Knowing the keyboard layout is one of the most essential steps in learning the basics of playing an electric piano. Just like an acoustic piano, an electric piano keyboard has white and black keys on it that represent the notes on a musical scale. The white keys are named after a letter of the musical alphabet, from A to G, which repeats across the entire keyboard. The black keys are either a sharp or a flat note, depending on the musical scale that the musician follows.
On a keyboard, a universal system of numbered notes helps a person's finger placement as he plays. This guide eases the process of beginners learning to play an electric piano. The finger placement guide, represented by the numbers 1 to 5, corresponds to the five fingers and is written above or below the notes. The numbers represent the fingers on either hand, which starts from the number 1 representing the thumb all through the pinkie, which represents the number 5.
An electric piano has buttons that can manipulate its sound output to achieve different effects. Knowing these buttons, their functions and their corresponding effects is one of the essential things to learn.
Aside from the volume button that controls the volume of the instrument, there are several knobs that you must understand when starting to learn the electric piano. These knobs are the overdrive, the chorus and the tremolo knobs. All these knobs are assigned to a specific effect and they can decrease or increase the amount of effect used.
The electric piano comes with effects that are primarily used to produce a distinct sound that an acoustic piano cannot. Common effects found on an electric piano are chorus, overdrive, tremolo, wah-wah effect and transpose. The overdrive effect controls the amount of distortion that a player wants, while the chorus effect creates a subtle swirling sound. The tremolo produces a ping-pong effect on the notes even if the player hits the note only once, while the wah-wah effect produces notes that may sound like a human voice. Lastly, as the word suggests, the transpose effect either transposes the keys to higher or lower notes, depending on the player's desired effect. These basic effects are normally used when playing popular music and add a distinct sound output especially created by an electric piano.