My Unusual Way of Learning the Piano
I have been learning the piano on my own since June 2015. That is right, I am self-taught. I started playing on a little 61-key digital keyboard that I borrowed from my uncle. It was a bad keyboard with no weighted keys and no pedals. The only cool part about this thing is that it had a lot of integrated sounds like dog barks, bells, strings, etc. Shout out to my parents for letting me make their eardrums bleed by the way.
Later, I got a full digital piano for Christmas. It was the real deal! It had a full set of 88 weighted keys, all three of the pedals, headphone jacks, etc. That is when the real experience began.
I was not interested in music theory in the beginning. In fact, I was only interested in playing. I did not want to play any of the classical stuff, I only wanted to be able to play some songs from series and movies. Examples: He’s a pirate from Pirates of the Caribbean, Sadness and Sorrow from Naruto, Rain of Castamere from Game of thrones.
I still remember to this day the way I learned my first song on the piano. I wrote the name of the song that I wanted to play on YouTube followed by a nice little “tutorial.” I stumbled upon the video of a guy who was playing the song that I wanted to play. He was playing it a bit slow with a view from the top for learning purposes. I was literally copying what the guy was doing. By using that technique, I managed to play my very first song on the piano. It was called Alone from Naruto. It is a very slow pace song which is ideal for beginners.
It is only later that I found out about a video format called “Synthesia tutorials”. It is basically a visualizer that shows you exactly what notes to play. It is kind of like the video game “Guitar Hero” for those of you who know.
Here is a quick glance at what it looks like:
After learning about that, whenever I wanted to learn a song, I would go to YouTube and type the name of the song that I wanted to play followed by a nice little “Synthesia.” I would be listening to the song at first. Afterwards, I would pause the video and try to learn parts of the song. Then, I would start by learning the right hand followed by the left hand. Finally, I would try to match the two together.
Later, I decided to dive into music theory because I wanted to be better, I wanted to understand how those people knew how to position the keys to make the songs.
I learned a few techniques by playing certain songs and I noticed some patterns. I learned how to read music sheets. Although, I do not really use them because I find that boring.
With a lot of practice, I have become quite decent at the piano or at the very least I would like to think. I have quite the repertoire of songs now. Whenever I hear a song, I am even able to play the melody. I am just missing the “adding the chords aspect to it.”
Now, I would like to finish this article with some quick tips for those of you who might want to start playing the piano or for those of you that are beginners.
5 — Play sad songs. They are generally extremely slow and easy to learn.
4 — Practice every day. It is better to play 5 min per day than 30 min every other day. Learn a bit of stuff every day. Whether it is by listening to a piano song that you might play in the future, watching some piano tutorials on YouTube, etc.
3 — Do not play for too long. When you learn songs, you might try for hours and hours to get a succession of notes correctly. Just put the piano aside and try the next day. Sometimes I would not be able to play a part at all and, for some reason, I would get it right the next day.
2 — Do not give up! I know it can be frustrating at first. I ensure you guys that it is all worth it in the end.
1 — Try to match the notes from both hands together. I know it can be hard to play with both hands. Just keep in mind that both hands are very dependent of each other and try to figure out exactly when they play notes at the same time.
