What's the correct learning method?

[andrewho]

I've been learning piano for about 2 years and I'm still stuck in grade 3 (1 year ago).  I've been practicing piano every day for 30 minutes to an hour, however I still can't get the counting part down.  Does anyone have any tips or suggestions to help counting?  I do count when I first learn a piece, but it becomes very hard for me as it is not second nature.  My method is to usually learn the notes and then master the tempo.  I know that's probably wrong, but hopefully you can offer some insight?

Thanks in advance

[leahcim]

Does anyone have any tips or suggestions to help counting?  I do count when I first learn a piece, but it becomes very hard for me as it is not second nature.  My method is to usually learn the notes and then master the tempo.

I'm sure you can count.

If you're not playing in time that'll be for some reason that you need to listen to your playing to hear. If you can clap in time, you probably don't have a problem with actual rhythm / tempo [if you do, I'd learn to clap in time]

E.g perhaps you are 'early' or 'late' when moving the thumb under or  3rd finger over. Or when using certain fingers, e.g perhaps you'd  play fingers 345 quickly together so something like C..D..E..F..G becomes C..D..EFG [or similar for other fingers / notes]

Or perhaps you lose time when making jumps / shifting hand position, when pressing / releasing the sustain pedal or when trying to get certain dynamics. Or when playing hands together. Or perhaps you don't know the notes well enough and stutter a bit.

If any of those [or others] are the case playing in time will be a case of fixing those issues - which aren't  directly related to tempo / rhythm / counting at all, it's just a side-effect of some other technical limitation.

Or perhaps you're so inconsistent that you play it differently every time? If that's the case, find a teacher to teach you fundamentals - if you can't play a c major scale [or hanon or whatever simple exercise] evenly in time with dynamics / stacatto / legato pretty much every time you try then you aren't going to do much better with a piece. This is my dilemma - how to start playing the piano after 5 years of trying If you find a method to actually fix stuff, post it, but 'practise' is about the best you'll get, at least ime to date.