subject: Piano for All: How I Learned to Play the Piano [print this page] If you're like me, then you want to avoid struggling for years to learn how to play the piano. Believe me, I know how tough it is. It took me many years of wasting time and dabbling with the piano and keyboards to finally learn how to play well. If I'd had a more modern piano training course, I'm certain I would have learned much faster. Why? Well, many piano courses failed me in a few key ways:
An On-Demand Piano Teacher
First, most piano training isn't very useful without a live instructor. It's pretty tough to learn from just a book, and finding a piano teacher will get expensive, not to mention inconvenient. You have to drive across town to schedule your hour-long appointment, which could cost $60 per session or more. I found the best option was to choose a piano course which includes tons of video training; this way, you can get all of the tips that a live instructor would give you, without having to pay out the nose for it, or schedule your life around it.
In my experience, the material used to teach piano is often pretty boring. Many piano courses typically opt for traditional folk songs or nursery rhymes to teach the basics. While simple to learn and play, they certainly don't inspire or excite the learner. Modern piano courses (I'll mention one in particular below) have corrected this problem by teaching you popular songs that you're probably already familiar with. But it doesn't end there:
Flexible and Easy to Use
Many courses suffer from a common, simple problem: the student quickly forgets the last lesson! Face it: we all have busy lives. There's so much to learn in order to achieve any kind of proficiency with the piano (scales, music theory, technique) that beginners can end up forgetting large portions of what they just paid hundreds of dollars to learn. It's happened plenty for me, and you can imagine how frustrating it is!
A good solution to this, as mentioned above, are video-based piano lessons, which offer a degree of flexibility not found elsewhere. Keep in mind: learning the piano should be fun, but it also should be practical. Finding a competent, inexpensive piano teacher is like finding a needle in a haystack. Online piano courses offer flexibility and convenience for those looking to learn to play the piano.
