Learning to play the piano is one of the most rewarding journeys I have ever been on in my life. One of the reasons it is so rewarding is because, it is so difficult to learn and stick with. I would compare the difficulty to learning a foreign language, and then being able to speak it fluently. I was a bit of a late bloomer and didn’t start playing until close to 30, so it was even more difficult for me. Lucky enough for me the power of the internet had some great resources to help me along the way. The following are a few of the tips that I found very useful in helping learn to play the piano.

Flash Cards

When you are reading sheet music you must be able to instantly know what the note is being played so that you can stay in rhythm. Any delay can mess up the entire flow of the music. Flash cards are key to helping you instantly recognizing the notes. You can buy flash card kits online that have both the treble and bass cliff. Click here to check some out. It made me feel a little childish using flash cards at first, but after about 2 or 3 weeks of daily training, I was able to instantly recognize almost every note on the staff.

Scales and Chords

I hate to practice playing scales as much as everybody does, but they were instrumental in helping my skills develop when I was first learning to play. Now that I have a good knowledge of the scales, I can look at a piece before I start playing and figure out exactly what key it is in. Knowing this when I am playing a piece can help me dramatically in understanding which keys to play, and my fingers gravitate towards the right keys without having to pause and think. It will add to your practice time, but if you just do scales for 10 minutes to warm up, it will go a  long way.

Practice Makes Perfect

Learning to play the piano requires many, many, many hours of hard work and dedication to help refine your skills. It is easy to want to take a day off and not play, but you will be doing yourself a disservice. It has been proven that playing for 30 minutes a day, everyday for a week, is better than playing for 3 two hour sessions. Even though your only playing for 3.5 hours as opposed to 6 hours, since you are doing it daily instead of sporadically, your brain can learn everything quicker.

Whether you are trying to become a concert pianist or The Next American Idol, playing the piano can be an amazing experience. My advice would be to just take it one day at a time, and stick to a routine until you become more comfortable and then move on to your next objective. Hopefully you will be able to use some of these tips to your advantage, and maybe one day I will be listening to you play on the radio!