Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Which online program for a complete beginner

Hi all,

I'm 43 and finally decided to start playing the piano after wishing to do so for as long as I can remember. I play acoustic guitar on-off since about 30 years, but have zero experience playing the piano.

I have very basic knowledge of reading sheet music as basically all non-classical guitar stuff is using tabs or chord sheets, i.e. I would need to count up or down from a known note in order to identify a given note etc.

Due to time and financial constraints I want to use one (or two) online piano learning programs.

My ultimate goal is being able to play solo piano arrangements in various genres (pop, rock, blues, jazz, celtic traditionals) and to play piano accompaniments, so nothing overly ambitious (I hope). I don't want to play anything classical (for now).

I had a look at several offerings (Piano For All, Pianote, Playground Sessions, Piano Marvel) and they all seem to be able to bring someone from zero to intermediate but with different approaches.

What would be the best program to use given these goals? I would also be fine with using one program to learn basic technique etc. and then switching to another one.

Piano For All seems to be "chord based" from what I have seen, so it should at least work for the accompany side of things. Does it also teach you to play solo stuff with melody? Piano Marvel seems to have the most in depth content regarding technique and sight reading, but it also seems to be more focused on classical content.

I have seen very favourable reviews of Pianote, but it seems that the content is spread across various "packages" while I would prefer a more structured curriculum.

If it al possible consider lessons with a teacher in person for whatever time you need to get posture, hand position etc where they should be.

Playing with pain is zero fun, it is important to get that all right.

Pianote does have two structured packages, the older one called Foundations and the current one called Methods. They might be suitable. You can pick and mix from the other packages as you progress or after completing Methods. They hold feedback recitals, have an online forum, and provide regular enhanced sessions that build on elements within Methods or Foundations.

This is what I would recommend ....

https://homeschoolpiano.com/

Home School Piano is the brainchild of Willie Myette (Jazzedge).

He is the real deal.

He makes a sincere effort to help you become a well rounded pianist, which is what you want.

And .... it is free for 30 days as you try it out.

Good Luck

Hi,
Pianote is absolutely value for your money. No complaints. With the monthly or annual membership you get full access to all content. Prior to Pianote, I had a couse Learn and Master Piano, also still available and very good, less content. I have no experience with other learning platforms.

Good Luck!

FWIW, I’m also an adult beginner and was on a similar quest when I started. If the main limitation is time and need for flexible schedule, have you considered remote lessons with a teacher? That’s what I’ve been doing after trying a couple of online/app options and I’m getting a lot more out of it than I ever could from those platforms. As others hinted, there is also a real danger of learning the wrong fundamentals without direct, personalized feedback. While doing it remotely is not as good as truly in person, it’s still a whole lot more that an impersonal website or app.

You can take remote lessons. If you're dedicated and observant and find a good teacher, they can be quite similar to in person lessons. The only real differences are that the teacher can't physically place your hands at the right place, and they sometimes will have a few seconds of delay before providing feedback, which may sometimes be crucial but can be mitigated if you can keep track of what you are doing.

This will be one of the fastest ways to get better. As I mentioned before, I was self-taught for several years, but I don't recommend it because I had several hours to kill each day and a burning enthusiasm for it, spending hours trying to get the movements right. However, I didn't follow any of these programs and just figured it out by playing repertoire. I don't recommend the programs by the way. At the beginning, if you're learning on your own, you need to really focus on trying to make a 1:1 correspondence between what you're hearing and what you're actually playing. If you have a metronome ticking in the background and a program counting out your wrong notes, that's not going to happen. You need to be able to immediately know while you're playing whether you played wrong notes or not (and they don't matter as much as wrong technique or phrasing or any number of other things).

There is also the book Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course. It's a series of 3 books with CDs. In the old days, a lot of people used those books.

However, that book is not an online course, and it has extremely little information about technique and phrasing.

The faber adult books come with an app (which I think can also hook up to a midi keyboard for following along with the music used in the exercises), and a big list of online videos accompanying them all too

Even though you are not interested in playing classical music for now, I would really recommend you to chose a program that teaches you basic technique. As a guitar player, you probably know the importance of not just playing the correct note at the right time, but also to learn the correct technique in order to play in a beautiful and expressive way.

There are two online programs that I know will give you feedback on your technique. The very best one is Piano Career Academy and quite okay is Artistworks. For both programs, you can make a recording of you a playing a piece and you'll get feedback. You could consider subscribing to one of these sites for three months or so - just to get the basics, and also to get feedback so you'll know that you are on the right track.

I hope you heard of synthesia on youtube and there is a tool in musescore. Looks like synthesia but it is not synthesia, very useful thing- https://musescore.com/user/1335401/scores/5003715/piano-tutorial

I hope you're not seriously recommending Synthesia for learning music.

You’re promoting muse score in about every post. This is not useful for really learning to play— only fit those that want to copy

You’re promoting muse score in about every post. This is not useful for really learning to play— only fit those that want to copy[/quote]

There are three people here on Piano World that mention musescore in every single post, often quite without relevance. I wonder if they are sock puppets for the same person: Arciom Nesterovich, Henrik Stromberg and now Nelly Visser. It is very annoying.

I started learning, not even having known how to read music two years ago. (I'm retired)I used Piano Lessons on The Web. (Tim Wurm) You can check out free content on YouTube. The paid lessons are more in-depth and generally very informative. Lessons are very affordable and access to them does not expire. Don't ignore the technique information or things like counting . After a couple years I have switched to in person lessons and I definitely have basic
deficiencies but I'm improving steadily I think.