Hello all,

I am new here, and would appreciate some advice. I have been a musician since I was about 10 years old (I started with guitar), and in my late teen years taught myself to play the piano -- somewhat. I know my way very well around the keyboard, and have subsequently written several songs on it. My only problem is, I am in no way "classical," or "professional," and would love to be. I have made my own sound and have my own technique, but to a REAL piano player, my methods might be considered rudimentary.

Last summer I finally took piano lessons, but the teacher just didn't know what to do with me. She was used to teaching young kids (I am 24), and took the conventional approach with me. She was impressed that I knew what I knew, but wasn't sure where to guide me.

My goal was to learn to SOUND and PLAY better...to increase my technique and achieve a more complex and classical playing style. While I don't know how to read music, I knew I would not need to know how to do so in order to improve my skills -- I have always been an "ear" musician. (don't get me wrong; I would love to know how to effectively read music and appreciate its value to musicians)

Due to time, money and a new job I couldn't afford to keep taking my lessons, unfortunately, and felt a little dejected and frustrated. I HAD learned to read music a little, but I decided to put the lessons on the backburner.

But I still want to play better. I reason that a good way for me to learn would be to listen to piano-only tracks, dissect them, study the work of each hand, and mimic them. This approach has actually been "instrumental" in improving my playing skills in the past, and I figure it would work even better now.

My questions are, is this a sound learning technique for an ear musician (and someone willing to put in the effort), and most importantly, what songs do you recommend? I just don't know where to start.

Thanks for any advice you may have!

D.

Hello luv_cannon, welcome to the forum.

I'm not sure about your proposed way of learning, I will leave others to comment on that, however, you said that you do want to learn classical music.

If this is the case, you will need to be able to read music, and you may have to go backwards before you can go forwards. Just because you have an excellent ear doesn't mean you have to be an "ear player" and not learn sight reading.

I can sound quite alright playing pop song accompanyments on the piano, but I'm taking classical lessons at the moment and it just takes time to learn a completely new (and challenging) style. Good luck.

Probably what you need is a low/intermediate level of instruction from a teacher now, rather than "start over at zero."

Do you read music now? That would probably be most of the "low" part, along with fingering.

Then the intermediate part kicks in when you have to get beaten into doing things rote rather than the way you taught yourself to do it. THAT would be where you're losing some efficiencies in your playing and technique because there's easier/faster ways to play. You just have to train your hands to do them.

Definitely look around for a teacher who has experience teaching adults, and particularly adults who are returning to the "workforce" (as it were) after some years off. They'd be better at helping you get up to speed on techniqe a lot easier, while not grinding everything out of you that you already know.


The upside is that you're farther along than someone who has never touched a piano before. You're past the "chopsticks" stage now

This is doable with the right teacher (you may have to shop around some to get the right personality mix for what you need.) Maybe not easy but you're skipping ahead of a lot of that first lesson stuff. Not ALL... just some

Luv-cannon, do you want to learn how to play classical music? I'm not sure I could make that conclusion from your post.

If you want to play classical music, I personally think you need to learn how to read music. You don't necessarily have to become comfortable playing from a score, but you still want to be able to use the score as a text to teach you new music.

If your current style is sort of a pop style, or using the keyboard as an accompaniment for a song, then there are probably a lot of techniques that you haven't learned or needed yet. Working with a score, and working with a teacher will help you to acquire new techniques quickly.

If it's not so much classical music that you're interested in, then my answer to your question would be different. If you want to improve your playing in the style that you already play, then of course you need a teacher who plays the kind of music you're interested in.

If you want to improve without using sheet music, then you need a teacher who will teach you without using sheet music.

Have you studied music theory? If you're writing your own music, you might like to approach it from that angle.

Write again and tell us a little bit more about the kind of music you play right now, and what you mean by wanting to sound more "classical" or more "professional." The more specific you can be, the better advice you'll get.

Thanks folks, I appreciate the responses.

Shiro, I would have to admit that I lean towards the latter, definitely. That is, I want to improve the way I already play, sound a little more believable as a piano player. And yes, my style is definitely more pop, without a doubt.

To put it simply, I want to find out new ways to "teach" my hands to move across the keys with more skill.

What do you think of my approach of listening to piano songs and mimicking them to benefit my overall skill (i.e., if I learn some new and challenging hand movement from my study of a given piano track that I was previously unfamiliar with, I might "assimilate" it into my technique...hopefully). Any suggestions?

I think you need some visual information to augment your ears. For example, you might be able to hear what a pianist is doing, but if you can't see how they are moving their hands, it will make it much harder for you to learn how to do it yourself. This is where a good teacher can help you.

And by the way, I'm not talking about seeing the notes that are being played. I'm talking about seeing how the hand moves across the keyboard, which fingers are used. How does the physical movement go into creating the sound? If you can't do that movement, you may never get the sound. And if you're doing it all by yourself and your ears, then it may take you an unnecessarily long time.

Other people may not think this is so important, but I'm thinking about what my teacher helps me with, and this is one big element. The things she's taught me about choosing fingerings have really helped me to be able to choose my own fingerings, and choose the best fingerings the first time around, which has helped to speed up the learning process for new music and also helped me to physically play better. She has also showed me how to use my hands to get the maximum reach I'm able, to make smoothly horizontal movements etc etc.

It sounds to me like you are already good at using your ear to teach you things. COuld it be that you have to add a new method in order to take your learning to the next level?

Hi luv_cannon, welcome to the forum! An approach that may work for you if you are going it alone would be to get some elementary books of exercises such as scales, arpeggios, intervals, etc. Usually, these have fairly simple notation and working through them will help your facility in moving around the keyboard and also build familiarity with which notes are where on the instrument. You should look for books with suggested fingerings.

I'm not sure this is either the "fastest" or "best" way for you to proceed, I think lessons would get you there faster if you could find the right teacher, but this might be a way of continuing on your own.

I never underestimate the power of motivation and hard work. My brother is an excellent bass and guitar player, he can play anything. Can't read a note, never could. I do remember him wearing out records and turntables playing sections of music over and over for as much as 8 hours a day when we were kids. Again, he might have been able to learn faster if he took lessons but there's no arguing with the result.

Good luck, and welcome again!

Amen!! I'll give you a simple example. I'm self-teaching, too, and one of the pieces I have been working on roughly forever is Winston's Longing/Love. It opens with a bunch of simple arpeggios that get faster and faster. The notes themselves aren't hard to play but I had a terrible time accelerating them while keeping them smooth and even. Then one day I had a visit with a friend of mine who's a music teacher and told her how I couldn't make those arpeggios smooth. She watched me play and said "of course you can't play them smooth when you move your fingers independently like that... here's what you need to do," and she showed me how to keep my fingers motionless in a plane and just rotate my wrist. Whammo!! Instantaneous[/b] improvement! And it was something I wasn't able to figure out myself self-teaching.

My advice would be to hang around hotel lobbies, clubs, bars, etc. until you find a musician who plays the kind of music you like and ask him/her if they take students. You want a teacher who can show you the techniques and tricks of the pop music trade, not a classically-oriented teacher used to starting little kids from scratch. Or, start calling around teachers and asking about their playing style and teaching experience until you find somebody like that.

Guys, thank you all kindly for the advice. I appreciate your time, and I will definitely take this to heart. This all sounds very reasonable, constructive and helpful.

Thanks!

Uh-oh, that's all I need is rationalization to hang out at clubs and bars. Like I don't do enough of that. Now I can tell myself "it's so I can learn to play better"