I will be honest and say that it is with a kind of a double agenda that I write this post about the best way to learn piano online for free.
Why?
Because I naturally would love for you to join my fantastic online course “Piano in 3 Weeks”. A step by step course that will get you from being a total beginner to actually playing songs on your piano the fast and easy way. My course, though being great value for your money, is not free.
However, I have made a promise to myself that I will do my best to help as many aspiring piano players as possible to move forward – any way I can.
This means that if you have chosen to teach yourself how to play the piano – I would like to offer you some FREE hands-on advice. This advice will be based on my more than 35 years of piano teaching experience.
If you follow this advice I truly believe you will be on the best path to learning piano by yourself.
First of all – I teach rhythmic piano – meaning – I know very little about how to play classical music. So if you are mostly interested in learning to play classical piano you probably wont find my advice useful. If this is the case you should search for good advice elsewhere on the internet.
But if you are interested in learning how to play music in genres like pop, rock, soul, country and more genres alike – please read on.
So, is it even possible to teach yourself how to play the piano?
The answer is: “Yes – absolutely”.
When I started out playing piano at the age of seven I quickly got bored with my nice classical piano teacher. After a few years I stopped taking lessons – and over the next years I taught myself how to play rock’n roll and blues. This being said – I of course had learned some basics from the piano teacher.
I have no doubt that In today’s online world you can find any and all information you need to learn how to play the piano.
However, the biggest problem, as I see it, quickly becomes information overload. There is so much information out there that I is hard to know how to pick and chose.
There are thousands of YouTube videos ready to show you just as many bits and pieces about playing piano – and hundreds of homepages (like mine) ready to offer you all sorts of information on the subject.
As I see it there are two main things you must have to teach yourself piano:
You need a plan of progress. What is your starting point. What is it you want to learn. What information do you need to accomplish this goal.
You need to develop a good critical sense because: There are so many happy amateurs out there – especially on YouTube. You have to be aware that many of these self-proclaimed “piano teachers” in reality is trying to make a living as a “YouTuber” – meaning – they post video after video to get enough views to allow them to run advertising on their channel – and thereby make money.
Now – I’m not saying that this approach to making piano-learning-videos necessarily results in bad videos. What I am saying is that many of these “teachers” are not thinking in terms of creating a good learning progression for you. They are more about trying to hit on a narrow but popular piano subject that has the chance of going viral.
This last semi-grumpy paragraph makes a nice opening for me to point out that my course “Piano in 3 Weeks” is ALL about good progression – taking you as a student from point zero to being able to play just about any pop and rock song – of your choice – as fast as possible.
Well – back to the subject at hand – the best way to learn piano online for free.
Before I show you an example of how your personal “Plan of Progression” might look – just a few words about keeping yourself inspired in the process.
Just as I do in my course – I would urge you to get to a point where you can actually play one or two simple songs as fast as possible.
Instead of immersing yourself in the vast world of music theory and learning to read sheet music – move straight on to playing some music. It is playing actual music that will keep you inspired and moving forward. Not 132 written pages on finger technique.
This is why my best afvise to you is to start with learning how to play chords – using both your hands. The minute you understand just the basics of how to read, build and play chords a whole world of music opens up.
As you may or may not know – thousands of modern pop songs are written with no more than 4 to 8 chords. This means that once you understand how to use chords – you can pick your favourite songs – and play them using your chord knowledge.
Once you get the hang of playing chords – and once you have a few of your favourite songs on your repertoire – you will naturally be inspired to learn more about chords, music theory, sheet music reading, fingering and so on.
My point being – learn to play some songs right away. This will be your greatest source of inspiration – this will keep you interested in learning more.
Best, Niels
Learn more about Piano in 3 Weeks by attending my online webinar – you can find it here.
