Abstract
Learning to play the piano is a systematic process in which initial training is fundamental to further developing musical abilities and improving playing technique. The inherent abilities of students vary greatly. Some students can distinguish between different musical genres, understand counting, have a notion of rhythm, and some are even familiar with notes. Others encounter the instrument for the first time and do not possess any previously mentioned attributes. Thus, the first months of instruction are so significant in revealing both approaches to education and the discovery of the student's abilities. Presently, we have many methods that target different ages, and abilities and focus on different goals. However, this was not always the case. The expansive process that brought musicians to the present pedagogical actuality evolved from more general indications of the distant past to the specific and detailed guidelines of today’s pedagogical methods. In this article, I have described the main tasks that the teacher faces during the initial piano learning period and gave a brief overview of the history of teaching methods in order to show how teaching methods have developed and changed over several centuries.