Beginners piano – How do you get started
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If you want to learn to play the piano or the keyboards you are going to need some form of tuition. You basically have the choice between a traditional ‘real life’ piano teacher offering one on one lessons or some sort of beginner piano home study course.
Traditional Lessons
One on one piano lessons can be quite expensive and normally range between $20 and $60 per hour. You need to get a teacher that suits you and you may need to try various before you end up with one who you can work well with. You will eed to attend at least once a week for the lessons to pay off.
Home Study Courses
The other option is invest in a home study course. These can be relatively inexpensive and for the cost of one or two traditional lessons you should be set up with months of study material.
Are They Any Good?
A simple web search will reveal that there are literally hundreds of these courses available for immediate download. The question you might be asking is are they any good and will you be able to learn anything from them.
The better quality courses will take you from the absolute basics, teaching you proper posture, hand position, fingering and harmonic basics. You will be presented with practice exercises and pieces to play and depending on the course will be taught to read music, play from chord charts or play by ear. The beauty with all of the home study methods is that you advance at your own pace only moving onto the next lessons when you have mastered the previous.
A well designed course will ensure that you advance quickly and that you will not get bored doing dull exercises but instead ensure that you will be playing musical pieces and songs as early as possible.
Drawbacks
The only real problem that exists with taking home study courses is that you do not have someone there looking over your shoulder to correct any bad habits that you might pick up as these can make it difficult to advance beyond a certain point.
The best study method
If you want to study on your own at home then I suggest that you get a good quality reputable study course (see the recommendations below) and find a private teacher who can give you lessons once every month or two just to check over your general playing style and correct any bad habits that you might have got into.
Reviews
Check out these Beginner Piano Course Reviews on two of the best, most complete courses available online.