 Hi, and welcome to your first piano lesson as part of the NCSSM classical piano and guitar course. I'm excited to begin showing you how to play the piano and through this first introductory lesson you'll get some of the basics of the piano and then we'll get right into learning songs pretty quickly. Let's begin by just talking a little bit about the piano keyboard and how you can tell which notes you're playing. If you've ever looked at a piano keyboard before, you'll notice that you have a pattern of two black keys, then three, then two, then three, and so on. So I use this rhyme, D dumb diddle, D is in the middle, right between the two black keys. From here we have D, E, F, G, A, C, and D. D dumb diddle, D is in the middle, right between the two black keys. And that always holds true on the piano keyboard. So, you know the names of the keys now. Now we're going to begin to learn a little bit about where your fingers go and how we're thinking about our hands on the keyboard. For the beginning piano music, the note C is going to be the most important note. The first number of songs that we learn will be in the key of C, so we have to find the C on the piano. Now, every piano has a C that is right in the middle of the keyboard. We call that middle C. It's usually very close to the label of the name of the brand of the piano that sits right in the middle of the piano. So we're going to find a middle C and with our right hand, our right thumb is going to land on middle C. And from that, each finger will sit on one adjacent piano key. So the thumb is on C, index finger on D, middle finger on E, ring finger on F, and pinky finger on G. With your left hand, it's going to be very similar, only your left pinky is going to land on C. And it's the C immediately below middle C. So your pinky will be on C, your ring finger on D, middle finger on E, index finger on F, and thumb on G. Now, your hands are in the right place. I want you to notice a few things about my hands. First of all, you'll notice that I'm sitting up straight, my shoulders are square. You'll notice that my fingers are curved down to the keys. In fact, I'm using basically the tips of my fingers on the keys. I'm not letting my hands lie flat like this. My wrists are above the keys and I can very easily play individual notes with individual fingers. Now, once we place our fingers on these keys with our right thumb on C and left pinky on C, we're going to basically stay in that position for quite some time. Now, you will notice that there are several exercises on pages 8 and 9 of your book. Those exercises are designed to get you used to playing one finger on each adjacent key. You'll notice that the first line of each exercise is marked R-H, that stands for right hand, and the second line is marked L-H, that stands for left hand. You will play these exercises with your hands alone. You won't play them hands together. So, work on Warm Up, Merrily We Roll Along, and Claire DeLune on pages 8 and 9 of the book. The next concept that we get to after we've learned the names of the notes and where our hands go in the key of C is the concept of playing a chord. Now, to play a chord, you're going to play more than one note at one time with one of your hands. In this case, we're going to play a chord with our left hand, and for several songs, we'll be playing lots of chords with your left hand. This chord is a C major chord, and it includes the notes C, E, and G. So, you'll place your pinky on the C as you have been, your middle finger on the E as you have been, and your thumb on the G. So, this time, you'll play those notes together. Now, if you look at Frejaca, you will see that we now play a right hand melody along with those left hand chords. Let me play Frejaca for you. Now, once you can play Frejaca nice and evenly and steadily, you're ready to move on to the first song assignment.