Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Self taught guitarist, now want to learn piano

I am 42 years old, and I've been playing guitar for almost 9 years. I consider myself a very good guitarist in certain styles (acoustic, blues), and a competent guitarist in most other styles (electric rock and blues, bluegrass, etc.) I can read standard notation, and my knowledge of theory is good but not great. I've played coffee house gigs in the past.


I'm pretty much self taught with guitar, reading and listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan, and for acoustic a lot of Mayer, Dave Matthews, Rob Thomas, etc. I would like to play the piano competently. I'm more interested in the singer songwriter style, accompaniment for singing. When I started learning guitar I just started copping off the songs I wanted to learn to play, either by ear, tab, or youtube.

I'm curious what your opinions are for using online courses for going the self taught route. Emedia has a program that looks good for instance. Would this be good for the basic course to transfer of my chord/theory/scale knowledge from the fretboard to the keyboard.

Anyone play guitar first and move to piano? What was your experience with the technical aspect if you already had a solid base of music theory? Do these books or courses focus on classical folk style music?

Thanks!

I would say you are in good shape starting out!

I played classical guitar for 15 years but I never was technically very competent. It was very difficult for me. But I could sight read reasonably well and covered a lot of territory. I stopped playing at around age 35.

Now at age 59, I began playing piano at age 57. So far, I find the piano to be more straightforward and intuitive and I am enjoying it much more.

Here are some links that I've seen here on this site. A few have been recommended but I have no experience with any of them.

http://www.premierpianocourse.com/ I don't think that one is an on-line course
http://www.doctorkeys.com/
http://www.pianoforlife.com/
http://www.howtoplaypiano.ca/
http://www.fundamentalkeys.com/
http://www.sudnow.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pian...dents-Free-through-Skype/129548587231669
http://www.tjjazzpiano.com/p/lessons.html
http://pianoforall.com/

As a member of PianoMagic for 6+ years, I've seen many guitarists come aboard and do really well because of their understanding of chord progressions, plus their ears already know what to listen for.

PianoMagic's focus is on about everything but classical and jazz but it's all ear with no sheet music.

I'm also a self-taught guitarist of about 20 years. I've been playing piano for just over a year now, and I'm also finding that my knowledge of music is significantly helping me pick up the piano very quickly.

I'm speeding things up by using the Piano For All program as recommended above. For the price, you really can't beat it!

I've been playing both for 35 years, learned them concurrently as a teenager. I took some lessons, and some high school and college classes. I got all the basics of technique that way, everything else after that I have self taught. It's always a good idea to get some kind of coaching when you're starting out, even if it's minimal and just covers basic technique to point you in the right direction. That way you have a better chance of not developing any bad habits.

Other than that, you probably already know what you have to do. You need to know your scales, chords, inversions and arpeggios. Practice these in the circle of fifths as a warm up, then grab a lead sheet and have a go at a few of the simple songs you already know on guitar. If you're good with your ears and have learned your chord inversions, it should fall into place pretty easily. Knowing the inversions allows you to properly voice a chord for the song you're trying, and get correct voice leading from one chord to the next. Then if you want, you can sing the melody line or add it in to the chords/voice leading as embellishments.

I've played string instruments since about 1980. Been playing piano 2 years in June. I like Doctorkeys probably the best from the sites I've investigated. There's no sense reinventing the wheel. If you know you chords in several keys, then all you need to know is what white key is C, and know how to find your location on the keyboard at will, like you would on a fretboard. You know you don't have to know everything all at once. Find your I-IV-V chords in a key or two and you can entertain yourself and others for hours. Build technique as it comes. Piano was a good fit for me. I don't read notation fluently, but I do have a journeyman's knowledge of theory, and chord theory. I guess I have a pretty good ear from playing fiddle. I found it ridiculously easy, because I know I don't have to be Van Cliburn to thoroughly enjoy myself. I've even gig'd a bit, no better than I am. LOL I hope it's a good fit for you too. Good Luck, FJ

Thanks for the encouragement, I will check out those sites out

Welcome to PW, Soothsayer.
I think you're gonna be able to play piano with ease. Your music experience will help you. I'm also a self-taught piano player
Enjoy the journey!