Take Piano Lessons Online

Learning to play the piano doesn’t have to be tedious, traumatic or expensive. I took piano lessons from a piano instructor as a child. There were no home computers back then, so I had to have a live person teach me. I practiced the assigned pieces every day for 2 hours. Talk about tedious! Granted, I look back now, and realize the pieces were good pieces for learning the techniques of piano playing and they fit the lesson the instructor was teaching. But as a child, it just wasn’t what I wanted to play. I wanted to play the tunes on the radio.

I remember one “recital” my instructor took me to. We went to this lady’s house, there were three of us students. Two of us sat on her couch, while the third student played in her study. There were two Dobermans guarding us on the couch. Now, as a child I had cats; my family never had a dog. So I was terrified to move with those dogs sitting there staring at us. Piano lessons shouldn’t be remembered this way. It’s good thing I never associated piano music with being terrified.

I also remember my mom giving me cash to give my instructor. Now, I was lucky, my instructor lived across the street from me. So she knew my mom real well. Okay, maybe I wasn’t so lucky, I couldn’t fudge on my lessons in any way shape or form. But if I had a question, I just trotted across the street and asked. Back then though, Mom was paying $20 a week for me to learn to play the piano. Pretty steep at the time, especially when Dad was not working because of the strike at his company.

My point is there are other less tedious, traumatic and expensive ways to learn to play the piano. You can buy a keyboard with headphones, so everyone doesn’t have to hear you struggling or make mistakes. When I practiced, everyone in the household heard every note played over and over and over again. And they heard every wrong note I played. My husband is learning to play the piano and he likes to play at night after I have gone to bed, so the keyboard with headphones works well for him. There are various keyboards and most of them aren’t as expensive as a piano. So if you find the piano isn’t the instrument of choice for you, you haven’t spent too much to find this out.

A Better Way to Learn

There are books at the book stores that can teach you how to read the music and some of them actually come with instructional CD’s. I had to buy books that taught the theory of piano playing; the very first book taught me how to read the music. What notes on the page stood for which keys on the piano. What the signs for sharp and flat mean on the piano. What a quarter note versus an eighth note means. The theory of piano music could also be called technique; it’s the nuts and bolts of the written music. If you are the type who learns better from reading something and then putting it into practice, this would be a good route for you to learn to play the piano.

There are also online programs. Now, with computer technology so commonplace, you can go online, and for a fee, download instructional videos on learning to play the piano. These videos start with the basics, learning the names of the keys, musical notes, etc. And these videos usually have simple songs for beginners to learn to play, so you can put what you learn into practice.

So, if you don’t want to start out learning to play the piano with the expensive expenditure of buying a piano and spending money on weekly lessons, you can go another route. You can buy a less expensive keyboard and learn to play privately via books and online programs.

Pat Rentz knows that everyone learns in different ways. Learning to play the piano with an instructor may not be best for you. Visit her website to see if video learning is best for you.