Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Totally and Completely Discouraged

The reality is that you're in a piano trough, and every adult piano player regardless of age has them, whether one is a beginner or an accomplished pianist.

Having been a teacher of adult learners at the piano for many years, I can assure you that what unites 90% of them is a constant sense of not being good enough. The other 10% somehow don't view the world this way, and just enjoy their piano skills and their progress without judgement.

I agree with a prior poster that it's time for you to try another teacher. Even just for a few lessons on the sly. Or spend a week at a piano camp that welcomes beginners. Beating yourself up is not healthy; playing the piano for forty minutes a day is healthy. Dust off some old pieces!

I have been playing for four years, just like the OP, and just about everything the OP wrote I can relate to. I think there is an expectation that in ten years we will be pretty good, in five we should be showing distinct promise and even at four years we should be showing a reasonable command of the instrument, sadly this isn't true for the majority of us. My 70 year old piano teacher told me after 50 years of playing she asked her mother "does it ever get easier", "no, it doesn't" came the reply.

grburgess, it sounds like the Manitoba winters and the mosquito filled summers
have done a number on your brain

Why did you decide to learn to play the piano? You don't mention that, other than saying "....I want to learn the thing I most want to do...". What were/are you hoping to do by learning the piano? Where is "it" when you write ...."before I get where I want to go"....?

BTW where is your teacher in all of this? What has your teacher said/done about you feeling so
discouraged?

In my 60's I decided to learn the piano; never had any music lessons as a child, plus I consistantly
failed music class in junior high school (thank goodness it wasn't needed to pass the grade). Found a great (for me) teacher, who has faith in me, though I will NEVER be a good let alone adequate player.

I can readily identify with the issues if coordination and begin able to play quickly. Arthritis in my hands/wrists makes it very difficult to reach 1 octave, and to be able to play from memory is a challenge, as to being able to play a simple piece by ear, well let's not go there.

Forgive me if I sound dismissive, but I truly feel you are being much too hard on yourself. We all
have the right to makes mistakes, and somewhere along you'll make fewer. All musicians make mistakes, even the great ones.

Enjoy your piano lessons for what they are; a learning experience.

This fighting word is a bit concerning.

Generally, those that are happy and fulfilled with their progress the most are also loving the process of learning and playing. As slow as it may seem to be in the beginning, they are not overly critical of how well they can play a certain thing and certainly no care of how they may or should stack up to others. The reward is in the work and they feel rewarded.

If it is just a slump though, don't worry about it. We all have them. Or, could also be the black flies.

We all have our moments, and many of us post about them here.

Mostly, I'm an "enjoy-the-process" kind of girl, but every now and then I run smack into the critical voice, you know the one, so I don't need to give space to the words.

Please remember that it is wonderful to enjoy an activity. It is okay if you aren't highly skilled at it; you can still enjoy it.

Some things are hard. People can do hard things.

Keep doing it and you will improve.


If you don't like any part of the game anymore, consider doing something else.

+1. Although I started piano as a kid, I _re-started_ singing (and then piano) around 70.

I'm better in choir, than I am as a solo singer. I may _never_ be a decent solo singer. But I enjoy choir a whole lot.

Sometimes I think:

. . . "If I could play just _one_ solid verse of "C Jam Blues",
. . . straight improvisation, not from memory, at tempo,
. . . I could die happy."

That may never happen. The more I study, the harder it gets.

So the question is (as many previous posts have said):

. . . Am I in this for the accomplishment, or for the journey?

I waffle back and forth, depending on whether it's been a good day, or a bad one.

I don't know if grburgess is still with us - in case yes:

Ok, I'm reading responses that go to talking to the teacher about how you feel, and that the teacher can help you feel better, and that you may be doing better than you think and your teacher can tell you this, and that we all hit plateaus etc. Why may (also) be true. Meanwhile I'm looking at the OP below, and have some different thoughts.

What sticks out at me is "too many mistakes". One thing we often don't get from teachers is how to approach practising once we're home. The "too many mistakes" suggests that some elements of approach may not have been taught, and this is the result. For example, if you learn to work on a smaller section of music, concentrate on a first thing you can handle - say just the right notes with the right fingering for a few notes - slowly - then those notes will not be wrong, and you will entrench right notes. Then add rhythm, or dynamics, that you can handle (your existing personal level), then the next. There won't be mistakes. But if you are given entire pieces and try to work on the entire piece, and make everything in it sound right immediately, you will have different results. Breaking things down, building them up, building the music, knowing of this and applying it can make an enormous difference.

For the coordination, this too can get built up and get addressed directly. If your teacher can actually do that for you. Not all teachers know how to. A teacher may be good in some aspects of music and not others, and the student then ends up being strong in one area and not the other. Then again there are teachers who do give the right guidance, but the student doesn't know how to clue in on that part, or works differently than instructed. There are cause and effect, and if something is missing, and it's given and applied, then the effect (result) will also be different.

This may not be true in your case, but it might be. The first time I took lessons, which was on a different instrument, I was in a rut for several years. My "feelings" were addressed, I was told it was normal, etc. But in fact I was missing essential things, and when I got those things I stopped being in a rut.

I used the same word years ago when I was in the situation I alluded to in my last post. I was advised to have a different attitude etc. But the fact was that I could not progress, because things were missing that I should have known, the approaches were poor, and the reality was that no matter how hard I tried, little changed. If things are missing, then trying to force oneself into a positive attitude, a sunny disposition, and resign oneself that a slowness that borders on inertia and backsliding is "as things should be and are", this is not helpful. IF there are things missing.

There has been a lot of good advice so far.

I simply want to say that I have been in a similar, though not as extreme, condition.

You are by no means alone. In fact I imagine that a trouble free path from beginner to virtuoso is possibly unheard of.

Hopefully grburgess comes back on to read all of this encouragement and good advice.

I guess we`ve all been there, done that . . . .hang on, I`m missing the T shirt . . . .

Which one? This one:



Or This one:

Definitely the second! I like a bit o` stress. Any excuse to swear . . . . it`s my heritage, I`m of age and I`m a fella . . . .

Same here, and I'm a girl!

Love the second one!!!

On behalf of your dog: he may be running out of the room in response to the stress you are giving off, rather than the wrong notes you are playing! As long as I am banging happily away at the keys, my dog usually sleeps at my feet (sometimes between me and the pedal, dang it) no matter how many clinkers I hit. But as soon as I am struggling with some piece of sight reading or something new where I am figuring out where to put each finger one at a time, he gets restless and starts fussing at me.

Relax, try to enjoy yourself, as others have advised, and you will probably find your dog becomes a great fan of your playing.