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I have been trying to learn piano for last 18 months or so and can't say that I have made decent progress. Many times I have to relearn what I could play earlier. A large part of this could be due to the fact that I am able to practice only on the weekends (I know it should ideally be daily), for 4 to 6 hours in all, and some weeks lesser. And this schedule is unlikely to improve, at least in near future. In this situation, what should be the best way to practice? What I should be focusing on? There are just too many suggestions on Internet and I am unable to formulate a decent plan that will help me improve.

Never too late! For practicing away from the keyboard, which we all may have to do when the day job gets in the way......one thing I've tried (not as consistently as I should have) is to take the music with me on the commute - just reading the notes and physically "playing" the fingers and trying to hear the music in my head has been a help. I feel a little wierd because here in New York, it's a good bet that the person sitting next to you might be a virtuoso....but heck, it's not about either them or me, it's about the music.

When you say you have to relearn what you could play earlier are you talking about memorizing? That is perfectly normal and it's the same for all of us mortals. It does not mean you don't make progress. Progress means you learn easier stuff faster and are able to learn more difficult pieces at all.

With such a schedule I would focus on reading music and study a wide variety of music that is not too difficult and have maybe one piece at the time to try to memorize or polish if you want something to play for fun or perform.

Why can't you practice daily? Is 30 minutes a day too much? How about 15 minutes? Everyone can free up 15 minutes a day. Unless you practice daily I don't see how you can make progress.

The key is to use that time effectively. If you have a limited amount of time don't waste any of it doing dumb exercises or playing whole pieces over. Focus on solving problems in small sections.

Did I mention getting a teacher?

Hi Outo,

What I mean is that I again struggle with what I was able to play earlier. And as as-of-now I cannot sight read, so depend on memorizing. So When I attempt to play, the notes do not come out gracefully - I have recorded myself on phone and on review I feel that I am banging rather than striking the keys with the intent of completing in the fear of forgetting rather than bringing out the softness or melody of the song.

I have also thought of learning to read music, but I do not know how effective it would be considering that even that I would be able to practice only once or twice a week.

Hi Qazsedcft,

Getting teacher is not possible right now, and yes some months back I was able to practice for 10 to 15 minutes on the weekdays too. But that has not been possible for the last few months - hence, this post.

If you don't have a teacher, I strongly suggest that you follow a method book, even if you feel like you are more advanced or don't like all the pieces and songs in it. Use Alfred's, Faber's, or other methods as your main material at least for a while. You will learn to read music and understand some theory in no time. Then you can roam free, tackle more challenging pieces that you particularly like - always following a good practice plan for each of them, not just playing them through or dabbling around. If you're into pop music or other genres, then you can follow some online course on chords, accompaniment, etc., but you still need a good general foundation, and books like Alfred's include a good variety of classical, folk, blues, and well-known tunes, which will keep you busy for some time and will make you feel like you are going somewhere.

I think you just experience the normal process of piano learning. You have to do it over and over again, it is perfectly normal. Truth is that piano playing just is harder than non-pianists think. It is also true that the learning is a bit like climbing Mount Everest. The first part of the journey is so easy that anyone can do it in a wink. So you make very quick progress in the very first beginning and that is fun and you feel very encouraged.
Then ... the "climbing" steeps up and the air gets thinner, kind of. Then you start to doubt on yourself and wonder what you are doing wrong. You also encounter this phenomena that you describe, that you can work diligently with something and the next week or day you have to do it AGAIN, and maybe AGAIN ... but don't worry. It is just your poor brain that needs time to digest and process the new knowledge. It is said that re-learning is excellent - in fact the ideal situation is to learn something, then "completely forget" it and then learn it again. Then you will gain the real solid knowledge that will last forever. At least that is what I have being told. But none of us wants to endure that process with every piano piece we learn, so ...

Not long ago I brought an "old sin" to my piano teacher, Mozart's famous variations on "Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman". I learned them decently, but not perfectly, when I was about 13 years old. After my teens, I did not play much piano, but 25 years later I re-bounded. I had to struggle hard, but now I am proud to play pieces that are far more advanced than my teen repertoire. I have learned much nice music during the past few years. And so I found this old one and thought it was fun to relearn. And my teacher was delighted and said that I had never played anything so well before. I was a bit depressed by that - so what I recently learned, with Beethoven and Chopin and all that, was not as good as this old thing? Did it mean I had not made any progress at all since I was 13?

But she assured me that it is just how it works. When we hear the big stars play their wonderful versions of Beethoven sonatas and Chopin etudes and Rach 3 and all these beloved classics, it is old repertoire. They may have had these aces up their sleeve for many decades. They are also still working with this old repertoire. So even if their catalogue may be awfully impressing after some decades as active pianists, they don't have that many pieces ready for performance just like that.

And I can also note that my version of Mozart's variations are 10 times better today than it was 35 years ago. I simply did not understand what I was doing back then. (I still have a lot of work to do with it.)


I know exactly what you mean by not having time to practice daily. Nor do I. We just have to do our best during the circumstances. Of course you make progress even if you don't play every day, but the advice to study away from the piano is a very good one.

It would be most effective!

First, it's something you CAN do without a teacher.

It's also something that tends to stay after you "get it" so practicing only on weekends is fine. As I said very few people can keep pieces memorized if only practiced two days a week. But when you learn to read music you can pick up a piece and very fast get it into the level it was and better. When my work situation changed so that my practice time was drastically reduced last year, I stopped memorizing because it was too frustrating.

How good your playing sounds is of course also related to your technique. If you cannot have lessons now but maybe will one day I would advice not to keep practicing the same pieces over to and over to muscle memory (possibly with not so efficient technique) but rather study as many pieces as you can to get more fluent in reading and studying new pieces from notation.

Believe me, the virtuoso just gets happy to see a beginner taking his or her first steps into the piano world! Because the virtuoso has been there too, you know ... and has not forgotten what it was like. What use has the virtuoso of his work if there are no beginners anymore? His profession will die.
All you need is enthusiasm, then you will be most welcome in the piano community, no matter if you can play Flight of the Bumblebee backwards while standing on your head, or just still struggle with Happy Birthday.

Learn to read music.

Learn to play music while you are reading music.

You mentioned not beng able to sight-read. There is that mis-used term again. Sight-Reading mean picking up a sheet of music you HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE and being able to read and play it right away. You are a long way from that and should not even be thinking about that.

Learn to play music while you are reading the notation.

This is the most important skill you can attain and will open doors for you to play all sorts of music without having to remember how to play it.

Get a method book or books and go through them page by page slowly and do what it says.

Did I mention ... Learn to play while looking at the printed page of music notation ?

This will take a long time and there are no shortcuts. Just keep going and you eventually will get there.

Good Luck

Thank you - this made my day!

So what you mean by notation reading is simply having notes written rather than notation symbols and trying to read that while playing? Yes, that I am attempting.

And honestly, I know this journey is long, and am enjoying the practice, but doubts creep in.

Here is what I have done till now. I started in May 16 with a song playing only melody with only one or two fingers. Next, played the same with multiple. Continued learning couple of more with all five or four fingers. After few months, came back to the first song and played along with chords (in the process, gifting myself overconfidence ). Learnt another song that I love, but only melody. Moved to next that I loved even more, but this time with chords (moving from chord to chord is not smooth for all chords). Currently, I am learning one song for the last 2 months or so that has arpeggios too. Just the first 20 seconds of prelude has taken me this long (and I have to keep going back to start, else I forget) - I don't know if this kind of progress is normal or I am way behind.

I have practiced only the songs, and not focused on any exercises like scale playing or chord progression exercises or many others recommended. I wondered if this is an issue as my playing is not graceful.

ManishP
You have heard suggested on this thread several times to get a method book that you like, follow it page by page. Learning one piece at a time where you struggle with learning the notes and it takes you months to learn the first 20 seconds is not an effective way to learn to read music and play music. Find a system of learning through a method series that you like and take it one step at a time. The method book will work you through learning music in a progressive way, With the music and the skills starting easy and getting progressively more difficult.

Hopping around by using one piece of music and working on it for a long period of time when you have not gained the skills to play it, will not work in the long run because it does not give you the skills you need to play other music. if you take one step at a time, then you can take those same skills you have learned and apply them to other music.

Well done ManishP, keep it up.
That is exactly what it's like for us trying to learn, especially as adults and especially using something like Alfred instead of a teacher.

Think back to when you first sat at a keyboard and your fingers felt like sausages - and compare that with what you can do now, even if you get wrong notes and forget things.
You wil see progress.

We all have problems with sight reading too, and so usually avoid practising it. I've decided after 2 years to remedy this and am now working through Paul Harris Improve your sight reading series.

Also, a great tip I got from Youtube guy Gale Wolff who gives demonstrations of every single piece in the Alfred series, get a piece REALLY good before you move on to the next one.
It may be slower than just saying That'll Do and moving on but being able to play even a simple piece well (i.e. three or four times in a row without hesitating or going wrong - especially without hesitating so you feel comfortable with it - will give you a sense of achievement, Gale says that if you don't perfect yr pieces, you'll get discouraged and pack it in before too long.

Then again...when one is self learning and without proper feedback using a lot of time to physically "perfect" pieces can become a waste of time and can lead to undesirable habits becoming very strong. Comfortable is not always good even though good should mostly be comfortable.

Unless perfect just means correctly reading notes and understanding the rhytm by studying the score properly, then I agree.

I can’t think of a reason that learning to read music is a bad thing and I put it off for way too long. I’m currently doing the Alfred method and video lessons and they feel right for me but there are many so look around. As Don stated above, take your time. I wish you well.

I think I may have confused you with my attempt to remove the "sight-reading" term from you plan.

Let me try to simplify ....

If you wish to play while looking at the sheet music ....

Your efforts should be focused on playing while you are looking at the sheet music.

If you go through a method book and play everything in the book as you are looking at the sheet music in the book, you will gradually get better and better at doing that.

If you memorize things and then look at the keyboard while playing it .... you probably will not learn to play while looking at the music.

It is really that simple. You get better at what you do.

Now .... make no mistake .... it is often easier (and faster) to memorize something and then look at the keyboard while playing it. That is why one does that.

You have to decide what it is you wish to be able to do.

If you wish to memorize and play while looking at the keyboard, then do that.

If you wish to play while looking at the music, then do that.

Good Luck to you

I'll add my voice to the chorus. Learn to read music. That's one of the few productive things you can do with only two days a week of practice. Get one of the method books and learn to read music. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he's fed for a lifetime.

Don't learn by writing in the names of the notes, for example D F# A C. Learn to read the things with stems pointing up or down (for example) that fall on lines or spaces.

First of all - thanks to all who have taken time and put in effort to respond. I highly appreciate. Thanks!

From all the posts, I gather that following a method is most important. I will follow this and start with Alfred's. Secondly, I am also trying to get myself a tutor - at least an online one. I hope my next few months will see a more measurable improvement and refined playing.

You might try this site. You can customize the difficulty level to suit you. It allows you to practice identifying notes.

http://www.sightreadingpractice.com

I am on this site now - thanks. This is very good.

I tried to search for Gale Wolff's YouTube videos but could not find - can you post a link? Thanks.

Hi Manish
How do you started on s method book yet? Just want to see how that was going, as this will give you a systematic instructions for learning notes key signatures and rhythm

I on page 13 (Ode to Joy, right hand) of Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course 1 - playing this is not a problem for me at all, but playing this with just looking at notations without the note names (C, D, E...) is difficult. I have written the first 8 measures on a separate sheet of paper without the note names and am practicing. I hope I will be able to do better today. Thanks for the interest.

Personally do listen to online performances as much as playing. Just getting tunes into your head will help you practice your pieces.

Jump into the Alfred thread as well. There’s a lot of good info as well as folks on the same mission.

Yes - I am following that.

Hi
I’m a little bit confused about why you had to write the notes over on a sheet without the note names? I would suggest that you not write the note names on any piece of music bet that you mainly work to recognize them when you play, even if it’s slow. you want to reduce the process to ‘see the note on the line or the space and locat it on the keyboard’. You do not want to add an extra step in.

Please excuse me if I have misunderstood. I just want to see you develop the ability to read the notes so that you can play a new piece of music when you want to learn it. It just takes practice and time, so keep the faith.

I would suggest you just work on the material in the book the way it is written.

The author has written it in a particular manner for a reason.

Just accept that and do not try to enhance the material with your own methods.

Page by page .... doing it very well .... is the secret .... no rush.

Piano methods are purposely designed to have you progress slowly because that is what works.

If you try to go too fast you may be setting yourself up for failure.

Good Luck to you

Hi Don and Dogperson,

This is my reply to both of you on why I wrote notes on separate paper without note-names. If I understand correctly, the idea of reading sheet-music is to be clear on where the notes are on the staff without note names. In the book, note names are part of stems, so how will I be able to analyse if I am able to pick notes or not without the help of names? That is the reason I have taken off note names.

Thanks to both for the response.

[quote=dmd

I would suggest you just work on the material in the book the way it is written.

The author has written it in a particular manner for a reason.

Just accept that and do not try to enhance the material with your own methods.

Page by page .... doing it very well .... is the secret .... no rush.

Piano methods are purposely designed to have you progress slowly because that is what works.

If you try to go too fast you may be setting yourself up for failure.

Good Luck to you


[/quote]
As usual, I agree with Don. Always good advice.

Alfred preprints the note names for several of the early pieces. Eventually they stop giving the note names. It’s meant to provide support for learning the notes and eventually being able to play without the note names written in. I don’t know if this is pedagogically sound.

When my teacher made me go through Alfred’s 1 (after self-teaching), I already knew how to read music and in an act of rebellion I whited-out/blacked-in (half notes/quarter notes) all the prewritten note names.

That is what I am doing now... ☺

When I first read that, I saw it as you, in an act of rebellion, going through the book changing crochets to minims and minims to crochets Wow that WAS rebellion, I thought. Then I realised what you meant.

Sorry, just seen this. It would have helped if I'd spelt his name properly!! Gale Wolfe I think
Here is the home page of his Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIeSnI-BmRMkxURGZ7nHtzQ

Well, that is very logical and you certainly can do that.

However, that falls in the category of you making changes to the method book that has been written for you.

I like to believe that the author (a professional) made a conscious decision to put those note names as part of the stems for a reason.

Considering that you are a beginner, I am suggesting that you defer to the expertise of the author and do it his/her way.

I am sure you will be presented with plenty of material without the note names in future lessons.

Also, the time spent rewriting the material might be better spent practicing the material as written.

Try to keep things simple. Practice the material until it is mastered and then turn the page. Simple.

Good Luck

I cannot support the oft-stated idea of simply deferring to the "authorities" that come up in the study of music, whether it be a teacher, a method book, or similar resource. They are not infallible, and some less than others. I'd like to look at this in particular.

Yes, the team that put together a particular book have reasons for doing what they do. They may not be the right reasons. For example, in the old JT books, finger numbers were put in, so that the student could start playing right away. It served that purpose, if you want to have instant gratification and want to be playing music right away. It also created dependence on those numbers and some wrong concepts - there is no direct relationship in piano between any note and any given finger, and you don't want to develop such a relationship in your mind-body system.

I have talked to more than one teacher who looked at this or that method book or methodology, and pointed out traps or flaws in thinking, or reasons why a thing was done that were not related to the learning of skills. I got caught out myself over a decade through that kind of deferring to what I assumed was expertise .

It's a tricky path, because as a beginner you do indeed benefit from guidance, and if you do everything your own way all the time, that's a circular road to nowhere. (I see where dmd is going in general most of the time). But you don't want to blindly trust what's out there either.

My impression was that Manish was doing the opposite. In the material he had, the note names were already written in. He did not want those note names in there, but instead wanted to learn to read the notes, even if it was slower. Therefore he wrote the notes on a separate sheet, minus note names. If I understood this correctly, he was subtracting the extra step, rather than adding one.

If I misunderstood what was being done, I'd like to be corrected.

I too cannot see how it would be nothing but useful to write notes on the staff yourself. In my youth we were expected to learn to write notation as well as just read it. The earlier the better I'd say. It just adds to learning imo.

Many thanks for posting this link - his demonstration and explanations are so much better than some others I have seen on Alfred's Basic level 1 book, but for some reason YouTube search on the topic didn't bring up his channel.