Articles
Free, well-structured music articles and method books.
Books
All About Piano
A Fun and Simple Guide to Playing Piano
Mark Harrison's friendly, no-drudgery guide to playing piano — reading music, playing by ear, improvising, and exploring styles, with real songs to play along to.
Keyboard Chords in Color
A complete chord resource for keyboard and piano players
A complete, full-colour chord dictionary for keyboard and piano players — every common chord shown as the exact keys to press, a photo under real hands, and standard notation.
The Ultimate Scale Book
A Crash Course on Fingerings, Applications, and Theory for Guitar
Troy Stetina's complete guitar-scale reference: pentatonic, blues, major, natural minor, the modes, harmonic and jazz minor, plus symmetrical and exotic scales — each shown in
Materials
All materials →Piano vs guitar vs ukulele: which is easier to learn first?
Piano, guitar or ukulele as a first instrument: one table of cost, the first month, time to a first song, portability, theory and styles, plus who should pick which.
How to connect a piano keyboard to a computer: USB, MIDI and Bluetooth
Connect a digital piano or MIDI keyboard by USB, a 5-pin MIDI interface or Bluetooth MIDI, with steps for Windows, macOS, iPad and Android, a fix for latency and a troubleshooting table.
Jazz piano for beginners: seventh chords, voicings, swing and your first tunes
A step-by-step start in jazz piano: the five seventh chords, shell and rootless voicings, the ii–V–I, swing feel, the blues scale, eight first standards and the pianists to listen to.
Famous piano pieces: 15 classical works everyone knows
The 15 most famous classical piano pieces, from Für Elise and Clair de lune to La Campanella, with the composer, year, level and what each teaches, plus sheet music.
Piano chord progressions: the chart, the voicings and the songs
The piano chord progressions behind most songs, a chart of the chords in all 12 major and minor keys, and how to voice each one with two hands: left-hand roots, right-hand inversions and smooth voice leading.
Music theory basics: the ten ideas behind every song, in order
Music theory for beginners in ten steps, from note names and the staff to scales, keys, intervals, chords and progressions: the short answer for each, a free tool to practice it, the full lesson and a rough time.
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Tools
All tools →Look up
Reference tools — pick a root, a key or a fret and see the answer in notation, with sound.
Train
Ear and sight-reading drills that quiz you, keep score and get harder as you improve.
Play & practice
Instruments and practice aids to play along with — keyboard, metronome, tuner, drone, progressions.