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I doubt if 0.1% of the population who wish to take up the piano would be the slightest bit interested. I'm not so sure inflicting it on others is a humane thing to do though. I tried your method. It's junk. As a method it's absolute garbage.

What everyone says looks so eminently sensible in the face of the original post that I was wondering if I'm alone in thinking that the OP might be pulling our collective chain ? i.e (for those with English as a second language) whether the OP is joking???

haha no I am not scared off, I'm actually loving all the responses, positive or negative, conversation is good! (shout out to dmd and Moo for being extra positive!). I'm realizing now that perhaps I should've better explained my approach and given a little more background on my goals and what I hope to achieve, so I will do that, since everyone seems to think my system looks terrible lol


First, I would like to say that I wasn't thinking this originally, but now after reading responses, although I do agree with basically everything posted, I'm also aware that there has to be a ton of bias from each poster (not necessarily a bad thing). I'm going with the assumption that everyone learns their own way, and since they learned that way, they will naturally think that that's the "best" or "only" way to do it. I kind of carry the same logic, as I want to develop my own method to teach others, after I prove that it works on myself. I also think there might be a lot of people here who were classically trained and they definitely might think that's the only way more than anyone. My goals in music are different from "the classical way", so if there are people who disagree with going against that way, I don't really know what to tell you lol.

Next, to anyone saying I need a teacher, I really don't think I do. I think I'm capable of learning on my own. I was thinking of seeing a teacher at some point down the road just to check to make sure I'm doing things right physically (posture, fingering, hand positioning, etc.). Other than the physical aspect of playing, I don't think I need a teacher. Why would I pay money for a teacher when I can use plenty of resources from online (Youtube, online PDF's, etc.) to compile my own "syllabus" that works for me personally? I've had vocal coaches and I find that teachers like to push their own view of things onto students, which is something I'm trying to avoid as a student. I think learning music and learning piano can be such a personal experience without a teacher. I'm not at all saying that having a teacher is bad, I think a lot of people could/will benefit from a teacher for sure, I just really don't have any interest in paying money and searching for the right teacher (just in case I find some and don't like them or what they teach or their teaching style), seems like a lot of time and money wasted on something I can just figure out myself and figure out a way that works best for me personally. I think if I need a teacher for a particular concept, I'm sure Youtube can give me all the help I need.

To those saying I need to play songs and gear my learning towards songs/pieces instead of learning music theory, I personally disagree.. strongly lol. I actually tried this first, and it didn't work for very long (but maybe I was trying things that were too hard lol). I'm a huge fan of C418's Minecraft Soundtrack, and I would love to be able to play every song from it. So, since everyone suggests learning by playing songs, thats what I tried to do. It was working, but overall, it was more frustrating than anything. Sure, now I can play a song or two from the Minecraft soundtrack, but I really wasn't LEARNING anything. I was just following along with the notes on a Youtube video. I was learning the song, but was I aware of the notes I was hitting? Not really. Was I paying attention to the chords I was playing? No. Was I paying attention to the RELATIONSHIPS between all the notes and all the chords? Literally not at all. I was literally just following someone elses playing, that's all. Learning songs is cool if that's all you want to do with music/piano. Learning songs is probably the last thing I'm trying to focus on, I'm trying to learn music theory by playing the piano (we'll get to this).

A lot of you are also saying that my practice routine looks like the most boring thing in existence and I will quit because of it. I don't really think so, but you all are entitled to your own opinions of course! Allow me to explain though. I thought learning songs was a boring and messy approach. My two reasons for this are: 1) You have to start off easy and slowly play harder and harder songs. Easy songs are boring. I don't want to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, I would rather just play scales. 2) Learning by playing songs doesn't always mean you will play songs you like, ESPECIALLY if you have a teacher! If I'm gonna learn by playing songs, I would want to play songs I know and love. I don't really want to play easy beginner nursery rhyme songs. I don't want to play Mozart's symphonies down the road. As far as songs go, I want to have the music theory knowledge to hear a song, then figure it out on my own. When you don't know music theory, and you're just learning it along the way, you learn things out of order just as they happen, that's way too disorganized for my taste. And when you're just learning songs, you have to go online and figure out the key, then you have to learn all the chords, etc. But if you already know music theory, you can figure the key out by the notes you hear, and you can assume the possible chords by the key, etc. Would you not agree that learning music theory first would make learning songs a whole lot easier and faster? Because that's the way I see it. I like to learn the rules of the game before I play.


So, this brings me to my background and my goals. As I have said in passing, my main goal is to learn music theory by playing the piano (I think most of you have the opposite view? Learn songs and learn music theory along the way of doing that? Yes?). I don't (necessarily) want to learn classical music. I don't want to learn a method book. I want to learn music theory. I want to learn the bones of the whole skeleton so that I can learn to play all kinds of songs and music. My method focuses on learning all aspects of music theory, and FOCUSING HARD on little increments one at a time (i.e. spending an entire week on one scale). I'm currently in college for the Music Industry program (I'm only 22), and one of my teachers says, "Do not practice it until you get it right, practice it until you can never get it wrong". I thought this was amazing, and I'm trying to make it the overall theme for my method, so I also took a step further with a sister quote, "Do not learn it until you know it, learn it until you cannot forget it". I want to spend a week on each scale/concept so that I will never, ever forget each one. But not only am I learning music theory, I'm also playing the piano! So, yes I am "boringly" playing the same scale for a whole week, but learning piano along with the theory allows me to spice it up: play it with my left hand, play it with my right hand, play it with both hands at the same time, play it all the way up the keyboard with both hands, etc. This way I'm learning music theory and how to physically play the piano at the same time. Hopefully now you are seeing how the method is supposed to work. ENGRAVE the music theory in your head, and have some fun with it by playing the same thing in a variety of different ways. You guys are saying that learning this way is boring, but to me its fun! Breaking it down into small, achievable goals is fun to me, it makes me feel like I'm actually learning music, and actually progressing in my learning. Learning songs made me practice at random times, made me give up quicker than I wanted to, etc. Organizing it out like this gives me peace in my order. I've set aside certain time increments for each concept, and that makes me happy. If I'm just playing songs, all I could say is "ah I don't really know much about music, but I can play these 20 songs really well". That's not very useful at all in my opinion. So, using this method, I think in about a year or so from now I will know all major scales, all versions of minor scales, most chords and inversions, all intervals, etc. Do you know how valuable that is? Do I have to stress how valuable that is compared to just knowing 50 songs? I'm sure those who are well trained in music know what I'm talking about. I think my method might be "boring" at first, but it will ultimately make me a music superhuman, which is what I'm really interested in: mastery. Once I achieve mastery of music theory, it will make what I really want to do IMMENSELY easier: creating music. You cannot have an easy time creating music by learning a method book, by learning your favourite songs, by learning everything Mozart wrote, etc. It doesn't work like that.


So, now that I've more fully explained my method that I'm creating, I would like to ask again: Does anyone have any more concepts/details to add to my original list? Every time I search something like "list of all chords", every list is different, some are unorganized, some exclude some chords, etc., so I thought it would be easier to ask piano people lol maybe I was wrong? Idk, I think I've started a good conversation here. If you don't feel like posting in the thread, that's totally cool, you can just PM your opinions or links, PDF's, videos, etc., that have helped you.

I think you're explaining what I'm imagining to be the end goal. I want to create music, and I guess I just believe that knowing music theory will make creating chord progressions and understanding relationships in the sounds much easier. Whenever I try to write a song, I'm always stumped because I don't know what works with chords and melodies, etc., and the process is frustrating and takes way longer than it could. That's one of my main inspirations to learn music theory, I want to understand all these things, it allows me to see the choices and what works and what doesn't.

Learning with one sense isn't as effective as learning with multiple. I believe your advice to becoming really familiar with the sounds of things is extremely crucial, but it's a lot easier to find and understand those sounds when I've read about them and can put a name to them as well as hear them. That's the overall point I'm trying to make. I'm trying to memorize the boring, redundant stuff systematically to graduate to more advanced playing and understanding, like the stuff you're mentioning.

This place is ridiculous, I 100% regret posting here lol every answer is just "you need to get a teacher or good luck" or "there are tons of proven methods out there that work", yet not a single person can share a link or point me in any direction. Don't just tell me that there are methods already out there, show me where I can find them, otherwise your comment is useless. Jesus Christ. I guess I'll go look for this [censored] myself then.

Thanks for the help.

Adding profanity to your rant does little to encourage others to want to help or offer their opinions. This is not the place for that kind of language.

Funny that you should be able to voice your opinion, but decry the opinions of others because they don't agree with yours.

Since no one is willing to help me with my ideas, then let me rephrase the question. What should I do to learn piano and music theory? How should I practice (keeping in mind I can't even read notation)?

This place is ridiculous, I 100% regret posting here lol every answer is just "you need to get a teacher or good luck" or "there are tons of proven methods out there that work", yet not a single person can share a link or point me in any direction. Don't just tell me that there are methods already out there, show me where I can find them, otherwise your comment is useless. Jesus Christ. I guess I'll go look for this [censored] myself then.

Thanks for the help.