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Hello everyone, I'm new on this forum and brand new to piano! On a whim last week I decided I really wanted to learn to play piano, and bought a Casio Privia PX-150 as a birthday present to myself (will be delivered next week). :-D

I'll be learning on my own until I can't get further without a teacher (it worked for French and guitar). I'm not that interested in classical music (maybe I'll learn to appreciate it during my piano studies?), but would love to be able to play some pop rock, jazz, blues, folk... I like singing, so mostly stuff I can sing to.
I plan to start with the free video courses at http://howtoplaypiano.ca/learn-piano/ and http://howtoplaypiano.ca/learn-music-theory/ (these remind me of justinguitar.com), and maybe the paid http://simplymusiconline.com/how-it-works/ (this one just looks fun).

I've been pouring through this forum to find a good method book to compliment the YouTube videos - I see Alfred's recommended a lot, but I'm not sure which version would be best for self-study? I found different versions referenced and ended up super confused...
- http://alfred.com/Products/Alfreds-Self-Teaching-Adult-Piano-Course--00-30115.aspx
- http://alfred.com/Products/Alfreds-Teach-Yourself-to-Play-Piano--00-22623.aspx
- http://alfred.com/Products/Alfreds-Basic-Adult-All-in-One-Course-Book-1--00-5753.aspx
Or are there other complete methods that might be better suited for a mostly non-classical programme?

I do understand that the best way to learn is with a teacher, but right now timing isn't good (no local teachers available on weekends) - and also living in France I'm worried I'd struggle somewhat with the vocabulary (my French is good, but the musical vocabulary kind of puts me off).

Thanks for any feedback, and I'm really happy to be here. Can't wait to start learning!
Hine

Hello and welcome.

I don't think you'll find any free online resources that compare with justinguitar, there's none that I've found anyway. Also in my experience guitar is a significantly more complex instrument than guitar, if by guitar you mean playing tab and chords to pop/rock songs. Yes you can learn French without a teacher but could you learn Korean? Well, you probably could, but regardless it's still not recommended.

I think those other two books are variations of the Adult All in One Course book, possibly older versions or published for different markets.

Hine,
I have a membership at InstantPianoGenius.com which I have found to be quite good (in spite of the cheesy name . I have no affiliation with the site other than being a customer. I like it a lot and it might be something you would enjoy. It does not teach reading traditional music notation, but rather uses a play by ear approach. In the beginning it uses guitar chord charts as a sort of training wheels to help you work out the chords in a song. It doesn't just teach you how to play specific songs. So if you don't like a particular example song that is being used you could download the chord chart for another song and apply those arrangement techniques to it. The teacher is a professional keyboardist (currently playing with Rick Springfield's band).

In the beginning it focuses on teaching you to play an accompaniment style (i.e. you're signing along) but later teaches you how to work out melodies and come up with instrumental arrangements of songs. It also includes lessons on things like songwriting, using music production software, and quite a bit more. It's $20/month so not terribly expensive to try out if you think it sounds interesting.

As far as the Alfred's Method goes, it's a very well put together method, and it will teach you to read traditional music notation if you work through it diligently. Some find the music choices to be a bit uninspired, but if you work through it you can learn a lot. If you choose that route, I suggest you look at the Alfred's volume 1 thread on this forum. You can ask questions there, get feedback, etc...

If you have Skype, there are also quite a few people offering lessons over Skype. perhaps not as good as an in person lesson, but perhaps better than a no person lesson. In any case, you might find an instructor willing to work with you over Skype. Google might be your friend in this regard.

Good luck with your piano journey!

Thanks for the replies AndrewJCW and Fizikisto

Andrew, do you mean piano is more complex than guitar (typo maybe)? I think both are complex instruments, depending on what you play (jazz or flamenco guitar, classical piano)... I'm not great at guitar (started late, never finish learning), but do get enjoyment from playing mostly finger style accompaniment. I'll never make it my career, and can't read tab. I'm hoping to learn to play equally pretty things on the piano, and also better understand music and general music theory - the notes being all laid out in front of me, it _seems_ a bit easier for that...
Not sure about self teaching Korean, I haven't tried - but I did learn Japanese this way until I couldn't get further alone, then joined a class to go further, and currently combine self-study (kanji, reading, vocab) with class learning (grammar, conversation).
I imagine I'll get to a point in my piano study where I'll feel blocked and need a teacher too - but for many things the early stuff can be learnt from books and videos, I imagine piano is the same? I know I'll have to be especially careful with posture - what are some other things I should be extra careful to learn correctly?

Fizikisto, I'll have a look at that website thanks, it sounds interesting. Also I never thought about Skype piano lessons - I didn't actually know that was a thing! I will look into that.

Yeah that's what I meant sorry . I won't try to defend my statement too much but I'll stand by it as my opinion after learning guitar for a few years and piano for nearly 1. In very rough terms I'd put it this way; any dedicated student can become a guitarist after 1 year of study, but no one has even been a pianist after 1 year of study.

I too come from a guitar background (although more drums/bass), and I've picked up piano to understand music as well. It seems to have taken over my other musical ambitions for now, and I think it is a fantastic tool for gaining that theoretical knowledge.

Ok yeah I understand what you mean – luckily I'm not aiming to become a professional pianist I watched some of your videos, and I really enjoyed seeing your progress!

I bought the "Alfred's Basic Adult All-in-One Course, Book 1" (version with DVD introductions to the lesson material and performances). I see you've recently started learning blues and jazz – I'd love to be able to start learning jazz and blues in a year or 2 or 3 (no idea how long it'll take me to get to that point). What resources are you using? Did you finish Alfred's Basic before starting them? Are you continuing with the next Alfred's Basic books?

Professor Utube (aka Ms Alison Sparrow) has 20 videos for raw beginners. She is continuing the series but her method of copyright protection is a bit silly.

Fizikisto, I just watched the free introductory videos on InstantPianoGenius.com – it looks great! How long have you been a member for? Is it suitable for true beginners, or better once I have some experience?

It's a shame most piano learning websites I've found look scammy (this one included) – it's hard to tell which ones are actually good.

Thanks tbonesays, I didn't know about Alison Sparrow. What is her method of copyright protection?

I still haven't finished Alfred's Book 1, but I'm close. I think I have 3 songs left. I got a couple of weeks of lessons about 12 months ago but I decided I couldn't justify the expense, so I've just been learning from books. There's a lot of books suitable for beginners for blues and jazz, but I think I've come to the conclusion that I'm putting to much into this to not try to get the best results and that means having a teacher. I've trialed an artist works online service that I've been impressed with but they only have classical method teachers, however there's a new jazz teacher coming soon. So I'm tossing up between that and a real teacher in town (at 4x the cost).

If you're interested in playing by ear, I just got this book:

http://www.lucinda-mackworth-young.co.uk/piano-by-ear

It's a very nice progressive approach to the subject, much better than just sitting down and trying to figure out random tunes. It's okay for complete beginners too, although you might have to complement it with a bit of theory.

She made teaching books for sale (fine) and tailored her https://m.youtube.com/user/theonlinepianotutor utube lessons to the books (fine). But this summer she started blurring out the pages she was lecturing on (aye?) rendering the entire video useless without the book. I totally understand that she deserves to earn the market value for her time and skills. But posting a series of lectures on illegible sheets seems well, just plain silly way to enter the market.

Blame that on the American marketing culture. Everything has to be a "miracle" and fast. Dishwashing soap removes grease instantly, drain cleaners work in just 10 minutes (I remember when they used to say 30 minutes, or even overnight). Telling people that it will take time to do something unfortunately makes it less marketable. The hard part is finding a balance between marketing hype and actually delivering a solid method. That's why I think money back guarantees are so important.

I also suggest giving a look at the piano schools at artistworks.com. The Popular Piano School with Hugh Sung leans -- no surprise -- more towards popular music, with songs like "Memory," "The Rose," and "Linus and Lucy" in the curriculum. But, as Hugh Sung is fond of saying, "the curriculum is for those who like structure. For those who have specific songs you want to learn, I'll teach you how to play anything you want."

Hugh's a great teacher. He doesn't demand a whole lot, but if a student wants to get everything there is to get out of piece of music, Hugh's happy to work with the student on details and nuances on top of details and nuances.

It's a fun place.

Hine I've been a member for about 18 months now. I would say that yes it's suitable for true beginners, but with the caveat that it's better suited for people who enjoy experimenting and figuring things out. One of Tim's goals as a teacher is to give you the ability to play the songs that you want to play, not just the example songs he teaches. His mantra is "don't try to do *EXACTLY* what I do, I never play a song exactly the same way twice." He gives you lots of tools, but it's up to you to go practice and apply them. So it's all about experimenting and finding what you like and giving a song your personal spin.

If you have questions about the lessons you can create a "support ticket" (basically there's a form for you to email him your questions) and he's generally very good about getting back to you quickly.

Originally, the site would give you one module per month (videos, backing tracks, pdf's, etc...) but now he's experimenting with an option for an "all access pass" which gives you access to all the lessons. I recommend it. It lets you see every available lesson (a new one gets added every month-ish).

http://www.instantpianogenius.com/allaccess/

So you could try it for a month, see everything that's available, then decide if it's for you or not With the Month to month option you can actually download the lessons to your computer as they become available; I think with the all access option only streaming is available for the videos.

Following Tiggs post: I signed up for artistworks classical piano (Christie Peery) while I was on hiatus with my teacher.

The basic system is watch lessons, videorecord yourself, and get feedback.

Christie is pretty demanding (still very nice). I spent a lot more time finetuning Sakura than I ever expected. I liked that she was very attentive about posture, handposition, etc. I think those are all good things.

The curriculum is based on RCM. (Google RCM piano if need be.) You do buy your own books. I found this to be a litte annoying because I was already paying and there are a lot of thin little books that are hard to find.

I would like to follow up on Tiggs' post regarding artistworks.com, having just signed up for a year with Hugh Sung's part of the piano school. Though I am new to Hugh's school, I am not new to Artist Works, having gone through the Martin Taylor fingerstyle jazz guitar course. For those who think that piano is more difficult than guitar, check out THAT school.

Anyway, the reasons that I signed up for Hugh Sung's school is that I do need/want a structured environment, at least for a year or so as I really get going. I am re-retiring after next week and will suddenly have a lot of free and unstructured time on my hands. I think that the Artist Works environment is quite good because you are interacting with the teacher, both through the chat and via uploading videos. You are also able to interact with other students. I think that is a really good and motivating thing.

Another thing that I personally find important about Hugh's teaching is that, from what I saw on the free videos I watched before signing up, he really focuses on working out fingering issues (which finger goes where, when, and why). In the first song, I am definitely finding that to be true. That stuff seems to get glossed over outside classical lessons for some reason. Yet, when I have learned some music by ear and worked out fingering by myself, I will find from a schooled piano player that if I moved this finger over here and started with this other one, the whole section goes much more smoothly. So, to me, that is important stuff to know.

Hugh (if I understand correctly so far) feels that learning piano as one would a foreign language - by playing music (i.e. by speaking the language) is a good model. So, when learning specific songs, you are really learning a whole lot of stuff in the process, and Hugh apparently uses the songs as vehicles to point out all the other stuff you should be learning through that process.

There are many approaches to learning the piano (or guitar, or ...). Usually, I find some combination of approaches works best for me. I have quite a bit of self-teaching materials that I have used on and off, and fully intend to continue with. I think that Artist Works, at this particular point in my life for reasons already mentioned is a very good match. I also think that being able to actively engage with the teacher and other students tends to provide quite a bit of ongoing inspiration. It is fine to hang out in forums like this (though it is all too easy to not play when we can be spending our time here), but having on-line access and interaction with other students working in the same "school" is far more focused and probably more productive while one is involved in that school. I don't know if other sites mentioned here provide that kind of immediate interaction with teacher and students.

Tony

Tony, I think you made a great choice.

I like the "learning a foreign language" analogy. A similar idea that Hugh emphasizes is that playing a song on piano is like telling a story... there's a lot more to playing than getting the notes right.

That s a great perspective! I am only on "Greensleeves" part A at this point. I think that tomorrow I will probably have all that section down and be ready to move on to the next section of the piece as I work on getting it all flowing smoothly. Having gone through all the fundamentals at the beginning, and now into Greensleeves, I have already picked up quite a bit. Hugh has the same kind of piano bench that came with my V-Grand, so it was really helpful to see him discussing posture in the fundamentals section. Other sources said to sit at the very edge of the bench, while Hugh talked about sitting farther back on it and getting balance. That was important for me to see, as was the fingering for Greensleeves. I am looking forward to a lot more. I saw that Hugh teaches Yiruma's "River Flows In You" as one of the songs. I am really interested in that style of music, among others. He also seems to later get into some jazz/cocktail styles too, which is another interest of mine. His choices of tunes as teaching vehicles seems to match what I want to learn, and his approach matches my learning style.

Tony

Thanks for all the great replies everyone, I'll be sure to check out all these resources! I really appreciate getting your personal feedback and recommendations on services/books/other resources you've used – it's really hard to filtering through the tonnes of resources out there when you know absolutely nothing...

Can't wait for my piano to arrive on Wednesday