Learn how to Play the Piano - 10 Tips to Get Started
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Learning to play the piano is one of the best decisions you can make, not only for the pleasure of interpreting your favorite pieces or songs, but also for the benefits that this brings, such as improving your levels of concentration, fine motor skills, discipline and memory.
There are two ways to learn how to play the piano, one is from theory and musical scores like in traditional music academies and schools, the other is from imitation and repetition like many jazz, salsa and pop piano players, but in this blog I will give you 10 tips on how to start playing the piano combining both forms and methods.
Get a Piano and start exploring.
Having your own instrument is essential and knowing which one to buy can be a first challenge, the number of options you have to choose can be overwhelming, there are acoustic pianos that take up a lot of space in addition to having a high price, there are also electric pianos or keyboards with 7-octaves with heavy keys like acoustic pianos, synthesizers are keyboards that may or may not have heavy keys, they can be 5 or 7 octaves, but the amount of sound possibilities you have with these kind of keyboards is gigantic and also quite entertaining, finally there are the keyboards at a much cheaper price and the instrument that many new students pick to start their process with the piano.
What I recommend is to buy the piano that best suits your economic possibilities and later you will be able to see if it is worth considering buying something of more value, it all depends on how your progress is and what kind of music you like to play the most. Is better for a classical or academic pianist to play on an acoustic piano, but for someone more into the world of pop or experimental music a synthesizer is the best option.
Once you have your instrument, explore it, review the manual, see all the possibilities you have in terms of sounds, how the metronome works, the possibilities of recording yourself and in general all the technical aspects. In case you already know how to read some sheet music then you can try playing it on your new instrument, but something I like to do with my new students, even if they already know how to read some music, is to play their favorite songs or famous melodies to familiarize ourselves with the instrument.
The important thing at these first steps is to begin to know the structure of the piano, and not get lost between the white and black keys, to understand how the instrument sounds when we press the keys and to remove that useless fear of this instrument. Once you are familiar with your piano, the best part begins.
2. Learn with your favorite songs.
Regardless of how old you are when you start your process with the piano, the best way to avoid discouraged and stay constant is to play your favorite pieces or songs. To start, you can look for tutorials on the internet where you can learn what you want, even without knowing how to read sheet music, or you can look for a teacher and tell him or her which songs you want to learn and be clear about whether or not you know how to read music, with that we come to an important issue: The Method.
As I told you before, there are methods that prefer to teach the piano through the score and there are other methods that prefer to teach through repetition, the first method teaches you from the beginning to read music, look less at your hands while you play and depending on the teacher, to understand a bit of music theory, on the other hand, the second method educates more your memory and your listening skills and the truth is that you can also learn music theory this way.
Now I will tell you how you can combine both methods. When students have approached me with the clear intention of learning how to read piano scores, what we do first is find the pieces or songs that they like to listen to the most, if they are of a very high level, easier versions can always be made, this way the learning process will be much more interesting and motivating. Remember when we were little and we were learning to read for the first time, it was always more interesting to read books with drawings and illustrations telling fantastic stories, the same applies to starting to play piano, there should not necessarily be drawings, but at least songs or pieces that we enjoy listening to.
For students who are not interested in learning to read sheet music but only into learning songs, what we usually do first is learn the piece or song by heart from repetition, imitation and listening. Once learned I share how it looks in the score and make a small explanation of how the sheet music works. Over time and almost without realizing it, interest in understanding written music will arise, giving more possibilities for individual practice.
It is worth clarifying that depending on the type of music being studied, there may be more attention to the score or harmony, which refers to the chords and not the notes. Having a teacher as a tutor can really make the process easier, but you can always find a lot of information on the internet that can explain everything you want to understand.
3. Learn One Song or Piece at a Time
At the beginning the emotion of playing the piano can lead to a cycle where you start a new song even before finishing the one you have already started, this can gradually lead to the frustration of feeling that you cannot play everything you set out to do, to avoid this, what I recommend is to make a list of your 10 favorite songs or pieces that you would like to learn first, organize them from simpler to more complex and from shorter to longer, in this way your process will be progressive, fast and with the satisfaction of seeing results.
The idea is always to enjoy the music and the piano, although there may always be times when the repetition of the same song or piece can be repetitive, the final result will always be satisfactory. Being consistent and considering a practice routine is essential for you to see good progress and that is what we will talk about now.
4. Organize your Practice Session
Practice sessions can vary a lot in terms of the number of times a week and amount of time per day, as a piano teacher I try to achieve consistency with my students of initial levels, I want them to practice every day minimum one hour, although there are those who start with only half an hour a day, and that's fine, as long as it's every day.
One way to organize your practice sessions is to be clear about your goals and objectives. Previously I talked about choosing 10 songs or pieces to have a progressive process, these same 10 songs can be our goals and we can organize our practice sessions based on them, for example limiting yourself to learning one song per week, after that what you can do is divide the song or piece in order to learn a part in each daily practice session.
If you want to know more about this topic you can also read “How to practice piano? Make the most of your Time”
5. Understand the Basic Technical and Practical Elements
There are elements to the piano and music in general that must be taken into account regardless of whether you are new to the piano or have been practicing for years. The first of these and perhaps the most important is good posture of the body, arms, hands and fingers. If you are learning with a teacher you do not have to worry, we teachers are usually very insistent on maintaining good posture regardless of the level of the student, we do this for two reasons:
Technique: A good posture can facilitate the interpretation of pieces with fast and complex passages, as well as giving you the resistance to be able to practice and interpret pieces of long duration and a lot of physical demand.
Health: Like any repetitive task, doing it incorrectly can lead to injuries and chronic pain, a good position when playing the piano avoids having this type of problem and if at any time you feel pain, do not hesitate to consult it with your teacher to be able to identify where something may be happening, if the pain persists it is best to go to a health professional.
Having a mirror in the place where you practice is a good way to be aware of your posture when playing the piano, another way is to record yourself full body or focusing on your hands to later identify if your posture is correct. Also look at the position of the pianists you see in concerts or videos and try to imitate their position when playing, but keep in mind that the posture of a pianist with 180 cm height is not the same as a pianist with 160 cm, paying attention to these details can contribute a lot to improving and understanding your posture to play the piano.
Another important element is to understand that all music is composed of scales, arpeggios and chords. Practicing this until you have it by heart will make it easier to learn everything you want on the piano. These scales, arpeggios and chords have structures and patterns that, although they may seem confusing at first, are really beneficial for our progress, since little by little they get our hands and brain used to generating a relationship between the fingers and the keys, we know this as fingering.
Fingering is similar for all scales, arpeggios and chords, as time goes by your hands will know the most effective way to move around the piano, whether playing songs, pieces or even improvising. The fingers have their corresponding numbers, with the Thumb being number 1 and increasing to number 5 for the Little Finger, this applies equally to both hands. If you are starting to learn how to read sheet music and learn songs from it, it is good to always be aware of the fingering and if it is necessary to write the numbers of the fingers on the musical notes, do not hesitate to do so.
6. Teacher, Tutor or Self-taught
With so much material that can be found on the internet today you can be self-taught and carry out your process without the help of a teacher, so you must be very careful not to get too distracted and lose yourself in that sea of information, choose a video, a course or a book and learn everything you can with it, sometimes can happen that you spend more time searching for the perfect video than actually playing the piano and that will make your process very interrupted and slow.
At some point in our piano process we all need a piano teacher, the usual thing is that classes are once a week, but it doesn’t always have to be that way, there are students who prefer to have a class every two weeks and others who prefer to have them up to 4 times a week, it all depends on the speed you want to progress with and the availability of time you have to study. Traditional music schools, in addition to receiving only young students, have programs designed transversally for all students, which gives the apprentice less freedom to play the music they like the most since they have pre designed methods for teaching piano , this is not a bad thing, many great pianists have passed through this type of school, but many others have come far thanks to taking classes with a private tutor.
Having private classes gives you much more flexibility and allows you to go at your own pace without the pressure of grades or exams, the difficult part can be actually finding the teacher who best suits you, who understands you and has the dedication and attention that you deserve, but once you find it, believe me, the progress will be very pleasant and fast Without you realizing it, a lot of time will have passed and your level will have improved
7. Time, Rhythm and Pulse
Starting a new project such as learning how to play the piano brings with it a lot of energy and the desire to play everything very quickly, but the truth is that if you want to see progress you must understand that the best way to start is to do it calmly and slowly. When you learn a song for the first time, it is best to play it little by little and slowly until you can master it, and then you can gradually increase the speed and always with what should be your best friend: The Metronome.
It is clear that music exists in time, it has a beginning and an end, how we organize it in a period of time is what we can call Rhythm. This element is fundamental, if it is not mastered and understood from the beginning, the music you play will not sound meaningful. The Pulse is a constant in music and is generally what you do when you clap your hands to accompany a song, in music you can play with the pulse, against the pulse and even subdivide it or leave it silent.
I understand that this may sound a bit complex to understand, that is why I usually give the explanation of these terms to my students after they have already learned and played several pieces or songs, because they always serve as an example to show what the pulse and rhythm are. Although music has a lot of mathematics and rules, the best way to learn it is as a language, through listening and repetition.
8. Share and Record your progress.
One way to stay enthusiastic and motivated is to show to your friends and family what you are learning, it can be when they visit your home or on your social networks, you can even prepare small concerts to share on a special date as a gift. Many students start learning piano because they want to be part of the neighborhood or school band. This is usually quite motivating, so you can also find spaces to play with other people, whether they are singers or play other instruments.
There are two ways to record your progress, one is with video and the other is only with audio, with video you have the advantage of seeing your posture and how you look when playing, but both ways allow you to be self-critical, comparing your recording with versions of other pianists it can be a very useful tool, but be careful not to get discouraged, if you notice that seeing other pianists discourages you, don't do it anymore, comparing yourself is only good if you do it to know where you have to go and not to see how much you need to get to that point, each of us has their own process and learning times, in the end what is important is that you enjoy what you do no matter how long it takes.
9. Listen to Music and go to Concerts.
Sometimes starting is not the most difficult thing, the difficult thing is to continue and be constant, this is achieved if you keep your motivation high. Do not forget the reasons why you started your process with the piano, what was that song with that piano melody that you cannot stop listening to, that concert that inspired you, that friend who showed you and taught you your first melody or the movie that encouraged you to learn to play piano, all these and many more are reasons you have to keep present.
Listen to a lot of music, find new songs and listen to them over and over again until you know them by heart, go to concerts with live music from your favorite artists or bands, although not necessarily related to the piano, are ways to stay motivated, the piano is music and with it you can play practically any genre and type of music. Even so, I invite you to go from time to time to see concerts where the center is the piano, it can be a jazz concert, classical music, pop or even Latin music. Listening and seeing new things will make your learning process more motivating.
10. Enjoy and be constant
The last advice to start playing piano from this blog is simply to enjoy the process, don't worry if you don't learn as fast as you expected, if one day you don't want to practice piano because you haven't stopped for a month, that's fine, don't feel guilty , remember that music is an art, not a competition. Every day that you dedicate to piano practice you will feel how it gets easier and when you realize it you will have a great repertoire of pieces and songs to perform, so don't be discouraged and start playing today!
I hope that with this blog you have been able to get a better idea of how to start learning to play the piano. If you are interested in taking online piano lessons with me, do not hesitate to contact me, I will gladly answer your questions. Do not forget to subscribe to the newsletter or share with your contacts if you think this information may be useful to them.
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