Can you teach yourself the piano?

Over the years, many people have come to study with me having previously tried to teach themselves to play the piano. At some point, they get frustrated that they seem to be making little progress, and that it takes them forever to learn something new. In addition, once they learn it, they find they quickly forget how to play it.

You would think in these days of having YouTube and all kinds of people giving tutorials online that one could just learn that way. How tempting, to save the many thousands of dollars one would spend on years of lessons and just use the internet instead. Unfortunately, it is almost never successful.

Another method people often try is just to teach themselves the names of the notes on the staff, and then try to pluck their way through a piece, slowly, note by note, one hand at a time, and often trying to memorize a measure or two as they go. (When reading is difficult, people try to memorize right away; but this is like cramming for a test -- the memory doesn't stick long term.) With this method, they usually don't learn to read rhythm correctly and have to supplement their learning by listening to the piece on the internet to get the rhythm right. This method is excruciatingly slow. It often takes many months to "learn" one short piece. People taking this approach will be likely to choose pieces that are light years beyond their abilities. Even if they manage to play the piece, slowly and haltingly, they are not really learning any skills, and will have to repeat the process with the next piece. They know the piece doesn't sound beautiful when they play it, but they can't figure out what to do about it. Many people mistakenly believe that learning to play is simply a matter of hitting the right notes. If this were true, there would be many more great pianists than there are. Just like playing by copying someone on the internet, this method also never works.

Here are some of the reasons.

1.The physical aspect
Playing the piano (or any instrument) is highly physical, much more so than it may look to a non-educated observer. It is just as physical as any sport, and in fact, probably more so.
Without developing a good technique you will be limited as to what you can learn to play and master. And you run the risk of doing harm to your hands, fingers and arms by practicing with bad technique. Even something so basic as sitting at the wrong height can cause problems such as carpal tunnel syndrome.
For this reason you must have a teacher who is observing you as you play, and teaching you technique. Watching someone play on YouTube is not the same as having someone working with you one-on-one. And the person you are watching online may have bad technique as well, but you can't always tell by how it looks on camera. In fact, the camera is usually just showing their fingers. You can't see at all what is happening in their arms, which is equally, if not more, important. When most people watch a video of someone playing, they are just trying to copy "the notes" and are not focusing on technique. With this approach, you will have to start at square one learning each new piece of music, because you won't really have learned skills. I say to my students that I am teaching skills, not pieces.

2. Understanding
In most of the videos and tutorials I've seen, the person giving the tutorial just focuses on showing you the notes to play. If you spend a great deal of time watching it over and over, you can eventually copy what the person is doing. But you won't know why. Very few explain in any detail why you would play a certain jazz tune, for example, in this way. Or they explain it in terms which they understand, having played for years, but which you, as a beginner, will not understand. So again, you are stuck with just copying what you see. You won't have the understanding to apply it to another piece of music on your own. So you are locked into finding a video for everything you want to play.
This is so time-consuming you will probably eventually give up.

3. Expression
When you watch a video and copy the person, you are also copying their interpretation of the music. This is true regardless of the genre -- classical, jazz, etc. Consciously or unconsciously, you will tend to play the piece just like that person, with the same dynamics, nuances of timing and phrasing, and so on. Once you hear something a certain way, that may just be how you will continue to hear it, especially if you are a beginner. And why would you want to play like someone else? Hopefully, one of the reasons you want to play the piano is to express your self.

4. Ear training
Playing an instrument is an "auditory sport," I often say. As such, you need to be training your ear. This aspect of music education is often overlooked. If you are not working on your ear, you can't progress as fast or play very complex music. It is also the reason you may not be able to memorize, or, if you do memorize a piece, you quickly forget if you don't practice it constantly. Watching something online requires mostly using your eyes and is doing very little to develop your ear.

Learning to play the piano takes a lot of work and dedication, but of course can be hugely rewarding. If you are going to invest the time and energy into learning to play and adding the joy of playing to your life, it is essential to invest in good training. It is not easy to find a teacher who has the knowledge and experience to teach all the many aspects of playing the piano, but the posts in this blog may give you some insights into what to look for in a teacher.