There are a lot of people looking for piano lessons for beginners who believe that they are really too old to learn piano. This cannot be further from the truth. The fact is that the older you are the more thoroughly you will learn and the less likely you will be to give it up.
I have written extensively on this subject before and will not go into it here (Am I Too Old To Learn The Piano) but if you are looking for a complete home study course that will serve as piano lessons for beginners then there are at least two that I can highly recommend. I have done a couple of extensive reviews on these piano learning products including a video sneak peek into the products. I have used both of these courses personally and apart form having hours of fun I improved my playing and learned to play in multiple styles.
Here is a quick review of the top two home study courses offering piano lessons for beginners.
Piano Lessons For Beginners – Best Piano Courses
This is my list of the top piano courses of the many I have checked out and tested personally.
This product consists of 7 books all with their associated audio and video files. They will teach you right from the very beginning how to play the piano or the keyboards and will go on to teaching you Gospel for beginners, Jazz for beginners and there are also some general technique books. You will get access to a load of software for MAC or for PC which includes several music learning games and a very useful metronome application. This course seems to be the current market leader for piano lessons for beginners. It is an extremely complete course which contains over a years worth of piano lessons. Great for complete beginners and intermediate level players too.
This really complete package comes with 10 books which all have audio and video embedded. You get taught how to read music and how to play by ear at the same time. Right from the outset you will be playing authentic sounding music. The course contains Innovative teaching methods which will hold the interest of most students and will have you playing great sounding music very quickly. The overall presentation of this product is not quite as smooth and professional looking as some of its competitors but the content is without a doubt far superior.
Both of the above products come with a 60 day no questions asked guarantee in case you are not completely satisfied with your purchase. They are both suitable for adults or young people though not really geared for small children to use. They are both a great way of getting piano lessons for beginners in your own home.
Am I Too Old To Learn The Piano?
Many people repeatedly inquire how old do you have to be before is becomes tricky to become skilled at the piano. This appears to be a regular question for persons over the age of fifteen. There seems to be a widespread misconception that once you get old then it is too late to learn the piano or keyboards.
Well the good
news is that this is false at all and in a number of cases it is in point of fact the contrary of the truth in that the older you are the more efficiently you will allow yourself to be taught.
When very young children are taught how to play the piano the advancement are generally really long-winded and frustrating for them. Regular practice is necessary and it can be really complicated for them remain interested. The children who take up piano at an early age do not go forward enormously rapidly at first but over time they get better at leaning and soon start to perform and practice without thinking about it and the entire process becomes normal to them.
It is much easier for a teenager to learn piano than a small child. It is a good time to learn the piano whilst in your teens if you can manage to stay to a schedule of practice and attend all of the lessons as it can be simple to become distracted by schoolwork or other projects. See the Piano Lessons For Beginners page for more info.
In my opinion, the best time to learn to play the piano or the keyboards is as an adult. You will be able to practice and get good at the instrument a lot better as soon as you have your schooling finished and you have more of a daily schedule established in your life. You will be more motivated as you have chosen to learn the instrument yourself and you will be able to arrange your own practice sessions.. Learning like this is more than likely one of the most significant components to success. As an adult you will be able to see the reasoning behind your lesson plans and your practice sessions which will make you less prone to give up.
Check out this in depth video review of the top selling home study course for piano Rocket Piano
It is becoming ever more popular as of late for elder people to take up the piano. Older people in their 70′s and 80′s are every day taking up the piano and enjoying it immensely. The Delight of learning is what these people are looking for and not so much the objective of becoming competent, though many of them do achieve this even though they have had no prior musical know-how
So to answer the original question, am I too old to learn the piano? then the response has to be a distinct “NO”. You have just as much chance of progressing to a high level of playing if you start to learn the piano as an adult as if you begin as a small child.
Piano For All Review
Reviewer: Andy Penbram
Rating:
Website Reviewed: Piano for All
This is one of my favorite home study piano programs. It is not as slick looking as some of it’s competitors (Rocket Piano) but it has its own special character and on the whole I really like the way that the whole course is planned to guide the student through the learning process.
What You Get
The course consists of ten hefty work books in a printable pdf format, 200 video lessons and 500 audio lessons. No fancy software here but the lessons are top quality and extremely well planned out.
The Unique Learning Process
This course is a little different from the others in that it teaches you how to play by ear, how to use chord charts and how to read music all at the same time right from the absolute basic level.
Here is a Video Review showing you what you get when you purchase
The Books The first book is called Party Time – Rhythm Style Piano. This starts you off assuming you have no musical knowledge at all and have never touched a piano before. It teaches you how to find the notes on the keyboards, and by
means of simple diagrams it shows you how to place your fingers and has you playing simple melodies straight away. It then shows you how to recognize the notes you have learned on the musical staff. Then as you advance you get shown some chords. The whole basis of this book is to play like a pianist with real rhythms. You are taught how to play basic chords but also how to use them with authentic rhythms using both hands. The results sound reall
y great. The best thing about it is that as you progress you also get taught how to read music… little by little until before you realize it you discover that you are able to play by ear and read music or chord symbols.
Once you have learned the basic principle of these books, t
he rhythm method for want of a better name you can then progress onto the more advanced books.
There is the Blues book where you learn beginners blues patterns and riffs.
The next book is
called Chord Magic. This teaches you how to play the basic chords in different inversions and how to combine them in chord sequences with rhythm that is really superb and has you sounding like a seasoned pianist.
This is then followed by the Advanced Chords book.
By the time you get to the next book, Ballad Style you are really playing like a professional. In this book you learn how to take a melody and improvise around it giving a ballad style to your playing.
The final book is Jazz Piano Made Easy. This is just that, it de-mystifies jazz playing and with some quite simple chord progressions and runs you will be playing authentic sounding Jazz pieces in no time at all.
Each book contains audio and video clips which you can simply click on and they open right there.
The Negatives
The most annoying thing about this course is that the teaching material is all traditional songs and melodies. This is due to the copyright laws prohibiting them from using protected material which leaves only the traditional and anonymous compositions.
The Positives
The whole way of learning using basic chords combined with rhythms has you playing authentic sounding piano right from the start. You can easily start this course if you are at an intermediate level too as it progresses up to quite an advanced level at the end.
The absolute best thing about this course is that it has you playing great sounding piano from the start and enables you to advance extremely quickly.
To Help You Decide To help you make up your mind you can download a sample page so you can see how the course is laid out and how it works. There is also a 60 day money back guarantee in case you are not entirely convinced. For more information see the Teach Yourself Piano Page.
Conclusion
This course I give a definite five star rating. It is my personal favorite and although the look of the books is not as slick as some of the other courses the content, material and teaching method is superb.
Every beginner can use advice on how to Teach Yourself Piano. There are many different methods of teaching yourself how to play the piano. Some people use an instructor and others teach themselves. No matter how you learn to play the piano, some things will be the same. The basics of playing the piano are never going to change. With that in mind here are some tips and great advice to help you as you learn to play the piano.
Start with the Basics
No matter how you decide to learn, you will always start with the basics. You will learn about the piano, the keys and where the notes are on the piano. You will also learn some basic music theory, including how to read music. These basics are where everyone starts. It can sometimes be easy to think that you don’t need to go over the basics, but even if you already know how to read music and you already know about the piano keyboard, going over the basics is always a nice refresher and should be where you start.
Choose Easy and Short Pieces to Start Your first pieces should be introductory pieces that test you ability to read music and play that music on the piano. These pieces should be short and easy enough for you to memorize. You should aim to perfect them, which should not take too long.
Also do one or two pieces that you play by ear. This means that you hear them and then try to play them on the piano. You can learn a lot by just trying to duplicate what you hear on the piano. This is great ear training that will come in handy as you advance through your piano lessons.
Understand It Will Get Harder Too often the beginner student feels like things get too hard and they quit. However, advancing to harder pieces is the only way that you will learn and improve. You have to accept that there will come a time when you will really struggle with a piece and you will have to practice over and over to perfect it. This is just you becoming a better piano player and every player goes through this. If you never play pieces that challenge you then you will never get better.
Make It Your Own Have you ever heard the same song sang by two different singers? Did it sound exactly the same? Probably not. The reason is that each singer made the song their own. That is what you need to do with the music you play. One of the secrets to becoming a good piano player is learning to make music your own. Start playing from the heart. Be adventurous and willing to try new things. It will only help you grow as a piano player.
When you first begin to seek how to learn the piano you will probably feel it is very structured. You will have set lessons and you will be learning the basic things that you need to know to become a good piano player. Do not let yourself give up in these early stages. They really do progress quickly and soon you will be moving on to playing harder pieces that sound beautiful. The key is to just follow the advice above and to stick with it.
There is a list of home study courses to help you teach yourself piano on the piano for beginners page
Basic Piano Chords
Learning How to Create Basic Piano Chords
The basic piano chords are going to be very important to you in learning to play the piano. When you learn to understand chords you will be better able to read music and understand how to play the piano much easier.
Construction of Chords
Chords are made from musical intervals. A chord is composed of three parts. They are the root note, which gives you the name of the chord, a Major third or minor third and a Perfect fifth, Augmented fifth or a diminished fifth.
A Major chord has a root, Major third and Perfect fifth. A minor chord has a root, minor third and Perfect fifth. An Augmented chord has a root, Major third and Augmented fifth. A diminished chord has a root, minor third and diminished fifth.
Making a Chord
Now that you know the basic construction of each type of chord, you can being to create a chord. Major chords are the easiest to create. Simply choose any note as the root note. Now you choose the Major third, which is simply three notes from the root note. Now finish the chord with a Perfect fifth note which is five notes from the root note. An example would be a D chord. D is the root, F is the Major third and A is the Perfect fifth.
As you move into minor chords, diminished and augmented chords the notes you will use will include not only the white keys, but the black keys on your keyboard. It is simplest to start learning chords with the Major chords. For more information check out the Piano Basics page.
Playing Around with a Chord
Most of the time you will be playing a chord with all three notes together. Using our example, a D chord, you would play D, F and A together to form the chord. However, when you start looking at how chords are used in music you will see that they are not always played together. Sometimes you may just use two of the notes or you may play the notes separately.
You can play around with a chord to see all the different ways that you can use the notes within the chord together and separately to create a nice sound. Chords are usually used in the bass clef and played with the left hand, but they can also be use din the treble clef and played with the right hand. Try playing chords with both hands and experimenting to see what you can do with chords.
The Importance of Chords
Have you ever been listening to someone play the piano and they strike a note that doesn’t seem to sound right? Part of the importance of chords is helping you to see how the notes harmonize or go together. This is especially important for you if you are trying to learn to write your own music.
You can use chords in many ways to create many wonderful songs on the piano. Through understanding the basic piano chords you can begin to see how music is written and become a song writer yourself.
How to Play Rock Piano
Advice on How to Play Rock Piano
When you want to learn how to play rock piano, it helps to get some advice to get you started. Rock piano is simply a style of playing. There is no real secret to it except learning the basic rock style and being able to turn out rock style music from your piano. Learning to play piano in a rock style is something that you may wish to do once you have learned the basics of playing piano.
Energy is Key
The main key to playing rock piano is energy. Rock music is driven by the energy of the performers. The music flows quickly and it can be challenging if you don’t have the energy to keep up with the pace of the music. You must go into learning rock piano with energy, ready to rock and roll. See the Piano Lessons For Beginners page for more info.
Rock Piano Skills When playing rock piano there are some certain skills that are specific to this style of music. Knowing these specific skills will help you to play rock style easier. There are two main skills: glissandos and fast chords.
Glissandos: This is where you slide your fingers across the keyboard. While it looks simple, it is actually something that can be a bit tricky until you have practiced at it quite a bit.
Fast chords All piano music includes chords, but in rock music the chords move fast. You have to really know your chords so you can play them fast without mistakes. You may need to spend some time practicing moving through chords over and over in order to get up to speed for rock music.
Basic Elements Rock music is all about passion and speed. Rock music flows fast and it is played loud. Even the slower rock songs move at a rapid pace compared to classical pieces. Most people learn to play piano using classical pieces so the transformation to playing rock music can be rather challenging at first for some piano players.
Your basic piano skills will really dictate how you can proceed with learning rock piano. If you are a seasoned piano player, who knows all the chords and who can play quick tempos then you may be able to start out with a faster piece than someone who is a relative beginner piano player.
Choosing the Right Piece For your first rock piece you should probably choose something slow. You want to really be able to work on your styling and grasp the basic flow of rock music before you move into hard, fast pieces.
Learning how to play rock piano is all about practice. You have to get your basic skills perfected before you can move onto real classic rock pieces that move at super fast tempos. You need to really play with all your energy and throw yourself into the music for a rock piece to really come off sounding good.
Even though the guitar is the instrument most people associate with rock music, the piano can also be a great way to rock out.
Here is a video I made showing how to play the piano within 10 minutes of sitting at the keyboard.
Learning how to play the piano is something that many people aspire to do. It really is not too complex of an instrument to learn. Almost anyone can learn to play simple songs. Regardless of whether you want to just be able to play simple tunes or complex pieces, when you learn to play the piano you can really benefit from tips and advice to help make the process easier.
Tip#1: Give yourself time.
Learning to play piano requires time. Nobody learns to play overnight. Through practice and time spent going over lessons and what you have learned. You should never be too hard on yourself throughout the learning process.
Tip#2: Play everyday.
You may not feel like playing everyday, but if you take time off you will surely notice it. Your fingers have to get used to playing so much and if you take time off you will feel it in your fingers. Also it is easy to lose skill if you do not practice often. You will find after a few days off that you have to practice even harder to get back up to speed.
Tip#3: Try learning pieces one hand at a time.
You should start learning a piece with your right hand first. When you can play through the piece well with the right hand then you can add in the left hand. This makes it much easier to learn and play the whole piece.
Tip#4: Train your ear. A good piano player will have a good ear. This means that you can hear whether notes are correct. To train your ear you can try playing songs that you have heard. This will help you to figure out the right notes and be able to hear when you are playing the right notes. It is a great skill to have when you want to be a good piano player.
Tip #5: Do not forget playing should be fun. Sometimes it can be too easy to turn playing the piano into work. For the best experience you should always play for fun. Make playing the piano enjoyable always. Do not let yourself think of it as work or something you have to do. Play when you feel like playing. When you do not feel like playing, then just sit down and play whatever you feel like playing. Do not be too rough on yourself. Some days you won’t want to play at all. You may sit down for a few minutes, play some scales and be done. That is fine. Just try your best to make it fun always. Play pieces that you like to help keep it exciting.
These tips are just some helpful advice that will help you to learn how to play the piano. When you take this advice you will be able to make learning the piano much easier. You will find that you struggle less and that you really enjoy the process of learning to play this amazing instrument.
For more Piano Basics see the review of top home study courses at the Piano For Beginners Page
Ruth Searl Rocket Piano Review
Ruth Searl’s Rocket Piano Review
This is a short overview of Ruth Searl’s Rocket Piano course. The course is one of the best selling downloadable courses available at the moment and in my opinion is one of the most complete courses I have seen.
I did a sort video review of this product showing you what to expect when once you have downloaded the files. Here is the Video:
Rocket Piano – What’s In The Box?
As you can see from the video the course is extremely complete. It is great for absolute beginners but it can also be used for slightly more advanced intermediate level players too. If you have been fumbling about on the keys for some time, maybe looking for videos on how to play certain songs on YouTube or trying to play along with your favorite songs then this is the product for you.
In the main Rocket Piano Review I wrote I gave this product a five star rating mainly because of it’s completeness. It really does cater for all your piano learning needs. It’s well laid out and extremely easy to follow. the material is of good quality and well thought out so that the student will advance with ease from one level to the next.
There is a whole bundle of software included in the package. Some of this is more useful than others. the most useful in my opinion is the metronome. This can be used to play along with the exercises. Playing in time can be quite difficult and using the metronome forces you to do this. The other interesting piece of software for me is the ear training interval recognition program called Perfect your pitch pro.
The major down side to this product is that the audio and video examples are not accessible from the workbooks. Ideally you should be working through the material when you come across an audio example then you should be able to click on the example to hear it. This is not the case here and in order to here the audio and watch the video files you have to fire up your computer’s browser or finder and locate the examples from off your hard drive. I should say however, once I had done this three or four times it became easy and I didn’t think of it as much of a stumbling block.
The course is aimed at adults but could also be used to teach older children too. I do not think it would be suitable for children under the age of 10 however. For more information see the Teach Yourself Piano Page.
When I bought the course I spent quite a time working through all of the books and found that I couldn’t stop. The material is compelling and you don’t notice how quickly you are advancing as what you get taught in one lesson is seamlessly integrated into the following lessons.
On the whole the entire course is really worth having and once you get used to Ruth’s rather bizarre New Zealand accent then you will have a lot of fun learning the piano or the keyboards with this excellent course.
The course is sold through the payment gateway clickbank. This is a very reputable merchant that has been in business on the Internet for many years so a safe transaction is assured. Payments can be made via paypal or credit card and just for that extra piece of mind there is a full 60 day money back guarantee in case you are not completely satisfied.
If you want to start playing the piano, you may be surprised that there are many advertisements and tutorials out there for you to learn how to teach yourself piano. While learning the piano can be quite challenging and you will find that there are many things that you need to keep in mind when you are learning it, you will find that with enough time and dedication that it is completely possible to learn how to play piano independently. Take a look at some tips that can help you along if you decide to learn how to play the piano on your own.
1. Go online
When you are thinking about tackling the piano on your own, remember that there are many different resources that can help you along. Go online and find out what books and what programs come most highly recommended. Read up on the various different options that other people have used, and make the most out of various different testimonials that you can find. Take some time and find out what methods are going to work well for you, whether you want to try some learning software or whether you are interested in a book.
2. Learn to read music
When you are considering how to teach yourself piano, you’ll find that reading music is something that you need to learn how to do. Ideally, you will find that you can start doing this quite easily with a book on the subject. If you can learn to read music, you will find that you can spring forward a lot faster than you would if you were learning as you go. Learning to sight read a piece of music will give you the boost that you need when it comes to learning a new piece of music much more quickly.
3. Practice, practice, practice
Whether you are learning with a traditional tutor, or you are learning on your own as go, you will find that getting practice time is essential. There are many different ways that you can divide up your practice, but you will find that in the long run, you will want to do more practices regularly, instead of doing longer practices sporadically. The more regularly you practice, the faster that playing the piano will get into your muscle memory and the better you will get when it comes to playing in general. Remember that setting time aside to practice and just doing it will be the thing that moves you forward.
4. Play critically
One of the things that can really help you out when you are looking at learning to play the piano is the idea of considering what the composer meant when he wrote the piece. Remember that the music in front of you was written with a great deal of thought and attention to detail, so as you play and as you work out how to play it best, take some time to think about why he or she might have chosen to write it in a certain way. There are many different things that you can learn by really looking at the theory behind a certain piece of music, and the more time that you think about it, the more you will learn.
While it is still quite challenging, you will find that learning how to teach yourself piano is a lot less difficult than you think. Take the plunge and make the commitment, and you will find that there are many different reasons why you want to think about taking on this feat!
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