Piano by Numbers

You have five fingers, and they are numbered one to five. That is the whole alphabet. This is a beginner method that lets you play a real tune before you learn to read a note.

How a page works

Every piece opens with a drawing of the keyboard and a hand resting on it, with a number on each finger. You put your hand where the drawing shows. From there the music is written as numbers: one number for each finger, one box for each beat, a dash where a note is held on. When the hand has to move somewhere else, the book draws it again in its new place.

That is the whole system. Most people are playing something recognisable inside the first twenty minutes, and reading music later becomes a choice rather than a toll gate.

What is in the method

• Level 1 · fifty pages. The keyboard, middle C, the right hand one finger at a time, then the left hand, then both together. You finish it playing Mary Had a Little Lamb, Ode to Joy, Jingle Bells, Aura Lee and Lightly Row.
• Level 2 · forty seven pages. Three counts in a bar, faster notes, the fermata, new positions for both hands, sharps and flats, soft and loud. Its pieces include We Three Kings, Row Your Boat, This Old Man, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Amazing Grace and My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.
• Ten Classical Pieces · the bonus book. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Haydn, Rossini, Dvořák, Handel, Grieg and Vivaldi, in the same notation.
• Ninety three practice sheets · every exercise and every piece on its own printable page, so one sheet sits on the music stand instead of the whole book.
• The play along, yours to keep · thirty seven of the pieces recorded, in a player that runs in your own browser with no internet needed. The key lights up with the finger number on it, and the bracket above the keys shows where the hand sits and moves when it moves.

Who this is for

For an adult who always meant to learn and never found the year it seemed to need. For a parent teaching a child at the kitchen keyboard. For someone who took lessons once and stopped at the notes. And for anyone who has followed the free video lessons on this site and wants a path that goes in order, from the first finger to a Beethoven theme.

Hear the method before you buy it

The play along on this site is free and always will be. Open it, press play on any piece, and watch the keys light up with the finger numbers on them. It is the same notation that is printed in the books. Start at the play along, and come back when you want the method in your hands.