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From practice techniques to compositional insights…

Complete Guide to Teaching Yourself Piano

Feb 02, 2024

 You can teach yourself piano and it may be the best way to start.

What you need is a plan and self discipline.

The Plan - AFK (Away From the Keyboard)

The plan involves some general principles, things that you can do away from the keyboard, and then things to do at the keyboard.

The first thing to do away from the keyboard is to listen to piano music, solo piano music, piano and orchestra, chamber music.

This develops your musical mind and ear. You're learning the language of music. It all begins with the ear and then it flows naturally from there. 

You want to actively listen to the music and you also want to physically engage with the music. That may mean tapping your foot, clapping to the beat, dancing, marching around the room—actively and physically being involved with the music. Again, this will help you internalize the music, which will influence how you perform the music.

The next issue is body awareness. Are you tense? Do you hold tension somewhere in your body? In your neck? In your shoulders? In your arms? In your hands? Do you even know how to relax?

Being very physically relaxed, free to move around, is important in everyday life, but especially at the piano.

And then lastly, remember that music is drama. Good music involves the general principles of drama. Quiet and loud. Different contrasts. Thinking about these things as you actively listen will ultimately result in better performances.

The Plan - ATK (At the Keyboard)

Next, let's take a look at things to do at the keyboard. Too many people learning piano on their own only focus on repertoire. There's a piece that they want to learn how to play, and so that's all that they do. They play that piece over and over and over, and never learn how to do anything else.

So with regard to repertoire, you want to have two general categories, short term pieces, and then longer term pieces. Short term pieces are anything that you can accomplish in a week or two, and then longer term pieces you'll accomplish in a month or three, and then gradations within there.

Next, you want to practice your sight reading. Not just doing sight reading, but you want to learn the skills and strategies that will improve your sight reading.

Next, you want to focus on technique. Technique is the HOW you play, not necessarily the what you play. Your pieces are what you're playing, but how you play them is technique.

Then lastly, you want to learn theory. This helps you recognize the patterns, vocabulary, and grammar of music.

How to study.

First, you want to schedule your practice time. You don't just want to fit it in where you think you'll enjoy it, but you want to schedule it. And it doesn't have to be for four hours a day. It can be a short amount of time, but many advocate doing it regularly at the same time every day. 30 minutes a day is better than three hours on one day.

And in your practice, just focus on a few of those things that we talked about. You don't have to do all those things every day. Not every day is leg day.

Lastly, be kind to yourself if you don't achieve your goal or keep your schedule. It is a marathon and not a sprint.

Resources.

First, is for you adult beginners who have no experience or it's been way too long since you touched the piano that you really think you need to kind of start from scratch.

First, I'd like you to consider my 5 Day Zero to Hero Piano Challenge where you go from knowing nothing about the piano to starting on the right foot for your studies.

Alright, next, let's talk about a method book. A method book is great because it gives you some of structure, and lead you on your path of musical discovery. The method book that I recommend is the Adult Piano Adventures All-in-One Course, Book One.

These are great books because they are laid out very logically and they encourage musical discovery and creativity, composition and improvisation. They also come with free video lessons. With each lesson in the book, you can click on a link to watch a video of the techniques being demonstrated by Randall Faber himself.

You can check those out right now on their website. You can also watch the videos through the free app. The app is great because it provides play-alongs. They're MIDI based play alongs, so you can slow them down, speed them up; you can just listen to the song, and then you can control the volume of the accompaniment, and there's also a metronome built into it.

Play-alongs are much better than simply a metronome because when you're playing along with a metronome you can stop and fix something, and then pick right back up, still playing in time, but you've effectively destroyed the musical line. So, a play-along will prevent you from doing that, and help you develop more of a flow in your music.You can't go back and fix it, because it'll result in a train wreck. I highly recommend that app.

So for sight reading, I recommend The Developing Artist Sightreading Preparatory Book.

And then technique, use the Scale and Chord Book 1 - Elementary. One thing that I should mention about these scale and chord books is that they aren't just scales. Certainly they present the scales and chords, common cadences that you should know, but then they also give these little challenges. It's a little musical pattern that you learn and then you transpose that into various other keys. It's just a lot of, it's a lot of opportunity, which is really what you need when you're practicing.

For repertoire, you have quite a variety of options. There are partner books that have Christmas music and popular tunes and classical themes that would be great for short term repertoire. For longer term repertoire and pieces from the literature (rather than being original arrangements written by the authors of the series) you might consider the Piano Literature - Preparatory - (Book/Online Audio) book.

And what's great about these piano lit books is that they include audio. You can hear the performances. performed very well and imitate them. By all means, imitate them. Do what they do. That's what a piano should sound like. And that's what you should emulate.

I have several other recommendations for repertoire, which I'll address later.

But next, for you adult beginners who more recently have been playing, maybe you took lessons a short while ago and you don't quite need the same refresher. You can start with the level 2 of the the series: Adult Piano Adventures All-in-One Piano Course Book 2. It kind of starts assuming you know note names and you know what quarters and eighth notes are and it progresses from there.

So then regarding sight reading it would be the Developing Artist Series Sight Reading Book 1.

And then regarding technique, the Scale and Chord Book 2 - Intermediate would be great.

So then regarding repertoire, the Literature Book 1 from the same series.

Other Recommendations.

The first book of the Essential Keyboard Repertoire series will be very useful for quite a while. It's laid out chronologically, and then within each composer's offerings, it's in order of progressive difficulty. But make sure you get the version with CD so you can listen to the pieces.

Another consideration for repertoire would be the Essential Piano Repertoire series edited by Keith Snell. That is several volumes of pieces progressively laid out in order of difficulty.

More recently they've begun offering a series called Progressive Piano Repertoire that is just that, but it also includes original pieces by the editors and it's high quality material.

So an alternative for sight reading and technique would be the Dozen a Day series. I've linked to the anthology because it has the first four books, which are the mini book, the preparatory book, Levels 1 and 2 all under one roof, so to speak, and it also includes the online audio.

 

Alright, so there you go. So that should give you a good action plan and plenty of resources to get started on the right track.

That'll be it for the video, but as I think of it, maybe I'll add some more, uh, things to the description. Some additional resources for you to consider. And if you have any questions or comments, leave it down below, and I'll see you next time.

 

***Additional Resources*** 

—Method Books—

 

—Sightreading/Technique—

—Beginner Jazz Piano (Early to Late Intermediate)—

—Advanced Jazz Piano (Early to Late Intermediate)—

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