Piano Lessons For Beginners

Piano Lessons for beginners

If you’re over fifty, you’ll know that many of the things that kids take for granted today just weren’t available when we were kids. I’m not blaming anyone, it’s just a different world now. When I was a child, music lessons were a real luxury. As a result, I never learned to play the piano when I was young and the same applies to most of my peers too. So, for those of us who want to learn as an adult, it’s worth thinking about the implications of trying to learn piano as we get older and how suitable the different methods are.

Adult Piano Lessons

The term adult piano lessons is probably a bit meaningless. A lesson is a lesson after all. But as we age, we are bound to respond differently to approaches that might be more suitable for younger people.

Firstly though, let’s look at the effects of the physiological changes that come with age and how they affect our ability to learn the piano.

Memory. It’s commonly assumed that our memory gets worse as we get older. This is thought to apply mostly to short-term rather than long-term memory. Many old people can tell you everything about their childhood but can’t remember what they had for lunch yesterday. If you keep your brain active then there’s no reason why your memory should fail you.

Beginners piano lessons

If, however, you do happen to have a poor memory then, fortunately, it shouldn’t impede you too much. This is because the procedure of learning the piano is designed to reinforce the link between what you see on a page of music and the movements of your fingers. This reinforcement is the result of lots of repetition. Memory doesn’t come into play here, we’re talking about the laying down of new neural pathways.

Neurological plasticity. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. You’ll have heard that old adage, I’m sure. It’s based on fact. As we get older we find it harder to learn new things. This is because our brains find it more difficult to lay down new neural pathways than when we were young. That’s not to say it’s impossible, it’s just more difficult. It’s reflected in the way that young children can pick up on new ideas and concepts almost effortlessly while older people need a lot more exposure before it sinks in.

Learn piano for beginners

Children’s brains are still in a developmental phase when new neural connections form very easily. This is why many piano lessons for beginners incorporate lots of repetitive exercises. It’s to help you get those neural connections formed.

I think the key here is exposure. If you can find the time to immerse yourself fully into the world of music for whatever time you have available, it will create a music-related neural environment within your brain and enhance your ability to absorb the musical ideas and techniques that you are going to learn.

Manual dexterity. There’s no getting away from it. Our bodies start to let us down as we get older. Although you may not have realised it, this applies to our fingers too. You may well find that your fingers do not respond as quickly or as accurately as you would like when you start your beginner piano lessons. The dexterity required is considerably more than that required to type on a computer keyboard.

Piano Lessons

Exercise is the answer here. You’ll need to stretch all the joints and muscles of your hands regularly. Fortunately, you can do much of this while you’re away from the piano. Once you’re in front of it there are many fingering exercises that you can do that will help to alleviate this problem. It may take some time, but be positive and more flexible fingers will eventually come as a result.

A backache. Sit on a piano stool for a couple of hours and you might find that you can’t get up again. It’s all about posture, of course. Most of the beginner piano courses give a guide to correct posture, and correct foot and arm placement. If you suffer from a bad back, and lots of adults do, it’s probably best to start off with short sessions at the piano and attempt to work up from there.

Obviously, your doctor or physician is best placed to give you advice on this. What I would say though is: don’t be tempted to use a chair with a back at the piano. The type of posture that this promotes will do nothing for your playing. A piano stool is the only thing to use. Make sure that it’s at the right height.



Practice. As you’ll have gathered if you’ve read any of the other pages on this website. The key to learning the piano is practice and lots of it. Now, the big difference between adults learning the piano and children doing the same thing is the amount of time they have on their hands for practice. If you are a retired person then this may not apply but if you are a working adult then time is usually a commodity that is in very short supply. Particularly for an indulgence such as taking piano lessons for beginners.

Obviously, you need to fit in your practice where you can. Fortunately, most modern thinking on this subject suggests that several short periods of learning or practice, rather than one long one, is more effective at reinforcing the neural pathways discussed above. Beginners piano lessons are often tailored to fit this regime and it should be easy to plan your piano lessons in this way. If you can do ten minutes before work, ten minutes before supper and another ten before bed then this will probably be very effective. Even short bursts of one or two minutes are useful, so fit them in whenever you can.

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Making a Success of Learning the Piano

You're about to embark on a journey

You want to learn the piano. A word of warning: It's not easy, and it's going to take you some time. But the rewards are well worth it! When you can sit down at a piano and play a piece of music with feeling and sensitivity, interpreting the writer's intentions, even though they may have been put on paper two hundred years ago, you will have a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that is difficult to put into words. But you're not there yet. You're not even at the beginning. Let's look at what's involved...

The elements of learning a new skill

Different skills require learning in different ways. Imagine learning a new language. You could read a book to get started, learning vocabulary and grammar rules - at this point, all the activity is in your brain. As you progress, you'll start verbalizing the words and phrases, your mouth and tongue become involved. Then you'll find it helpful to interact with another person and, at that point, your ears and facial communication abilities are brought into play. At various stages, different elements are mobilized and each one requires effort and practice. It's the same with learning the piano.

So what are the components of learning piano?

You'll need to learn how to read music. This is visual & brain work. Understanding how music is written down. It's not especially difficult but there's quite a lot to know, particularly as you progress. Following on from the above you'll need to learn to instinctively identify notes when you see them on the stave. This is very much a matter of continual practice. The more you see them, the quicker you'll become adept at it. Some of the teaching packages we review contain software to assist with this. You'll need to develop a sense of rhythm if you don't already have one. Most people do but it may need re-awakening if it hasn't been exercised for some time.

You'll need to develop a level of dexterity that greatly exceeds that required to use a computer keyboard. But don't worry, there are exercises that can assist with this. You'll need to enhance your hand-eye coordination, interpreting the notes on the page and converting them, instinctively, into finger movements. You'll need to develop a sense of pitch, ear-brain work this time. This, and understanding the fundamentals of western musical structure (it varies from culture to culture) will be crucial in developing a keen musical awareness. And...you'll need to do all these things at once as you progress. Argghhh, I hear you say!

Don't worry!

Well, don't worry. Things aren't quite as bad as they look. This is just the sort of thing your brain evolved to do in the millions of years before the piano was invented. Our brains are inherently plastic, meaning they are good at adapting to new behaviors and that continual repetition reinforces new neural connections within our brain.

When you attempt to learn something new, it helps if you understand what you're learning and why. For the brain, context is very important, I remember being taught the Circle of Fifths in a very early piano lesson. I had no idea what it was for and promptly forgot it. Now, some years later, I can put it into context and so I understand what it's for and why it's so useful. As a result, I find it easy to remember.

You'll find the same with learning the rudiments of piano playing. If you understand what you're learning and why everything else will follow naturally. The learning resources that we endorse, although they approach piano tuition in several different ways, all take the idea of early understanding very seriously and therefore have a very good success rate. If you understand what you're learning, you will not experience that familiar schoolchild frustration of 'I don't understand....' and you will not lose motivation as a result.

Practice!

There's something else, and we've left it until last. Practise. They key to piano playing and developing the skills in the list above is practice. Practice, practice, practice. It just has to be done, there's no way around it. In order to reinforce all the new stuff that you'll be learning and to set those neural pathways in stone requires a good deal of repetition. It sounds tedious, but there's a silver lining to this cloud. The more you practice, the better you'll become and the better you become the more you'll enjoy it.

We want you to be under no illusions. Learning piano, if you intend to take it seriously, is not easy. It's a challenge. It wouldn't be worth doing if it were easy, would it? But that is the joy of learning and mastering a new skill. Enjoy learning the piano and we can promise you, you'll enjoy playing it forevermore.

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