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This is my best suggestion ...

http://www.fundamentalkeys.com

Since you are a complete beginner I would suggest that you DO NOT purchase the old version of her book but instead ...

Purchase Book 1 of the newest edition and the videos that go with it and start in ...

Do not hurry through things. Take your time and do things very well before moving on.


Good Luck

Someone in another thread recommended this site for classical piano music.


http://artistworks.com/piano-lessons-christie-peery


It looks very good to me, also.


If I was more into classical music or just beginning my journey I would certainly give that a look. For only $240 per year you have access to a well thought-out selection of videos and then you can also send in a video of yourself playing and she will send back a video of things you should work on that you might no be doing just right. It looks terrific.

best advice of course is get a teacher.

If you decide to get a teacher after some time, you start from minus one.

Hmm it does look quite good, almost too good which make me a little bit sceptical. I would like to sign up for the yearly contract but is it worth the risk?

This can hardly get enough emphasis..
Considering your goals I am quite sure you can hardly do without. Of course you can play the piano well over time. But going to Grade8+ without a teacher in a reasonable time? No way.
If you decide to get a teacher after some time, you start from minus one.

If I said I can't buy a car but want to get to work, nonetheless;what's the best method? I would not think that a response saying get a car would make sense. So if I can't get a teacher until October but want to excel, what advice would make sense? Notwithstanding a teacher, presumably as aforementioned. IMHO, Alfred's seems like a great start.

I can't afford a teacher at the moment and I also have no set time to give per week as my weekly working hours change, etc. So what everyone is saying is basically don't practice the piano for about 6 months until I get a teacher? That's half a year wasted... it's as if the general rule is don't bother playing the piano if you can't afford a teacher.

I've not posted much this week. I'm compensating...

Being an all round player
A good all-rounder can play from a score or from memory, they can also learn music by ear or make it up as they go along as variations or free improvisation.

The daily routine should cover reading skills by playing accurately but slowly from a score and also by compromising accuracy or detail in order to keep time. It should cover memorising at least a few bars of music. It should include some ear training, picking out melodies or harmonising them. You might include developing variations from themes or free improvisation from harmonic progressions. Composition is a step on from there.

After a year or two it's helpful to include some time for technical skills that are commonly encountered in the music such as scales, arpeggios, chords or broken chords, trills, octaves, leaps, syncopation or polyrhythms. It's easy to overdo this. Scales are a small part of the whole and easiest to focus on but I don't believe they benefit beginners. Repertoire is king. Concentrate on repertoire and learning new material.

Classical music gernerally tends to work both hands evenly and tests precision and accuracy as well as interpretation and expression. It engages the brain as much as the body and the greater challenge provides greater rewards. Song accompaniment gives an easier time though it needn't be any less enjoyable. Think of the differences between strumming a folk guitar and playing classical guitar.

The time and effort involved in classical music doesn't make you sound any better in comparison - it just allows you to enjoy more stimulating and satisfying music.

Alfred's is geared towards accompaniment and is a very poor start for classical or solo piano compared to, say, the Hal Leonard series. Any method approach, though, needs supplementation and no book or video can give you the most important ingredients - direction, correction and solutions.

The Teacher Debate
In the end we teach ourselves to play piano and its our own effort and application that makes the difference not the teacher. A teacher will save the hours incurred from incorrect assumptions, misunderstandings or musical and technical cul-de-sacs, the 'bad habits' that really do impede progress. I have no statistics to show their frequency but a good teacher is less common and bad teachers do exist but time spent without a teacher need not be wasted.

Reaching Grade 8 is within the ability of any normal beginner in around six to ten years with a good teacher. I don't believe it's possible for the average person to reach that level without a teacher. It needs too much knowledge and experience in order to start out well and avoid the impediments of misguided practise but I do believe you can get close. It will, though, take several years more - at least double the time with lots more discipline, diligence, research and intelligent application but this forum, as has been mentioned, makes up a lot for that. The most important ingredients a teacher provides is quick solutions to technical problems that may hound us for years on our own and the ability to spot weaknesses before they grow out of proportion and become detrimental to technique.

Piano playing is a technique. You don't need to reach mastery by the early teens. You can take it up in retirement and still reach mastery. But mastery is very rare without a teacher whenever you start. As an allegory, many enjoy chess or golf without a teacher but precious few reach strong club level or low handicap without one. It's not just about practice.

Good Practice
One of the most fundamental skills is learning new material and no method book I've ever encountered develops the requisite techniques. You really do need to tackle significant pieces that cannot be learnt just by continually reading through, pieces that will take several weeks to overcome, that will be absorbed into the memory (which is necessary for reading and technical development), and that are of sufficiently good quality that you can play them frequently without boredom or without continually trying to improve.

It is the application of effort in this last part that determines the overall progress. The last 20% of achievement takes 80% of the time and effort. You simply cannot develop this fundamental skill on pieces that you've not known and worked on for only short periods.

One of the more enlightening lessons from the recent Schumann recital and the forty piece challenge is that easy music isn't really easy. It just presents less demanding technical requirements. How we go about learning new material is what separates the better students. The better players take small sections, small enough that they can played as well as their current technique allows but in a short time, and they reach that level before extending the section size.

Working one phrase at a time is the norm because a phrase is musically complete and short enough to be mastered quickly. The key point is that it is mastered before it is joined onto the adjacent phrases and when it's played, after it's learnt, it's only played well. It is never blundered through, allowing wrong notes and poor phrasing and hoping that it'll sort itself out later - which it seldom does.

If you take, for example, the Andante from Mozart's Sonata in C, K. 545. There is not a single bar of music there that will stump a typical adult beginner with enough concentration and effort over a period of time. The music is also high enough in quality to withstand years of knowing it and playing it. And years is what it will take to be able to play it with the sensitivity it deserves.

Played in phrases it is quite achievable but playing it through, well, as a whole piece is a huge challenge and demands individual mastery over each phrase on its own over many weeks.

No-one other than Bach engages both hands, both halves of the brain and all fingers with same rigour and training. If you aren't working towards (towards, not necessarily on) Bach Inventions from early on you're simply kicking tin cans down the road where you should really be starting out with dribbling skills on a real football. Kicking is a physical skill that comes readily with practise. Understanding how to control a ball and how it behaves requires knowledge, time and experience - and large amounts of each.