These piano lessons for beginners start with finding your way around the keys and build toward a first melody, a scale and chords. Each lesson includes a short exercise on its keyboard. Press Listen to hear it with the keys lighting up, or Start exercise to play the requested notes yourself. Use Show the key if you need a hint. The exercise waits for you; a different note does not move it forward. Listening keeps your practice place. You can pause, return later and choose Resume exercise in the same browser.
Who these lessons are for
Complete beginners of any age: adults who want to try the piano before buying one, children learning with a parent beside them, students who need to find middle C for music class, and anyone returning to the piano who wants the basics in the right order.
If you want a route shaped around your starting point, use the adult beginner path for short sessions that build toward sheet music and chords, or the kids' first piano lessons for parent-guided three-note activities, familiar songs and games that wait for each note.
What the exercises teach
Start with the piano keys lesson, then use the path above in order. The first exercise names eight white keys from middle C to the C above it. Hand position adds a five-finger pattern, and the first-song exercise uses the first two bars of Mary Had a Little Lamb. Repeated notes need a fresh press each time.
The sheet-music exercise connects six treble- and bass-clef landmarks to the keyboard. The scale exercise goes up and down one octave of C major with right-hand fingering. The sixth exercise builds C major, F major, G major and A minor one note at a time. Afterward, try the complete chord sounds in the chord finder.
The second part adds left-hand notes and sharps and flats. Compare the intervals inside chords, rearrange notes into chord inversions, and turn C and A minor into short arpeggios. The final exercise connects C, F, G and C using nearby chord shapes.
These are note exercises: completion means you pressed the requested keys. They do not assess rhythm, posture, fingering or whether chord notes sound together. Follow the article below each keyboard for those musical details, and use a real piano for hand technique. A finger guide names the hand it applies to; finger numbers are not the letters on your computer keyboard.
Progress is saved only in this browser, without an account. Clear lesson progress above removes the lesson exercise bookmarks without deleting song practice or piano settings. You can revisit any lesson, including completed ones, and Practice again keeps its completion mark. If storage is unavailable, the exercise still works for the current page.
Build and hear your own sequence with the chord progression generator: change key, try inversions, loop slowly and save the MIDI file.
The piano chord progressions lesson also explains six common patterns, with examples in C, G and D major. Try another pattern after completing its guided C–F–G–C exercise.
After that, keep going on the song pages. Each shows the letter notes of a public-domain song and has two modes: Listen plays the melody and lights up the keys, and Practice lights the next key and waits for you to press it.
How to practice
- Short and often. Ten to fifteen minutes on most days works better than one long session a week.
- Slowly first. Play slowly enough to get every note right; speed comes later, from correct repetitions. If you keep stumbling in one spot, slow down instead of pushing through.
- Hands separately. Learn each hand's part alone, and when you combine them, go slower than either hand could play by itself.
- Small pieces. Open Practice a section on a song page and select one or two bars. Listen slowly, then practice the notes before extending the range. Your place is saved in this browser; return to the song and choose Resume practice.
- Count out loud. Saying 1, 2, 3, 4 keeps long notes long and short notes short.
- Check the pulse. Use the online metronome beside your keyboard at a pace you can keep. Add subdivisions to hear where notes between the beats belong.
- Stay relaxed. If your hand, wrist or forearm feels tight, stop, let your arms hang and shake them loose.
What you need
To start, only a device with a web browser. The piano on this site works on computers, tablets and phones (a phone is easier to use turned sideways), and it's free, with no signup, download or install.
A real keyboard helps once you want to build finger technique and play with both hands. Any keyboard with 61 or more keys covers every note these lessons use, since they stay between C2 and C6, and touch-sensitive keys, which play louder when you press harder, let you practice playing softly and loudly. Sit at a height where your forearms are about level with the keys.
A MIDI keyboard plugged into your computer plays the site's piano sound, with soft and loud playing and a sustain pedal, in Chrome, Edge, Opera and Firefox on computers. Safari doesn't support MIDI keyboards in the browser.
How this site's keyboard helps
The full piano has all 88 keys, from A0 to C8, and several features that make beginner practice easier:
- Key labels: note names (C D E), solfège (Do Re Mi), the computer key that plays each note, or none. Start with note names, then turn labels off to test yourself.
- Computer keys: the bottom row, Z X C V B N M, plays white keys starting on C, with S D G H J for the black keys, and the top row, starting at Q, plays the next octave up. The arrow keys move the range by an octave, and the space bar holds the sustain pedal.
- Recording: record what you play and listen back, which makes uneven rhythm easy to hear, then download it as a MIDI file or copy a link that plays it for someone else.
- Chords and scales: the chord finder lights up and plays any chord and its inversions, and the scales page plays every major and minor scale up and down.
The keyboards inside the lessons have the same labels and answer to your computer keys, so you can check a note or try a finger pattern without leaving the lesson.