Teach Yourself Piano: Answers To Your Questions
Article by Tony Dunne
Before you try to teach yourself piano, there are a number of essential questions you need to ask. The first is about the kind of piano best suited to your ambitions and, of course, your pocket. And, for those who intend to do this without lessons of any kind, (apart, perhaps, from those you can find in book tutors), you need to ask yourself how you’re going to learn about written music.
But first, let’s take a look at what you’ll be playing on. How exactly do you decide which piano is best for your needs? To some extent this depends on the kind of music you want to play. If your passion is classical music, an acoustic piano might be the kind of instrument you want, as opposed to a digital piano or electronic keyboard, both of which tend to be better suited to more modern genres such as pop and rock.
It’s still possible to find old acoustic pianos in second hand stores, orlook at the advertismenets in your local paper. If you can afford to buy a new instrument, your local music store is the first place to look. These days new acoustic pianos can be purchased for as little as 00 to 00. If you would prefer a digital piano, new advances in technology keep driving prices of the most basic models down even further, so you can pay as little as a few hundred dollars for a model at the bottom of the range.
If you haven’t played a musical instrument before and don’t know where to start, you could try a package of online lessons. Make sure you do your research before making a choice, as quality and suitability can vary greatly. But, the good news is that online piano lessons are improving all the time and work out much less expensive than traditional piano lessons.
Before you do anything else, however, you need to be able to identify the keys on your piano. Perhaps a friend or relative might be able to help. Ask them to teach you thefundamentals of music, such as piano notes, staves, rhythm, pitch and so on. And the very first question you should ask is, ‘Where is middle C?’. Believe it or not, everything connected to playing piano follows on from this one simple question.
When you talk to your local music store representatives about pianos, ask them about book tutors for beginners too. Again, the best ones will center on the kind of music you want to play, but you really need to look at those that teach you how to read music. Included in these book tutors will be lots of questions and answers, and exercises. Whilst these may be a little off-putting, they are essential if you are to develop the basic knowledge you need to be able to play fluently.
It’s especially important to think these things through in advance and make some decisions BEFORE spending any money. It can be quite difficult to change things later if you discover you’ve made the wrong choices. So be sure about what you want to play onwhich kind of instrument and what methods of learning you think are most suited to your particular musical interests.
Central to all of this is not being too ambitious at the beginning. Start with simple tasks, however easy or mundane they might seem, so that you can develop a skill base gradually and build a momentum that takes you naturally onto more complicated exercises and music pieces.
Finally, don’t rule out traditional lessons entirely. It may cost a little bit, but you could use a local piano teacher to learn the basics so you have the foundation you need to go on and learn on your own later. This will guard against your crashing around all over the place at the beginning and learning lots of bad habits which cause you a lot of pain in correcting later.
Playing piano to a competent level can be achieved with a little self-discipline and the application of commopn sense. So good luck and I hope this article has been of some help.
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