Three ways to find A on your keyboard

A is the first note of the musical alphabet, so it’s natural for beginner piano students to want to start there when learning note names at the piano.

But A can be one of the hardest notes for beginners to learn, for two reasons.

One reason is its placement on the piano. The note A is buried in a group of three black keys, and the mess of keys can be difficult for young beginners to “see” at first. Here’s a picture of where to find A. It’s a little messy, isn’t it? How would you make sense of it?

That brings us to the second reason, which is that there’s no intuitive reason why A starts on that particular note. It’s difficult for piano teachers to explain, especially for young beginners who benefit from clear-cut answers. 

The difficulty in finding A is why most primer books start by teaching the note C. Songs that start and end on C tend to be the simplest because they use only white keys. But then, it’s sometimes hard for kids to understand why we start with C when it makes most sense to them to start with A, the beginning of the alphabet! 

This conundrum has led me to prepare a way of teaching how to find A early in my students’ piano lessons if this is what makes the most sense for them.

Using an intuitive approach to finding A

For the sake of learning how to play piano, there’s no pressing need to learn why A happens to start on that key. What’s more important is that you can find a way of remembering where A that makes the most sense to the learner so it’s easy to recall.

What I like to do is try to help my students find landmarks. That means to find some way of remembering this particular key in a way that’s easy for them. The way to find your own personal landmark is to think about what you notice about where A is on the keyboard. So try this: Look at where A is, and ask yourself, if you had to describe where A is to someone else, what would you say? This is exactly what I ask my students.

The three methods

• Some people who have a little experience with piano gravitate to the “counting backwards” method. They’ll find a key they already know, usually C (remember what I said about most piano lessons starting with that note?), and count backwards until they reach the letter A (“C, B, A”). The counting backwards method is a totally valid way to find the letter A. If this is what you or your child does, I encourage you to stick with this method until finding A becomes more natural.

• Other people might use the “cluster” method. They notice that A is found in a cluster of three black keys. They might say that A is between the second and third black keys, or they might say A is to the right of the middle black key, or to the left of the last black key. Again, perfectly valid ways to find A. If this method is working, keep using it!

• If either of these methods aren’t really sticking, I’ve found a third way to describe how to find A that might seem a little convoluted but actually provides a simple landmark that’s easy for even young beginners to learn. This way is to find the middle black note, and think of it as being the very end of the musical alphabet. If this is the very end of the musical alphabet, that means the start of the musical alphabet, A, is the very next key. 

Now, for those of you who are familiar with piano, you’ll know this way of describing the “end” of the musical alphabet is not entirely accurate. Sometimes that middle black key is called A flat, so it would not technically be the very end of the musical alphabet. But, I find the middle black key to be a really easy landmark for people to remember, probably the easiest of the entire keyboard, and it has helped my students remember where to start the musical alphabet. 

Now stay consistent! 

Once you have selected your preferred method, it is extremely important that you make a note of this method and use it consistently. Like many other aspects of piano, consistency of direction helps to ease anxiety and helps children learn faster. 

If we teach our child all three methods or keep changing the directions we use, the inconsistency will take the child longer to learn how to identify “A”. Instead, it’s important for us to pick one set of instructions and stick with it. 

I hope these tips help you! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. Have fun!