Piano Video Lesson: How to Learn the Piano

I'm Robert Estrin, you're watching LivingPianos.com and today the question is how to learn the piano. You know, for me, it's hard to imagine any other way because from the youngest age I started private lessons with my father Morton Estrin, who was not only an incredible concert pianist but one of the most amazing teachers you could ever imagine. So I had very, very good fortune. But you know, private lessons are a great way to learn to play the piano if you can find the right teacher. I can't tell you how many horror stories that I hear from people, some of them really just people who are mean and will be, you know, even hit the students with rulers and just the stories I've heard you can't believe. More than that, many times people study for years and years and years and discover they really haven't learned how to play anything with solidity and confidence because teaching any subject is an art that very few people possess, sadly.

But anyway, it's interesting to note that I've known many people who just picked up piano on their own just by playing, listening and they managed to figure out how to play things to their own satisfaction.

So a formal instruction isn't really, it's not one size fits all. For some people they can just pick it up on their own.

Of course, there are other ways of learning the piano.

Online resources of course are tremendous these days. I've seen people just from watching YouTube videos with the Synesthesia, the software that has the notes going down almost like Guitar Hero and some people have amazingly accomplished and to me that seems much harder than reading the notation but some people just want to learn which keys to push down and you know what? I've seen some people amazingly accomplished just with that. But there are many other online resources of course here on LivingPianos .com we have thousands of articles and videos of just about every subject you can imagine and there are others out there if you hunt them down and there are online piano courses and such. What other possible avenues are there for learning the piano? Well, there are piano classes. Piano classes are a great way to just get introduced to the piano. You have the social element which can make it fun and enriching.

However, I have taught class piano and the problem with class piano for really going to any sophisticated level on the instrument is that everybody has drastically different abilities at the piano. It's not like some people are better and some people are worse. It's the types of abilities. There are so many different skill sets that are necessary on the piano. You know, there's the actual physiology and what type of hands you have. There's the connection from the reading the score to the hands. There's a sense of rhythm, the sense of pitch, the sense of sound and tone.

There are so many different things and different people have real talents in some areas and weaknesses in others. In a class situation it's very difficult for a teacher to really cater to everybody and so it kind of brings down the intermediate level because the teacher can't possibly be sensitive to everybody but if you just want to get your feet wet and see how you like it and meet other people who are interested in the piano, a piano class can be a good choice. So once again, private lessons if you find a great teacher, that's tremendous. Just experimenting on your own and having fun with it, that can work for some people.

Online resources, today it's amazing what you can find on YouTube and other places on the internet.

And lastly, just if you want to get your feet wet and try it out, some piano classes. If you can give us any other suggestions how you can learn the piano or if you've learned the piano in a different way that I haven't covered here, leave in the comments here at LivingPianos.com.

So glad to bring these videos to you. Again, I'm Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. Thanks so much for joining me.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-learn-the-piano/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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