What I Wish I Knew When I Started Piano

okay I've been learning piano for about 4 and 1/2 years now and though people have been very nice about my progress I think I could have probably learned more and improved faster if I knew then what I know now so if you're thinking about learning piano or you've just started playing here's what I think you should know starting with number one hard pieces are a waste of time so when I first started out I really wanted to learn Max siren's cover version of the pixie song where is my mind and I mean look at it that is not an easy piece it's an e maor so you've got four shars to worry about it's got a whole bunch of dotted eth notes and 16 and it's even got a couple of arpeggiated chords in there and if you don't know what any of those things are then you're in the same position I was when I started trying to play it which probably means you shouldn't be trying something this hard because the thing is I did actually learn this piece and now I can actually play it pretty well but when I started out I had to kind of brute force it by looking up every single note as I went along and kind of checking other people's videos online for all the fingerings and that took a really long time that I could have probably spent more productively working on much simpler pieces that I could get to grips with in a couple of days or even a week instead of taking like months at a time to do one piece so I'm not saying you shouldn't have goal pieces that are outside your comfort zone and I do actually think it's super helpful to work on pieces that you would actually like to be able to play one day rather than spend your first couple of months working on like Mary had a little lamb or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or whatever but instead of picking something that's way too hard for you and then learning it by rout I think it makes a lot more sense to pick something that's in like C or G major and like has fairly simple rhythms in it so you have a fairly decent chance of learning it reasonably quickly that way you can actually work on reading music as you go and you'll have the satisfaction of being able to play more pieces earlier you'll also be able to concentrate on Dynamics because Dynamics are really important so if you don't know what Dynamics are they're kind of like the volume level they're a huge part of the way you add like excitement and emotion to songs and on the piano how you play these is by applying different amounts of force to the Keys from pianissimo all the way up to fortisimo but the keyboard I started out with didn't have weighted keys or even any way of playing Dynamics so I could really only concentrate on this stuff after I upgraded to a new keyboard after a few months of practice but I really think this stuff is important to start thinking about almost from the first day you start practicing and so if I was starting again I would probably invest in a keyboard that had weighted keys and Dynamics like from the word go it's not quite the same thing but it's also important to think about the difference between Legato and staccato and I didn't really start worrying about those until I was a few months in either which meant I had to go back to playing scales in different styles and basically relearn whole pieces to give them the articulation they needed so think of this kind of like footwork in boxing it's one of those things that isn't immediately fun to work on so you promise yourself you'll get to it later but it's actually so foundational to your progress that it really makes sense to concentrate on it almost as soon as you start learning so it's really something you should concentrate on from the outset rather than having to relearn a whole bunch of habits in a few months and then a similar way metronomes are helpful so I actually did use a metronome pretty much from day one when I was practicing scales I would pick like a Tempo that I was comfortable with I would play a scale until I could play it smoothly and connectedly at that Tempo and then I would like bump it up by a couple of BPM each day I practiced where I got a bit lazy about using a metronome was when I was playing pieces but what I found when I started using a metronome more seriously is that it made everything sound a lot more clean I'd play a piece until I could play it pretty near perfectly at a very manageable Tempo and then I'd click the metronome up and after I did that I really couldn't believe I hadn't done it earlier which kind of brings us to you need to learn to Pedal so this is something that still gets mentioned a ton in responses to my first video and yes guys I did buy a pedal it took me a while because I couldn't actually get one for my first keyboard and then when I got my second upgrade keyboard I didn't get one and I probably should have and the thing is Alfred's piano basic which I super recommend brings in pedaling pretty early for good reasons it lets you get used to using your foot alongside both hands when The rhythms are pretty simple and before it's all like too complicated to do at once and that Simplicity means that you can actually concentrate on getting the pedaling right rather than like over pedling and smushing all the sounds together which is what you'll do if you get to it later and that's a lesson that sort of applies to the next point which is that site reading can be fun if you keep it up so reading music can be hard and it's not what people get into piano to do you want to get into playing the cool pieces straight away and having to read the music as you go along feels like it's making that process more difficult so there's a real temptation to just memorize the pieces you play the most and then just kind of look at your hands as you play which can like help you play harder pieces in the short term but there are a couple of problems with that first you get reliant on looking at your hands which is kind of a bad habit to get into and secondly your ability to read sheet music falls behind the level of the pieces that you can actually play which makes it harder to do over the longterm because you have to force yourself to go back to easier pieces to kind of get into the swing of it and so site reading was something I had to go back and refocus on in years 2 and three and my ability to read music is probably still quite a long way below my ability to actually play it so if I was starting again I would do a lot more sight reading there's a line from Dan Gable probably the most successful wrestling coach in history who says if something's important you should do it every day and if it's not important don't do it at all and I really do think that applies to site reading but also learning some theory is worth the effort so when you start learning piano theory is like this great big Iceberg of stuff that seems impossible to understand or even really approach so if you're selftaught you learn the notes and then you learn the time signatures and then you learn about like the treble in the bass cleff and then you're like I think that was probably enough music theory but the thing is it actually will help your enjoyment of piano to understand just a little bit more music theory because if you can understand things like what a chord progression is you can actually start like noodling around and playing your own music like fairly easily and when you get into things like Boogie Woogie or other kinds of improv then it's easier to understand why you're doing what you're doing and it doesn't actually take much of this stuff to get to a point where you can actually sound pretty good just by knowing some real basic stuff about how to put chords and Melodies together and I think learning theory can probably also help you to remember music better because like the chord progressions seem more natural and obvious when you understand why they're the way they are and so even though it feels difficult and feels like time away from the piano and a little bit like homework sometimes I still suggest sticking with it and that also applies to everything else in this list because the most important thing to understand is you will get it eventually so there's a question that comes up in self-improvement circles a lot that goes what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail and I guess that's supposed to make you think about starting that business or project that you've always dreamed about getting that book deal you've always wanted or starting something like Brazilian jiu-jitsu or piano but there's kind of a secret here if you start a business maybe it will fail and if you write a book pitch maybe it will get rejected 20 times but if you set out to learn a new skill and you work at it regularly and practice it properly you absolutely will not fail in a year or 2 years or 5 years you will be so much better at it than you are now that you kind of won't believe it so for me and I think for a lot of other people hand Independence was like this huge sticking point with piano there was like a point where I was like I just don't think I'm going to be able to get this but thankfully I had the experience of learning other skills and eventually getting them to fall back on and so I stuck with it and it eventually clicked and then everything else got easier so the main main thing I think everyone should know when they take up piano is you will get it you will get better you might never play carnegi hall or get a six album deal and you're probably never going to be as good as Lang Lang but as long as you're practicing and trying you will Amaze yourself with how much better you can get if you want to make your practice more focused and efficient you can check out this video to do that but the main thing I want you to understand is you will get there thanks very much for [Music] watching what

Channel: Joel Snape

Views: 242,499

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Id: VUT_aelMYS4

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 01 2024