Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Best way to "Teach yourself" piano

I was looking at the Learn and Master Piano course, but after doing a search of these forums I am not so sure that would be the best route to take, as I do want to learn both harmony and melody in a style more akin to classical music then the chords on both hand method to play in a pop band as a back up. Is there any book/dvd/cd combo out there that teaches a more traditional method? I am disabled and lessons right off the bat wouldn't suit me although in the future I want to join one of the small group lesson classes at a local studio. But I do want to get off the ground a little first. I did play trumpet in school, but that was almost 20 years ago now and I have never touched a piano.

If you like working through a method in the company of others, there are huge mega-threads on this forum devoted to the Alfred's Adult methods.
Here is the thread for Book 1

Alfred's All-in-One with DVD
Alfred's All-in-One with CD
Alfred's Self-Teaching Method with CD & DVD

As you know Bill, if you haven't riden a bike for 20 years, you can still ride a bike - maybe not with no hands - that could take a few days, but you have the basics. A trumpet is a tough instument to play - as you know - it is all about lip! There are enlightened and informed people here who can direct you to the best method books to do classical music, harmony and melody books and chords method of playing the piano. I have some of those books but you need the best recommendations. You say you are disabled and I understand - I am dyslexic, have had a stroke and have brain damage so you are probably in better shape than I am - and it has been 50 years from when I was in school. And you are more ahead of other people because you have played the trumpret, read music, know rhythm, dynamics and as you know you have to practice and practice all the time or you will remain on the same page for ever!. Cheers and good luck.

Hi Bill,

The Learn & Master series is, as you say, probably not best suited to some one aiming for classical. Having said that, it's not a bad program.

I am following the Alfred's route already mentioned but I also have the Learn & Master method too.

It covers a good bit of the theory side of things and has, at least I think, a good way of getting the information across with some nifty tips and tricks.

It does concentrate on chords early on and although this may not be your long term goal, it is great for confidence as it enables you to knock out some decent tunes early on.

Have a look around though, there's plenty of ways to get it cheaper than on their site.

If you want an idea of what the method is like, the method book that comes with it, telling you exactly what it goes through, is available for free download on their site because they released an updated version (though you do have to a bit of digging around for it as it's sort of hidden, I'll post a link if required).

Actually, I know all about strokes. I had over eight when I was 15. Thankfully I made a full recovery with the use of my body, although I have memory problems and issues with time. For instance I might think something happened two weeks ago when in fact it happened four days ago. Although I am not dyslexic I can relate to writing problems because I was born with significant deafness and it wasn't until I was well up in school years and past the basics of phonics when it was corrected surgically so I am a very poor speller and if this wasn't spell checked you would not be able to read it or you would swear it was written by a third grader. My main disabilities now are that I have a very bad back and am subject to blood clots and two years ago I had a one that left my leg in bad shape.

I thank you for your words of encouragement. You're most likely right, having played trumpet would be a help, but of course we din't do chords or have the bass clef to worry about. Thanks again and I guess I will soon find out how hard it will be.

Well, Bill, I have two aneurysms, one in each leg and one has a clot so I am wait for a surgery call. When they discovered the clot recently I figured that was it, but they said it is quite common for aneurysms to develope clots and they will fix it. If the clot was in the brain I think it is a different story. I actually started playing the piano by accident. I was extremely weak from poor health over 5 years. I couldn't sit for more than about 5 minutes, so I thought if I sat at the piano and played book 1 how to play the piano, I might distract myself enough to be able to sit up longer. Well, in the process of the first 3 months, I fell in love with playing the piano. My back/back muscles didn't seem to improve so I bought a chair with a back at the piano height. And a short time later my back muscles improved so I can sit on a backless piano bench again which I prefer. Stokes can do a lot of damage so I was lucky to be able to walk, talk, and play the piano - my hands are okay. A doctor on this forum mentioned that he would prefer a heartattack over a stroke because if you survive a heartattack that is the end of it - nothing else.

On memory, that too was affected from the stroke and I say: "I don't know where I put glass of water but I can always find middle C because it never moves and is always in the same spot!"

The best way is with a teacher, so I'm confused when you mentioned being disabled and lessons not working for you in the same sentence. How'd you learn the trumpet? There are some okay ways to teach yourself, but nothing beats a qualified teacher. Why so averse?

The disadvantage here is that you will have to unlearn the bad habits you picked up on your own. I'm very independent, and worked for years on my own. It was a mistake -- I wish I'd started with a teacher first.

Good idea. Perhaps I'll take some lessons first. It's just that's money's tight you know and right after buying the DP it will be tight. I had my heart set on a Kawia MP6, but am thinking maybe a Casio PX-350 with its stand and its built in speakers plus lessons would be money better spent than investing in the MP6, a Z stand, and powered speakers. To my untrained ear I really can't tell much of a difference in the sound anyway. I am still hard of hearing some and if it's close I don't pick up the difference.

You can save a lot if you buy a DP via craigslist. It might take some patience. I got my Yamaha P90 via eBay, and once bought a Clavinova CLP560 for $60 at a rummage sale.

Posted this in the wrong thread -- content deleted.

Lots of things beats a qualified teacher.

Nothing worse than seeing people ask for advice, people who state they can't use a teacher at the moment for whatever reason, to have someone come along and question them. It happens all the time on this forum and in my opinion is this forums worst trait.

Personally I wish the site owner and mods would introduce a rule banning posts like yours when people have stressed they want to teach themselves.

Not everyone fits into the same pattern of learning as others do, some may find they need a teacher to learn, others may have a teacher now and wish they had gone this route many years previous.

But there's also the others. Those intelligent people who don't thrive well in a classroom environment but end up as math geniuses etc.

Many people need teachers to teach them math, physics, guitar, piano or whatever. Many many others do just as well (and often better) without.

There's also far far far too many people who are qualified at teaching their particular field as far as their qualifications and training goes, who should never ever be let anywhere near a student of any age as while these teachers have the head knowledge, they are unable to relate to their students in any way shape or form.

When I think back 35 years to when I was at school, I had a load of different teachers for many different subjects, but I could count the ones that were really good teachers on one hand if I had two fingers missing.

That all applies to a fit and well student with loads of study time spare, able to schedule study times every day, and have the financial means of paying for a teacher.

As soon as you bring illness (and many other things like wanting to be able to afford food regularly) into the equation, saying someone should get a teacher, and sort of implying you don't know why being disabled should affect that decision, well it shows me you haven't much experience as to how different illnesses can affect different people.

I'm ill. 15 years ago I was earning £42k, for the last 12 years I haven't been able to work and the hospital specialists won't let me even consider part time work. Last year I received £5200 in state benefits, £100 a week, and that's gone up by a little each year.

My wife works, we are financially fine but we don't have much spare money at all due to me not earning. She recently treated me to a Korg Kronos 88 which wasn't cheap, but she knows that I hardly leave the house, music is something I enjoy, and she is happy for the family to go without a holiday for another few years for me to have such a nice treat.

But even if I actually wanted a teacher, we couldn't afford one. But it's far more complicated than that.

Every one hour I'm up, I have to take a 15 min rest.

Watching TV, reading a book, listening to an audio book, playing my keyboard, being in a room sitting down talking to someone, none of that counts as rest. So if I'm watching a film on tv, I have to pause it and go into the other room, put on some chill out music and sit in my armchair, arms and legs relaxed, eyes closed.

If I went to see a teacher, the time putting on my shoes etc isn't rest, the walk to the car isn't rest, neither is the journey in the car. Then there's the lesson, then there's the drive home.

Chances are I wouldn't end up back in my armchair relaxing within the hour and if I don't, then the next day or two I will spend mostly asleep and won't have the energy to play my keyboard at all.

But it's worse than that, the 15 min rest every hour is for when I'm doing very little at home. As soon as going out is put into the equation or having to meet people at a certain time, that's a different thing altogether.

This morning I had a doctors appointment where all I had to do was have my blood pressure taken both standing and sitting, squeeze a handgrip three times to measure how hard I can grip things, then blow into a device three times to measure my lung capacity.

My appointment was at 9am and I was done by 9:15. She stressed she wanted me to go home and do virtually nothing for the rest of the day as that 15 mins (along with having to get there) would have been too much for me.

All that aside, often I sleep for hours in the day time, there's never two identical times I can play, I might feel up to practising at 10 am tomorrow, 3pm the next day, not have the energy to practice at all the next, and happily be able to practice/play anytime the following day, just pausing for my rests every hour.

So if I wanted a teacher, I would have to find one that could either come to me, was 15 mins or less drive away, was dirt cheap, and I can phone up and say I will be well enough to come right now, but I can't guarantee if I will be well enough in two hours time, yet alone a fixed time and date next week.

What's more, if you knocked on my front door and I answered it, you would presume I was a normal healthy man.

Many people have many reasons they can't have teachers, people with physical or mental (or both) disabilities where they are fighting with pain, breathing, headaches, not being able to concentrate for periods of time, etc, none of these can book an appointment in advance as they dont know how well they will be on the day.

Then you have those where the stress of meeting with a teacher is simply too much (hard to understand if your well, but can be very very draining if your not).

And many of us choose a musical outlet.

13 years ago I could walk miles, swam regularly, went to the gym, had a big garden I enjoyed working on etc etc etc. In the past few years I've just existed really, three months go by and I struggle to find something I've actually done except for watching tv or browsing the web (can't concentrate on books anymore, have joined audible as if I didn't listen to them, that would be another pleasure lost).

So I buy a cheap 2nd hand keyboard a year or so ago, and I finally have something I enjoy that isn't tv or computer (I used to have many synths all hooked up to my Atari computer years ago before I got ill) and my wife sees how much I'm enjoying it and how I have a sort of purpose/outlet again. So she buys me some computer synths (Native Instruments Komplete), my daughters at Uni and my wife gave her the money to buy me the educational version of Cubase for my PC, and this year she treats me to my Kronos that I've been going on about since it was mentioned early last year.

And I'm very very happy.

I want to learn to play better, I've got an online course recommended by someone on this board (play piano today) and I'm enjoying myself having fun and learning well in my opinion.

With the wealth of YouTube vids etc, there's plenty of info out there for the person like me that wants to learn themselves.

Thing is, I'm usually very very reluctant to ask questions etc on this board as I know someone will simply respond " you need a teacher"

And absolutely no one should have to explain themselves to you like I have above to justify themselves for your benefit when they say a teacher is out of the question.

If someone says they cant have a teacher, who are you to judge their reasonings and question them when they say this?

I only described my personal situation here to show you how unfair it is for you and others to keep saying this.

Please stop.

Best

Joe

Thanks, Joe, for that post, difficult tho it might have been. I, too, find it tiring, when someone has specifically said "I can't get a teacher right now", if someone posts a reply "get a teacher."

I don't have any of the difficulties you do, or that others here do, but I'd go nuts with a teacher So I don't have one, and I learn other ways. I did, in fact, have a couple of years of lessons when I was a teenager, and band, and choirs, so it's not that I didn't have a base. But I didn't learn how to make music, either. I've been much better off doing it my way, having started again 30+ years later.

Many people throughout the years have learned to make music on fiddles, guitars, dulcimers, pianos, whistles, and goodness knows what else, by being around people who play them and having someone show them a little at a time - no formal lessons to it. My mother learned to play piano from mail order lessons, and played for her church for many years.

Did many of those people play classical music? Maybe not. But they played and enjoyed music, sometimes for a life time.

So while I have no problem at all with folks for whom lessons are a great way to go, I in no way think it's the only way.

And, like you, if someone states that lessons aren't a possibility, whether they state the reason or not, then urging them to get lessons seems, well, rude.

So thanks again. You've done a great service here.

Cathy

+1, Joe and Cathy.

Joe, I share your displeasure with those "teachers are a must" posts and your anger over this particular instance of one. I wasn't going to post this time, partly because I've been ill and didn't feel up to it and partly because I've done it so many times before that I'm sure people are tired of hearing my voice on the subject and so it wouldn't add anything to the impact of the discussion, but your impassioned eloquence has inspired me.

My energy also comes in spurts, and though no where near as afflicted as you, I have very low blood pressure and it can be difficult to focus sometimes. But when I'm up, I'm really up and can really concentrate, and learning and having a creative outlet at the piano has meant the world to me. I also share a similar experience with you in terms of your experience with teachers growing up. School was a nightmare for me for some of the reasons you relate.

Also as you relate, because at least one of my piano teachers was one of those people who had no business being near children let alone students, I think having piano lessons starting at age 8 was the worst thing that could have happened to me. Had I been left to my own resources and allowed to explore music naturally and joyfully as I'd been doing from an early age, picking out songs and composing melodies and beginning to harmonize them at the piano, I think I would have been much better off.

I agree with Cathy that you've done a wonderful thing for the site. I intend to copy your thread and keep in a file, so that I have it ready to post anytime someone responds in a similar way to someone afflicted either physically or monetarily.

Thank you for using your precious energy to help others.

I can't agree with posts that make simple sweeping generalizations that teachers are necessary and then end the conversation there.

I can, however, agree with posts that argue that teachers are often (not always) the only means of learning/correcting habits.

Though, that being said, with the existence of the internet and its vast resources now easily accessible, you could arguably now easily find a proper teacher in a combination of various sources, Piano World being one possible significant component.

As I said, I have no problems whatsoever with people having teachers, and relating their experience with teachers.

It does get tiring, for me, when a poster has said explicitly that a teacher isn't a possibility at the moment and someone urges a teacher. I think, as Ojustaboo says, a poster shouldn't have to go into details about why a teacher isn't a possibility, in order to have other posters respect that.

I have read posters who say "if there's any way possible for a teacher, a few sessions in the beginning, for things like bench height, posture, hand postition" (or something similar), and I think that's fine - it acknowledges that there are difficulties to overcome. It's the posters who seem to assume that one is only not getting a teacher because one has just not thought this through carefully, or one is ignorant, or lazy, or rebellious, or some other remedy-able characteristic, if one would just wake up, you knucklehead , that I find off base.

The ABF seems, to me, to swing back and forth about the preponderance of those with teachers and those without. It's just that I don't see the ones without teachers chiming in and saying "oh, don't get a teacher, surely you can learn this on your own."

Mostly, it would be nice if each of us remembers that everyone's circumstances are different, their goals are different, and that there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Cathy

If you're going to be your own teacher it's worth being the best one you can be. You must do what a good teacher does as best you can.

Check your posture every time you sit at the piano.
Check your posture while you're playing.
Check you're playing the right notes.
Check you're playing in time.
Check you're using the right touch.
Check you're playing at the right dynamic level.
Check that you're making regular and measurable progress.


Keep a journal of what you do and when. Your memory of how long it takes to learn a piece of music isn't reliable. Make recordings, too, so that you're aware of the quality of what you were doing and when.

You don't know how you work best and how much more progress you make one way versus another. You must experiment working on one piece at a time or three pieces. Whether you stick with a piece until it's done, or tackle it for a short spell than return to it later, say, one week on and one week off. You must not get bored with a piece nor frustrated but you must not dismiss it just because you can't play it, either.

Don't dismiss a method book because it doesn't feature the music you want to learn. Use it as a supplement.

There isn't a good book using the 'traditional' method because of the the traditional method itself.

In a nutshell (and with sweeping generalisation) the European school responded to a need for concert platform performers when the affluent middle classes wanted to attend concerts. A teacher was the only way and the music was, perforce, not elementary.

The American school repsonded to a need for piano buyers when the piano makers began flourishing. Quality of performance was not a criterion. Banging out songs akin to guitar like accompaniment was the order of the day. It is for this niche that the method book developed. For self teaching this is the most logical approach because it's thorough and gently progressive.

Adding classical music, even at an elementary level you must be aware of how long it takes to learn simple pieces, how slowly you must go and how many different approaches to a learning methodology you must try before finding which ones work best for you.

I've been playing since the sixties and I'm still finding out what works best for me - it's changed over the years and I'm not always keeping up.

Here's a good link, there are others.
http://brenthugh.com/piano/piano-practice.html

There are many who will caution you about physical problems such as RSI and back problems. You must ensure you are conforming to good ergonomic practise to prevent long term suffering and injury. If you are used to 'listening' to your body in another discipline this may help but if not then do try to get someone with sufficient expertise to check your posture and playing actions at least once. An inch up or down on the stool can make a huge difference on long practise sessions and over long years.

If you can get a video of yourself playing, either you or someone else may be able to make an informed correction to your posture or actions.

Don't lose touch with the Piano World forums. The wealth of information here and the sheer level of support and encouragement is huge and freely given.

The bottom line is... everybody learns differently and not everyone has the same goals. If you want to play in a rock band, taking years of classical lessons won't necessarily help you achieve that goal as fast as possible. The best way to learn is the way that works for you. Unless you are trying to be a professional concert pianist or trying to get a piano scholarship to a conservatory, it's perfectly acceptable to learn on your own. The only thing to consider is where you are getting your information from, since your teacher will now be a bunch of sources. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad YouTube videos out there with horrible advice. Choose your "teachers" wisely.

I will say one thing about teachers that may benefit the OP. I often have been challenged to teach people overcoming disabilities. Quite often, we're throwing all the technique out the window and trying to create a methodology that will work for that student, creating the best results with the least amount of tension. You don't have to take regular lessons, but if you are struggling, especially physically, with any aspect of music, it may benefit you to take at least one lesson and share your struggles with someone who may be able to help you overcome them.

And as Richard said, a bunch of folks here are always available to help. Good luck!

Thank you for your post. I work with people with disabilities and thought you explained yourself really well, but shouldn't have to at all. So many people on this site teach themselves for all sorts of reasons and that's fantastic. Thank you again. Shey

Ditto

I entered high school wanting to "be a Beatle". In my first music lesson the music teacher announced they were not real musicians and couldn't sing and then began to draw a staff on the board ... I never listened again.