The piano as a singer's tool

Maybe you think the piano is for pianists and that without years of lessons there's no point going near it. But playing the piano and using the piano are two different things. Playing it takes years; using it as a singer takes very little: finding a note, resting five fingers on the keys and building three chords. With that you can already give yourself the note before singing and play yourself a vocalization (a sung exercise, like a little scale that goes up and down) without depending on anyone. You'll also be able to accompany a simple song. Nobody will ask you for speed or for sight-reading scores. What you do gain is independence: you stop practicing blind and start checking what you sing with your ear.

At first a keyboard looks like a wall of identical keys, like a row of houses with no numbers. But it has a pattern that repeats, and that pattern is your compass. Look only at the black keys: they come in groups of two and three, alternating. The white key just to the left of each group of two black keys is a C. There are several Cs, and the one closest to the center is middle C (also called C4). In 'Reading the staff' you saw it written on a ledger line (a short little line outside the five lines) between the two clefs: it's the same note, now under your fingers. If you get lost, go back to the group of two black keys: it always brings you back to a C.

When you sing, the distance between two notes is something you hear. On the keyboard, you can also see it, and that helps a lot. A half step (the smallest distance between two notes) is moving from one key to its immediate neighbor, whether it's white or black. From C to the black key on its right there's a half step; from that black key to D, another one. Two half steps together make a whole step, so from C to D there's a whole step. Now look at E and F, and at B and C: they're white keys right next to each other, with no black key in between, so there's only a half step between them. If you're ever unsure, count neighboring keys without looking at the color. That way you won't get lost.

When you sing, extra tension robs your voice of sound, and the same happens at the piano. That's why it pays to settle in before pressing a key. Sit on the front half of the chair with your feet on the floor, because that way your body is stable without effort. Your forearms go roughly level with the keyboard. Let your shoulders drop, since that's where the weight of your arm starts. Your fingers are slightly curved, as if holding a small ball. A key isn't pressed with finger strength: it goes down with the weight of your arm, which drops and rests. If letting go is hard, relax: almost everyone squeezes at first. When you notice your shoulder rising or your jaw clenching, pause for a moment: gently shaking out your hands is enough to release.

To keep instructions clear, fingers have numbers on the keyboard: the thumb is 1, the index finger 2, the middle finger 3, the ring finger 4 and the little finger 5. It's the same for both hands. Now rest your right hand with your thumb on middle C, so each finger falls naturally on the next white key: C, D, E, F and G, from 1 to 5. That's the five-finger position, and almost everything you'll need fits there without moving your hand. Play the five notes up and down, slowly, to hear that each one sounds even. If it's hard and fingers 4 or 5 come out weak, don't worry: they're the least trained fingers. Go slower, and with the weight of your arm they even out.

Ever started a song and realized by the second phrase that you began too high? That's what the simplest and most valuable use of the piano is for: giving yourself the starting note. It's done in three steps. First you play the key and listen until it fades. Then, in silence, you imagine that same pitch (how high or low the note is) inside your head. Only then do you sing it, softly and on a comfortable vowel. At the end, you play the key again while you hold the note, to check whether they match. That middle step, imagining before singing, is the heart of the lesson 'Pitch: singing the note you hear'. If they don't match, that's normal: try a more comfortable note, because in the center of your voice your ear finds its way more easily.

With the five-finger position you already have everything to play yourself a vocalization without depending on anyone. Play C-D-E-F-G-F-E-D-C and sing over it, so your hand and your voice travel the same path. Then move your hand up a half step: your thumb moves to the black key next door and you repeat the same pattern from there. Keep going up a half step at a time while your voice is comfortable, and when you reach your comfortable ceiling, come back down the same way. If mixing white and black keys is hard, there's a shortcut: play only the first note of each round and sing the rest yourself, which also trains your ear. It's normal for black keys to trip up your hand at first. The piano gives the starting point; your voice makes the scale.

With those five fingers you can build chords (several notes sounding together) while barely moving. A triad (a chord of three notes, each one skipping a note) comes out with fingers 1, 3 and 5: C-E-G, the C chord. To move to the F chord without jumping, C stays put and the other two notes move up one white key: C-F-A. For the G chord, your hand moves down slightly: B-D-G, with your little finger on the same G as in C-E-G. Back to C-E-G closes the loop, called a chord change (moving from one chord to another). They're the same old chords with their notes reordered: that's an inversion (the same chord with its notes in another order). If it's hard, try the change silently first, so your hand learns the path before it sounds.

With the right hand sorted, the sound still needs a floor, and that's the other hand's job. The left plays a single low note, the root (the one that gives the chord its name): C for the C chord, F for F, G for G. In the MIDI, this loop is called I–IV–V–I: the Roman numerals name each chord by its place in the scale (C is I, F is IV and G is V). To start, one chord every four beats: both hands together on the first beat, and you let it ring while you count the other three. When it comes without looking, sing the tonic over it (the 'home' note, where everything rests; here, C) and then a simple melody. If coordinating your hands is hard, that's normal: practice each hand alone a few rounds first.

It can happen that the five-note vocalization sits too high for you, or that a song feels uncomfortable. In 'Scales and key' you saw that transposing (singing or playing the same thing starting from another note) means moving everything by the same number of half steps. On the keyboard that becomes something very concrete: you keep the shape of your hand and place it starting from another key. If the vocalization sits too high, you start it a whole step lower and the pattern repeats exactly. Chords work the same way: the same shape from D sounds in D. If it's hard because black keys show up, that's normal and happens to almost everyone. Go by distances and by ear, not by color: staying on white keys only would change the distances.

For all of this you have the app's piano, in the Piano & MIDI tool. It shows one or two octaves (the stretch from one C to the next) depending on your screen, with buttons to move up or down. When the indicator says C4, the first white key is middle C. You play it with the mouse, your computer keyboard or a connected MIDI keyboard (a physical one, plugged into the computer). It records what you play, plays it back and exports it as a MIDI file (a file that tells the app which notes to play); what it can't do is import them. Each lesson's MIDI exercises play on the same page or download. The idea is to listen, play it yourself and record your accompaniment, so you can sing over it with your hands free.

You have all the pieces; now let's order them so they fit into your day. You don't need long sessions: ten well-used minutes are enough. You start with two minutes of map, finding every C on the keyboard and naming out loud the keys around middle C. Then come two minutes of five fingers, played and sung. After that, three minutes of a vocalization that rises a half step at a time, playing only the first note of each round. You finish with three minutes of the C, F, G and C chord change, with the bass in the left hand. It's best to do it before your vocal practice, because that way you arrive with your ear switched on. If some day you only have time for the map, that counts too: what adds up is consistency.

Today you learned to find your way around the keyboard: middle C is to the left of the central group of two black keys, and distances are counted from neighboring key to neighboring key. You also built your five-finger position, which lets you give yourself the note and play vocalizations that rise a half step at a time. And you're leaving with three chords that barely move your hand, C-E-G, C-F-A and B-D-G, with the bass in the left to accompany yourself. For today, here's something small: five minutes with the five-finger position on the app's piano, playing and singing C-D-E-F-G and back. Then, calmly, the guided staff at the end is waiting for you to write that same rise and fall in quarter notes; you can delete and try as many times as you like.