Seven Tips For Learning Piano As An Adult
Learning to play piano as an adult can be scary. Many people limit themselves because they think they’re too old or it’s too late to start something new. The good news is it’s never too late to start learning the piano. If you want to do it, you absolutely can.
Here Are 7 Tips to Help You As An Adult Learner
1. Don’t Rush
Adults are used to doing things at a really high level. Okay, so whether you’re in your 20’s or your 40’s or 60’s you either are doing a job or you have had a job where you get paid money to do something at a really high level. And to go from that level 100 down to, you know, level 0 when you’re starting to play the piano it can be very humbling experience.
Another thing about adults is, they have spent decades of their lives listening to really high quality music. To then have to learn and play really basic pieces of music.
It can be frustrating. But the thing is you do have to slow things down. And make sure you’re not rushing when you’re learning these basics because the basics will be your foundational blocks to actually playing some of the pieces that are more complex and that you really love.
It’s important not to rush it. It’s important to think about each movement.
Think about playing together. Think about playing evenly at the right volume. Which leads to the second tip.
2. Learn the Basics First
You should learn how to read notes right. When you see a note on a piece of sheet music, you should be able to know what note that is.
You should be able to know something about chords. What they’re for and what role they play, music and things like time signatures and key signatures. So make sure you nail the basics. We won’t go into depth in this video on them but make sure you know a little bit about the basics so that you can move forward in piano with ease.
3. Stick to a Practice Routine
A daily practice routine if you can.
Now adults are busy. I get it. You have your commitments and it’s hard to find time in your day to practice. But the thing is, even if you can squeeze out just 10 minutes a day. Let’s say you do 10 minutes a day for 7 days.
So 10 times seven will be 70 minutes in a week. It’s much better to do 10 minutes a day rather than 70 minutes on one day. The reason for that is because for you to learn music properly, your brain needs time to digest and sleep on things.
So whenever you practice 10 minutes and you go to sleep, you wake up the next day feeling more refreshed and for those things that you learned to be more consolidated and ingrained in your brain. So as an adult you’re busy and you want to make the most output from your practice.
Make sure you practice daily. A word of encouragement is not to see your practice as a burden but just an addition of a meaningful activity in your day. So personally speaking, aside from my absolute love for music, I practice piano also because I know what keeps my brain sharp. And also, whenever I finish practicing piano, I feel relaxed and peaceful.
And I feel a sense of wellness to it. So I always think about practicing piano as a wonderful addition to my day rather than a burden.
4. Work on Songs You Love
Now when you’re learning piano, you’ll need to be learning songs from either a piano course or your teacher. But as you’re playing through these songs I highly recommend that you are also working on something that you personally love.
Now if you are an absolute beginner on the piano and you don’t quite have the skills yet to be playing songs that you love, you should still make a note of the songs that you want to eventually play. You should write them down so that you can have this goal of working towards something. As opposed to playing and practicing piano every day sort of without a purpose.
5. Take it One Step at a Time
Whenever I’m practicing piano, I aim to be just one percent better every day. Right, like I don’t want to overwhelm myself. I want to do my work here. I want to enjoy the experience and as long as I’m improving even a little bit every day I’m happy about that.
If you improve just one percent every day, you’re gonna have a tremendous gain over time.
6. Be Willing to Make Mistakes
Adult learners can be very embarrassed to make mistakes. I understand and empathize with this. But I also want to convey to you that mistakes are part of learning.
We teachers also make mistakes. And great teachers have a great relationship with mistakes because we deal with it every day personally and also with our students as well. Because we deal with it every day, we learn how to cope with mistakes and we learn how to benefit from our mistakes. The truth about teachers is that we are more interested to work with you and discuss why the mistakes are happening and to find a possible solution for you.
We’re much more interested to do that rather than to judge you.
So don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Embrace them learn from them and improve from them every day.
7. Just Start
No more procrastinating. Simply just start practicing now if you’ve been thinking about it for a while.
You absolutely need to do it. We’re not sure how long we’re going to live. And we don’t want to be on a deathbed just wishing that we could have played the piano.
We want to know that we have given it our all and we went out there and we conquered our goals.
0:00 Intro
0:26 Don’t rush
1:43 Learn the basics- read notes, chords, etc.
2:13 Stick to a daily practice routine
3:36 Work on songs you love
4:33 Take it one step at a time
4:57 Be willing to make mistakes
5:50 Start now
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Check out Jazer’s other awesome playlists
Tutorials and Tips:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMawC1bdeZRHB4EYjsMDmgCDhBpCIvD3o
Easy Songs You Can Learn Right Now:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMawC1bdeZRFp0NKbEvunHj3Xl008OuHj
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