The easy piano songs worth learning first are the ones that sound harder than they are. Slow tempo, a melody people recognize in two bars, and a left hand that repeats itself. Get one of those under your fingers and it sounds like you have been playing for a year. Here are a few that punch well above their difficulty, and why they work.
What makes a song easy but impressive
Three things, mostly. A slow or steady tempo, so you are not racing your own hands. A repeating pattern in the left hand, so once you learn one bar you already know most of the song. And a melody the listener knows, because recognition does half the work of sounding good. A piece can be simple to play and still stop someone in the room. That gap between how hard it looks and how hard it actually is: that is the whole trick.
Five that sound better than they are
Für Elise (the opening). Beethoven's most famous few bars are a rite of passage for a reason. The recognizable opening section moves one hand at a time and sits comfortably under a beginner's fingers.
Gymnopedie No. 1. Satie wrote it slow and spacious on purpose. There is time between the notes, which is exactly what a beginner needs, and it sounds like a film score.
Clair de Lune (the first phrases). The full piece is genuinely hard, but the opening phrases are gentle and gorgeous, and they are the part everyone recognizes.
Canon in D. Pachelbel's chord pattern repeats the whole way through, so the left hand becomes muscle memory fast while the right hand carries the tune.
Greensleeves. A folk melody that has survived for centuries because it is both simple and haunting. Easy to start, satisfying to finish.
You can play all of these in Piano Aura's Piano Game, where they are copyright-free, by following the notes as they fall instead of reading a score. One practical tip: the app spells it Für Elise, so if a search for "fur elise" comes up empty, search for "Elise" instead.
The notes for three easy openings
If you searched for easy piano notes, this is the part you wanted. Here are the opening lines as plain note names, the way you would write them above the keys. Middle C is the white key just left of the pair of black keys nearest the middle of the keyboard.
Ode to Joy (Beethoven). E E F G G F E D C C D E E D D. Every note is a white key and your hand never moves: thumb on C, one finger per key up to G. Hold the last E a little longer than the rest, then finish on the two Ds.
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. C C G G A A G, then F F E E D D C. Two lines, and the second walks straight back down to where you started.
Für Elise (the first bar or two). E D# E D# E B D C A, starting on the E in the octave above middle C. The D sharp is the black key just left of that E, so the opening is two neighbouring keys rocking back and forth before the line drops down to A.
Note names tell you which keys, not how long to hold each one, so listen to the tune once before you play it. On a computer, our free browser keyboard plays from your letter keys: A is C, then S D F G H J walk up the white keys to B. Ode to Joy becomes D D F G G F D S A A S D D S S (yes, the D key plays E), typed with one hand.
