Could someone explain to me what present/past perfect tenses are?

Does it just mean the word can be both simple or continuous?

So

He said that he had played the piano.

Is past perfect as it’s not certain if that’s just once or many times?

No.

The present perfect indicates some kind of connection between the past and the present.

For example, in the entertainment news, you might hear “Lady Gaga has announced a new tour”. This is a recent past event, but as it’s being presented to you for the first time, it has a connection to the present (i.e. it’s ‘news’)

The past perfect performs the same kind of connecting function, but both events are in the past. One event is further in the past, and bears some kind of connection to the more recent past event.

So I was asked this question

“Which of the below sentences was originally in Present Simple tense, before it was made into Reported Speech?”

He said that he had played the piano.

He said that he would play the piano.

He said that he played the piano.

He said that had been playing the piano

but played means past and play is future so I still dont have a clue

The last one has had so its a perfect tense

In the examples just listed, I don’t see any “Present Simple”.

he had played the piano = past perfect
he would play the piano = conditional
he played the piano = past simple
he had been playing the piano = past continuous (I think; this is a form that I never studied, but I understand and use the construct; I just never had a name for it.)

It’s possible to stretch the meaning of “He said that he played the piano” into a report of present tense because of the way the sentence is constructed. If “he plays the piano”, then “he said that he played the piano” is a report of a present tense condition, because we just wouldn’t construct the sentence to say that “he said that he plays the piano”; it sounds wrong.

It’s like that with a lot of reports of present tense activity. Let’s say that “he flies planes”. Then “he said that he flew” would be the report.

Past Perfect indicates that the action completed in the past and is not continuing.
This is distinct from other forms of Past which could be continuing.

Present: He plays the piano. <= He is playing now.
Past Simple: He played the piano all morning. <= He might still be playing.
Past Perfect: He had played the piano. <= That spell of piano playing is over.

It’s all complicated.

There is also;

He was playing the piano when he started to sneeze.(parallel and ongoing action).

Present: She goes.
Past: She went.
Present perfect: She has gone.
Past perfect: She had gone.

“Perfect” tenses involve the use of “to have” as an auxiliary helping verb preceding the main verb participle.

He said that he played the piano.

The original report would have been, “I play the piano.”

@dabbler Present: He plays the piano. <= He is playing now
Nope.

@OP

Present simple and continuous are different. He plays piano is a general thing. You could add time expressions sometimes, usually or every day. But not right now. He is playing the piano right now.

This might help: the difference between the simple past and the present perfect is that both actions begin in the past, but the past simple is about when exactly the action began, and ended. Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. Not has seemed.

So for the past simple use time expressions like This morning, last night etc.

Present perfect is about what: I’ve lost my keys. When? Just now. How many times have you done that? Too many.

Notice: Present Perfect is about how many times, or about the the connection between the action and now. Use time expressions like: Just, recently, since, ever or never.

Hey, it’s complicated, but you’ve only just begun. ;-)