How to Learn Piano Tabs

3. Familiarize yourself with the layout
of the keyboard. There are 88 keys
on a standard piano, spanning a
little over seven musical octaves.
The lowest note on a piano, played
on the far left side in the bass clef,
is A. The highest note on a piano is
C. Starting from the left, playing
only white keys, the notes are A-B-
C-D-E-F-G. These notes repeat over
and over, all the way up. The black
keys on the piano have the same
names as the white keys, except
they are sharp or flat. The black key
after a C is C sharp or D flat,
depending upon whether you move
up to the note or back to the note.

4. Familiarize yourself with how
these notes are labeled. This is
the foundation to understanding
piano tablature. The first note (A)
on the keyboard is A0. The zero
denotes this is the beginning of
the piano keyboard, with no
octave having been reached. Play
the lowest A through G and all of
the notes will be followed by a
zero. Starting at the A an octave
above the first (eight notes
higher) and the number one
follows, indicating you're playing
in the first octave range. Middle C
on the keyboard is C4, meaning
the note C in the fourth octave.
The highest C on the keyboard is
C8, meaning C in the eighth ctave.

5. Choose a piece of piano music
written in piano tab format. Locate
lowercase letters. The lower case
letters tell you to play the white keys
on the piano. Find all the uppercase
letters. These are played as sharps
or flat. Combine these letter names
with the octave numbers and you
will know what note to play and in
which position (octave) to play it on
the keyboard.
Example: c4-d4-e4-f4-g4-a4-
b4-c5.
The above example is piano
tab for the C major scale in the
fourth octave (the middle C octave).
The last C has a five after it because
this begins the fifth octave.

6. Read stacked notes as chords. In
piano tab, the chords are often simply
written in uppercase above the piano
tab, but in some instances they are
notated in the piano tab itself. Piano
tab notes written one above the other
tells you to play the notes together, as
a chord. Notes written consecutively
indicate the notes are played one
after the other.
Example: d4-F4-a4
The above example contains the
notes of the D major chord. The F is
capitalized to indicate it is F sharp.
The other two notes are natural notes.
If these notes were stacked, you'd
play them together. Written as they
are in the above example, you play
them consecutively.

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