[itnAAnti]

I disagree with some of the advise on this thread so far. Scales are boring (I agree that you need them to get proficient, but if you start there, you’ll be bored to tears and give up before you get anywhere fun). Watching YouTube videos and trying to recreate what they’re doing is hard. Learning to read music from a human teacher is frustrating.

The traditional way to learn piano takes discipline, hours of slightly frustrating study and incredibly boring and repetitive practice. Though I tried a few times in my life to learn piano the way everyone said I should, I always found it mind-numbingly boring. Why does it have to be so damn hard?

I’ve only recently found a better way, and I’ve been learning faster, staying interested, and having way more fun than I ever did before.

The better way is: http://pianowizardacademy.com

(I know this sounds like a sales pitch, I’m not at all involved with the company, I’m just a happy customer and a big fan of their method.)

Basically the method hinges around software that turns playing a piano into a game. Similar to guitar hero, but where it leads you through a progression until you’re sight-reading the paper sheet music as you play. It makes it really easy to get started playing real music from day 1, then your excitement about your progress builds faster than the difficulty, so you stay interested.

Basically it inverts the learning. Play first, and learn reading music, notes, fingering, tempo, theory, etc as you go. It makes the whole process way less frustrating and way more fun.

The software looks straight out of 1998, and the DVDs are similarly a little silly - but it all works really well.

The DVDs are geared towards parents who have never played Piano, to teach their young kids how to play, while learning themselves. Watching the videos as an adult without kids, I sometimes feel a little silly playing along with a 4 year old, but since it works, I’m not complaining.

Generally, they explain the bit of music theory after you’ve been playing it for a while (ignorant to the fact that you were doing something deeply important to music), so by the time they explain the concept, it just makes sense - there’s no struggling to wrap your head around some obtuse concept that you don’t have a mental framework for yet.

Anyway - I highly recommend it. It’s not cheap, but so far it’s the best money I’ve spent on learning piano.