Every musician — especially if you have aspirations for a career in music or if you want to compose music — should have, at the bare minimum, a rudimentary understanding of the piano.

Possessing this understanding is the foundation for understanding music theory. The piano builds on itself as you progress through the essentials and fundamentals and allows you access to theory, which then leads to the understanding of how to compose songs.

The bread and butter of music theory are scales and chords.

The piano is the best and easiest pathway to truly understanding scales and chords. The notes are all right there for you in order. Seven octaves of 52 white keys and 36 black keys.

The white keys have a repeating order of A-B-C-D-E-F-G and the black keys are the sharps and flats.

As soon as you know where and how to place your hands, you will always know what notes you are playing based on your position on the piano.

The piano also allows access to both clefs, unlike many other instruments where you only learn one clef. Knowing both clefs will expand the number of instruments you can read the standard notation of. You won’t be restricted to just treble or just bass instruments.

Standard notation is a truly invaluable skill for all musicians that is often overlooked, especially in the beginning. This is especially true for many guitarists and bassists who often learn via tablature rather than standard notation, which will serve as a hindrance later on.

Often, musicians who use tablature rather than standard notation lack an understanding of the notes they are playing. They just place their finger(s) where the tab tells them to. This is fine for people who just want to learn their favorite songs as a casual hobby or a party trick, but if you really want to be a musician you have to understand the notes you are playing and how they go together.

The piano is a great tool for musicians to use to make the jump from tablature to standard notation. Learning standard notation on the piano will transfer to any instrument.

Understanding standard notation is foundational to composing and songwriting. You aren’t typically going to compose a song in tablature, so knowing how to discern standard notation is the first step in your composing journey.

Piano also allows you to write a bass line with your left hand while writing a melody with your right hand. This lends back to the idea that piano allows you access to music theory, which is necessary for composing. You will learn what notes and chords work together, which ones don’t, and how to flow a song together.

Learning piano as a primary or secondary instrument exercises hand independence, another invaluable skill. No matter what instrument you play as your primary instrument, it’s going to require hand independence. You will have to possess the ability to perform two different actions with your opposing hands.

Hand independence is often a hurdle for beginning and intermediate musicians. It takes a great deal of effort to engage both sides of your brain to perform different tasks with each hand. Piano allows another avenue for honing hand independence.

You can learn piano at any point in your musical journey and it will be tremendously beneficial, but it will serve you the best at the beginning.

For beginner level musicians, piano is the easiest gateway to music. There’s no building up calluses like with string instruments, and you don’t have to develop an embouchure like with wind instruments; the notes are right there for you to get started on.

You will usually see progress on piano much faster, which leads to more instances of success outcomes, as opposed to bowed instruments, for example, where many beginners give up because they aren’t seeing enough progress early on.

Beyond the invaluable skills the piano imparts on its players and the access it grants to music theory and composing, the piano is simply welcoming to beginner musicians.

Learn the piano and you will begin to truly understand music. You will be a much better musician for it. There is a reason nearly every collegiate music program requires its students to learn piano as a prerequisite for most other instruction.

Learn the piano, and then everything else will come much easier.