1. The
Piano

2. There are different kinds of
pianos. The biggest, prettiest
one is called a grand piano.

4. Another kind is
an upright piano.

6. A smaller kind of piano is called a
spinet piano.

7. Here is what the inside of
a grand piano looks like.

8. When you press a piano key,
it makes a hammer hit a string. (video)

9. A full piano keyboard has 88 keys!

10. Here are some piano keys.

11. In the middle of the keyboard is
a note called Middle C.

12. The other keys have names too—
C, D, E, F, G, then A, B, then C again.

13. How many Cs can you find?
How many As? How many Fs?

14. You make music with a keyboard
by playing the keys.

15. You play the keys with your fingers,
of course,

16. with your thumb on Middle C.
(That’s #1 in this picture.)

17. The black keys are called sharps and flats.
The white keys are called natural notes.

18. The black keys come in sets of two

19. and in sets of three.

20. Do you see the sets of
two and three?
They go 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3…

21. Down at the bottom of
a piano are pedals.

22. If you ever want to learn piano, you
need to play often and carefully.
The word for this is practice.

23. A piano teacher can help you learn.
You can take lessons.

24. A piano player is called a pianist.

25. There have been many
famous pianists.
Franz Liszt was very famous
both for playing the piano and
for writing music.

27. Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin
were all famous as pianists.

28. Another famous pianist, who also wrote
music, was Sergei Rachmaninoff.
You can still hear his music.

29. You can also still hear the music of
Josef Hoffman,

30. Arthur Rubenstein,

31. Vladimir Horowitz,

32. Sviatoslav Richter,

33. Glenn Gould,

34. Martha Argerich,

35. Marc Andre Hamelin, and Lang Lang.

36. The End