The keyboard map
Every piano repeats the same pattern of 12 keys. Learn the pattern once and you can find any note.
White keys and black keys
A full-size piano has 88 keys: 52 white and 36 black. The lowest key is an A and the highest is a C, so the keyboard covers a little more than seven octaves. The black keys are not spread evenly. They sit in groups of two and groups of three, and those groups alternate all the way up the keyboard. That uneven pattern is what lets a pianist find a note without looking for labels.
Finding C
Look for a group of two black keys. The white key directly to its left is C. The C nearest the middle of a piano is called middle C, written C4. The next C to the right is C5, one octave higher. An octave spans 12 keys counting black and white, or 8 white keys counting both Cs. A full piano has eight Cs, from C1 near the bottom to C8 at the very top.
Each key to the right sounds a little higher than the one before. Going up a whole octave doubles the speed at which the string vibrates. Pianos today are tuned so that the A above middle C vibrates 440 times a second (440 Hz), the international standard set in ISO 16. Middle C then comes out at about 261.63 Hz, and the C one octave above it at about 523.25 Hz, almost exactly twice as much.
Low on the left, high on the right
Sit facing the middle of the keyboard. Everything to your left is lower, everything to your right is higher. The number after a note name tells you which octave it is in, and the number goes up by one at every C. So the white key just below middle C is B3, not B4, and the key just above it is D4. When a teacher says to play the G above middle C, count up from C4: D4, E4, F4, G4.
Inside the piano, each key works a lever. When you press it, a hammer covered in felt flies up, strikes the string and drops straight back so the string can ring. Low notes use long, thick strings and high notes short, thin ones, which is why a grand piano has its curved, wing-like shape. The keys you see are only the front end of that machine.
- 1700: A Medici inventory lists Cristofori’s new instrument with hammers.
- 1711: Scipione Maffei describes it as a harpsichord with soft and loud.
- 1720: Cristofori builds the oldest piano that still survives, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
- 1722, 1726: His two other surviving pianos, now in Rome and Leipzig.
- 1975: ISO 16 fixes the tuning note A at 440 Hz.
Try it
Find every C on the keyboard below. On a computer, the keys A W S E D F T G Y H U J K play from C upward.
- How many keys does a full-size piano have?
- 61
- 76
- 88
- 100
- C is the white key just left of…
- a group of two black keys
- a group of three black keys
- any black key
- How many keys, black and white together, are in one octave?
- Middle C is written as…
- C3
- C4
- C5
- C8
- How many black keys does a full-size piano have?
- A4 vibrates at 440 Hz. What is the frequency of A5, one octave higher?
- What is the frequency of A3, one octave below A4 (440 Hz)?
- Who invented the piano around 1700?
- Bartolomeo Cristofori
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Guido of Arezzo
- What makes a piano louder or softer, unlike a harpsichord?
- How hard you press the key
- A switch for each note
- How long you wait between notes
- How many Cs are on a full 88-key piano?
- Black keys come in alternating groups of 2 and 3.
- C sits just left of each 2-group.
- Middle C is C4; one octave up is C5 and doubles the frequency.
- Cristofori invented the piano around 1700.