Piano Basics · Chapter 6 of 9

Your First Notes: Steps and Skips

Every tune is made of a few kinds of moves. Learn to feel a step, a skip and a repeat, and your first songs will come quickly.

When a melody moves from one note to the next, it can do one of three simple things:

Step

Go to the very next white key, up or down. C to D is a step. So is G to F.

Skip

Jump over one white key. C to E is a skip (you skip D). So is G to E.

Repeat

Play the same key again. E, E, E.

Bigger jumps happen too, but steps, skips and repeats are most of what your first songs do. In C position, a step uses the next finger and a skip skips a finger.

Play steps

Play skips

Your first tune

Hot Cross Buns uses only three notes, E, D and C, and moves by steps and repeats. Play it with fingers 3, 2 and 1.

Ready for the real thing? Open Hot Cross Buns, turn on Wait for me, and play along.

Steps and skips on the page

In written music, notes sit on lines and in the spaces between them. A step moves from a line to the next space (or a space to the next line). A skip moves from a line to the next line, or a space to the next space. You can see the shape of a melody before you play a note.

First steps (each note one place higher), then skips (each note two places higher, skipping one). The words under the notes describe the move into each note.

Remember

Step: the very next key. Skip: jump over one key. Repeat: the same key again.
On the page, a step goes line to space; a skip goes line to line or space to space.