Virginia Piano

It is definitely best to remove stickers from the piano keys. Stickers with the letters A through G printed on them, are commonly applied to keyboards, so that students can know which keys are which. But the helpfulness of these stickers, is a myth. 

If stickers on keys were truly best for piano students, pianos would come with the letters printed on them already.

Advertising “stickers included” with the sale of keyboards, is only a selling point so that more keyboards can be sold. The makers of keyboards know that caregivers don’t understand that the stickers are a hindrance to learning.

They may seem to help it first, but the dependence on them starts right away, and the student does not learn to recognize their way around the piano in the well rounded and necessary way, which involves touch, sound, and recognizing a key based on its placement within the two and three black key groups.

My many years of piano teaching experience (since 1996) has shown me this. Students that report stickers on their keys at home, are much slower to learn to play the piano.

These students can feel lost at their lesson at times, because there are no stickers on my piano. These students have failed to develop the normal ways of finding the correct piano keys to play.

I strongly recommend not putting lettered stickers onto the piano or keyboard keys, at home.