Self Instruction in Piano

The piano is a musical instrument that most people think is hard to learn at first, but it’s valuable nonetheless regardless of how much time, money and effort you invest. Start as soon as possible teaching yourself piano – the earlier you start the better, and also you can play a favourite song to impress your acquaintances. There are a few things you need to figure out before you start out playing piano.

First, decide what genre of music you want to learn, or what area you mean to concentrate, and whether you want to perform or play privately. Playing in public concerts/recitals is a little different than just playing for your own pleasure. If you decide to mainly focus on playing precomposed pieces, such as Mozart’s, you’ll need to teach yourself how to read sheet music and seek out formal training to improve and refine your technique. If, however, you just want to accompany a singer, you can get by with just learning chords, which is a great deal easier than learning entire melodies.

There are different genres of music, each having different styles and rules. Jazz piano, classical piano, and blues piano are several examples. Once you become familiar with the piano’s basic playing techniques you can learn a specialized genre.

Obviously you need access to a piano to show yourself how to play it easily. Going the approach of buying a piano is a bit expensive (putting it mildly), but you don’t actually have to purchase a piano. There’ll often be schools, churches or clubs that have pianos available for practice.

Many resources exist online and elsewhere to help you learn to play piano. Piano DVDs, CDs and piano lesson books, as well as other methods are all good resources. You may get stuck at a particular part sometimes, so have another resource for instruction in case you don’t understand a lesson or are unable to apply it. If you’re learning piano online and this happens to you, look for a different website or simply find an acquaintance who knows piano technique and see if they can help you out.

Practice is the most important ingredient of any cultivation of musical talent, and lots of it. You need to have a regular practice regimen – no one can learn just by practicing only sporadically. The mind and hands have to be taught to do things they’re really not naturally accustomed to, such as associating musical notes with their keys on the piano, knowing the location of middle C, and where the musical alphabet lies in relation to the black piano keys. At least half an hour or so per day is usually enough practice time, and per week four or five days will be enough time to help you learn to play the piano.

Innate talent isn’t needed to learn to play piano, nor do you have to be extremely young. At its most fundamental, piano playing requires only simple abilities that everyone has the power to do. Most of piano playing, as well as other artistic hobbies, is a learned skill that takes more practice than inherent skill or talent to do.