the keyboard and go to the white key directly to the left. Next, middle C. You've also played an exercise using steps or stepping, which is moving from one key to the one right next to it. This exercise, also use skips or skipping, which is playing a key, skipping the one next to it and going to the one next to that.

And the most important thing we've talked about is technique. technique is how you use your fingers and your arms and your body, at the piano. When practicing. It's really important to use proper technique every time because you're setting in muscle memory that will allow you to play just about any piece that you choose. As you build up your technique. You'll see that the pieces that seemed out of sight earlier in your musical journey are now achievable in this way Lesson the technique that we practiced was a flexible wrist, which means that you keep your wrist loose and moving the whole time that you're playing.

You don't want to play just with your fingers and not have the wrist participate. When your wrist is relaxed and flexible. It gives you the freedom to move around the keyboard with ease, which is really important when you want to play fast, or beautiful, lyrical songs. During this course. I'll give you a lot of technique tips so that while you're learning to read music and apply it to playing the piano, you'll also set in place good movement habits that will keep you playing beautifully for years to come.