ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Piano six hands

So imagine you have a really big piano, with three people sitting in front of it, all ready to play. But instead of each person playing their own separate music, they are going to play together on the same piano! This is called piano six hands.

Now, to understand how it works, we first need to know a little bit about a normal piano. A piano has a bunch of keys - 88 to be exact. Each key makes a different sound when you press on it. The sound is created when small hammers inside the piano hit the strings. The keys are divided into a few different sections, called octaves. Each octave has 7 white keys and 5 black keys.

In a piano six hands piece of music, the three people sitting at the piano are each responsible for playing certain keys. The person in the middle usually plays the lower notes on the left side of the piano, while the people on the sides play the higher notes on their side.

To play together, the three people need to communicate with each other and take turns playing their parts. They have to make sure they don't bump into each other while moving their hands around the keys. It's like a dance, where everyone needs to be in sync and know when it's their turn to play.

To make everything even more interesting, sometimes the players might use their elbows or forearms to play some of the keys that are hard to reach with just their hands. This adds a different sound and makes the music even more exciting.

While playing piano six hands, the players should also pay attention to the dynamics of the music. They need to decide together when to play softly (piano) or loudly (forte). This helps create different emotions in the music, like happy or sad.

Overall, playing piano six hands is a really fun and challenging way for three people to play music together on the same piano. It requires good communication, coordination, and a lot of practice. But when they get it right, it sounds amazing and makes people want to dance and clap along!