Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Stuff for completely new guy?

Hi I'm new here, and also completely brand new to piano's. I'm in college right now and plan on taking a Basic Piano class in the fall, but it requires that I have some kind of basic knowledge on playing the piano.

I just want to know how you guys would self teach yourselves how to play, like what DVD's or books or programs you guys would recommend a complete beginner to follow.

Thanks.

Go to the Alfred Adult Beginners Forum, and buy the first book.

I don't think the basic knowledge
required would be much, since the course
itself is in basic piano. Apparently,
all you'd need to know is how
to read music and some minimal
experience in playing the piano.

I'd suggest getting an inexpensive
61-key portable keyboard. These
can be had for less than $100.
Make sure it comes with the factory
AC adaptor included in the box,
because many don't come
with one, and finding
an adaptor that fits can be
almost impossible. If you go
to a store and they try to throw
in a "universal" adaptor, have
them open up everything right
there and prove the adaptor fits,
because chances are it won't.

As for instruction, there is tons
of it free online, and so you
might not have to buy anything.
In any case, the first book
in any instructional series
would be more than enough to
prepare you for the course.

Welcome to the forum, Gkrypt. I disagree rather strongly with Gyro's advice about the keyboard. I would advise instead purchasing something with 88 weighted keys. A smaller keyboard will distort your sense of 'keyboard geography' and make it harder to transition to piano later, and playing on unweighted keys will be a considerable disadvantage to your technique.

As for learning how to play, as a college student you may be fortunate to have easy access to peers/friends with some piano background. Do you have any friends who jam or who have had piano experience who can show you some basics of posture, hand positioning, and the like?

You may not even need to purchase a piano (if you cannot afford one) at this point, as there should be practice rooms available in the music department of your school. Of course, they will most likely be badly tuned and abused, but if you don't have the money, then it's better than nothing.

I'm not suggesting this as your only resourse but if you go to youtube and type in piano lessons....also you can type in any song and the word piano and usually get several people just playing that song on piano as well as tutorials on the song sometimes. A couple of people i check out on youtube just for watching and then trying to learn from watching them play (or getting the music then) is calikokat and adrianlee...( caliko kat can be found for instance by typing in 'The Holiday' in the search box and for adrianlee you could type in the coldplay song 'clocks') Caliko kat has 100s of videos often of movie or tv themes and adrianlee has....alot of coldplay songs. But like i mentioned you can search for just about anything including of course classical pieces.

Re: the beginners piano, that is exactly how i started - a sub $100 61 full size key Radio Shack keyboard. Went this route until I was sure I would stick with it. After six months I bought a Yamaha P90 stage piano w/ weighted keys, etc. Last week, after another four years, I took delivery of a Roland RD-700GX. :-)

I gave that old Radio Shack keyboard to my granddaughter several years ago. A few months ago she began piano lessons. Two days ago she became the proud six year old owner of the P90.

Although there are many resources on the internet, in my humble opinion nothing can replace a good piano teacher. Among other things they "nip bad habits in the bud" (boy does this apply to me). If you provide the aptitude and hard work, a good teacher steers you on a path of continuing improvement and makes it fun to boot.

Best wishes. karl

I'm very new myself, so I'll refrain from giving advice

Just wanted to say to kdi, that's a very cool story, both about your progression but especially about your granddaughter.

Also just realized that you must have been 'older' when you started which is very nice for me to know because I'm in my mid-forties and just starting!

Kdi, good advice on getting a piano teacher and i hope i didn't give the impression of winging it just off of youtube! I have to admit though at being something of a self-teacher although even when doing that i try to learn from those more skilled and talented than myself. Right now for instance i'm taking lessons from bach and beethoven...but seriously, not that i was totally kidding about my 'teachers', i no doubt would be better off taking lessons. A few years ago i was whittling my way through the first 4 suzuki violin books and at the same time picking up all other styles of fiddle playing and thought i would go and take a lesson or two from a violin teacher. She asked me to play something to basically see where i was at so i played Humoresque out of the 3rd suzuki book i think. When i was done she said 'not bad but now let's go back and in the first section of the main melody see if you can acknowledge the 'rests' (that are really an inherent part of that first section) and i'm looking at her as if to say 'the rests?...' ----So yes your advice is not to be overlooked.

Any college music department will have practice rooms with pianos that you can use. But it's better to have you own gear.

You have two options. (1) buy something cheap and plan to replace it. Used gear is great because you buy it and sell it for about the same price. A cheap unweighted keyboard will work fine foe a few months. By then you'll be in the class and will quickly learn what you really need.

(2) start out with something good that you can keep and use for several years. The trouble is that you can't even evaluate pianos at this time. You need to learn more about how they sound and how the keys feel. You would need to find an experienced pianist to go with you to the store and try out what's there.

If you could start on something "disposable" and then delay buying a good piano until after you have have some time to play the school's "real" grand pianos that would be ideal.

deburn, I played a saxophone for eight years and a guitar for four during the same period. Stopped both when I went to college. Decided I wanted to learn the piano and started at age 55, so there was thirty-seven years of nothing. :-)

For the first three years of playing, every time I heard somebody play who was really good I thought "i'm quitting, I'll never get there". But I didn't quit and although I'm not "there" and never will be, it has become fun. And I even occasionally play a sixty second piece for someone and don't get nervous anymore.

best wishes. karl

@ karl: cool, I'm about 10 years behind you (in age). I've played acoustic guitar on and off since I was about 15 but without taking lessons or knowing how to read.

I've been thinking of learning to play the piano and to sing for the past few years and last night, after spending a few days and several hours on this forum, I placed an order online for a Casio PX 130! I did go try a few DPs during the day; certainly not enough to tell the differences between various models, but I read enough to conclude that the PX 130 seems like a good fit for my budget and what I think my needs are.

Now I need to find a teacher; soon!

I have a lot of respect for anyone who plays any musical instrument. It's interesting how life works: you played two instruments for several years, then nothing for a bunch of years and now it seems like you're really into the piano! And influencing the younger generation, which I think is so important.
~ later

I like the Bastien adult series.

Karen

I am pretty new to these forums but in the time I've been here I have seen a ton of arguments about the merits of starting with a 61-key non-weighted keyboard versus a full 88-key weighted keyboard. Well, as someone who just moved from a 61-key non-weighted keyboard to a full 88-key weighted digital piano I thought that I would throw in my two cents because it seems to me that *everyone* is making good points but a lot of it comes down to what is important to YOU in an instrument.

So a few thoughts that I have:

1) For learning PIANO, it seems to me that a full 88-key weighted digital piano is far, far, far superior to a 61-key non-weighted keyboard. I learned for 2 1/2 months or so on my keyboard before I reached a point where certain things became very difficult. It is very hard to play proper dynamics without weighted keys, pedaling is very annoying, and I found the chord voicing on my keyboard to be very unforgiving if I didn't play a chord *exactly* correct, making some of the harder to play chords very frustrating.

2) That being said, I have seen Gyro make the point several times that a 61-key non-weighted keyboard is a very complex and capable INSTRUMENT. Gyro is correct! It IS a complex INSTRUMENT that can be used to make some wonderful music, but it is not a PIANO. After a couple of months of learning, it became difficult for me to follow a piano method book using a 61-key non-weighted keyboard. This doesn't mean that the keyboard is a useless instrument because there is far more to a typical electronic keyboard than just the piano emulation. When viewed through this light - a keyboard is a keyboard and a piano is a piano - you can see that both views can be correct at the same time as long as you set the proper expectations for what each instrument is capable of.

3) Finally, even though I eventually upgraded to a digital piano, I am not upset that I started with a cheaper keyboard. Especially for someone who perhaps is used to hobby-hopping and maybe gets bored easily with new endeavors, I don't think it's unreasonable to start with a cheap keyboard while you are still trying to decide if you like your new hobby enough to stick with it. However, if you go this route you should set an expectation up front that you will be upgrading to a full digital piano probably within 3-6 months or you will start having problems learning from piano method books. As long as you are okay with this, I don't see harm in starting with a cheaper keyboard. When I bought my DP, I started my method book over and it took me just a couple of days to redo everything with the weighted keys. I will just pass the keyboard on to my daughter when she's old enough to want to play around with it.

So to summarize I just see so many competing views on this issue and as I read all of the views I think to myself, "Everyone is correct, and everyone has good points!", so I tend to think that if you just understand all of the issues involved and the pros and cons of each path you can justify making either decision. Just know what you are getting into and what you are setting yourself up for in the future!