Play your first real piece today — by ear

What you get

• The sheet — one page, print it or keep it on a tablet.
• The hand position, shown on a keyboard diagram: how to find it in about ten seconds, on any piano.
• The tune in four short phrases — the letter is the key, the small number is the finger. No staff, no clef, nothing to look up.
• Four steps that decide whether it sounds like music or like typing.
• What to do when it sounds wrong — and it is almost never your ear.

It is genuinely one page. You can be playing in the time it takes to read it.

Why by ear, and why first

I was trained in the Russian school, where a child plays for months before meeting a printed note. The reason is not tradition. It is that the ear has to lead the hand, and if reading comes first the hand learns to obey the page instead of the sound.

Adults are almost never taught this way, and it is the single biggest difference I hear between someone who plays and someone who presses the right keys.

You already know how this tune goes. That is the whole advantage, and this page spends it.