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Topic: Looking for people who learnt to play the piano without a teacher  (Read 1609 times)

Offline joytunes

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Hi all!

JoyTunes is a musical education startup, which produces Mobile games that make practicing and playing the piano even more fun  :) .

To improve our games, we wish to hear from self-learners - people who learnt to play alone, without a teacher's guidance.

If you are a self-learner and are interested to share your experience with us, please contact me at oded@joytunes.com .

Thanks!
- Oded from JoyTunes
https://www.joytunes.com

Offline keypeg

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I think the appropriate place to answer the question placed in this discussion forum, is in this discussion forum.  Otherwise this is just an incorrectly placed notice.  So let's discuss it here, where everyone who has self-taught or is contemplating it, can have a dialogue.

I got a little electrical air-blown organ when I was a child, and then a piano.  My grandmother's books were passed on to me, which I figured out by finding "Do" and singing the notes to begin with because we'd had movable Do solfege in some primary grade.  The first pieces I figured out this way were Clementi sonatinas, which are diatonic and lend themselves to this.  I absorbed common patterns in music passively and subconsciously since I wasn't taught anything - cadences, anticipating modulations up a fifth or into the minor, ABA patterns and similar.  I played around with intervals.  I loved the major 6th because the little organ had a particular vibrato to it that made it alive.

What did I miss out on?  TECHNIQUE.  How to physically move at the piano.  The set-up.  How to use the nature of the instrument and the human body and physics to my advantage.

If this is actually about the app and its games - from the bit that I saw in the webinars, I don't think they address the part that was missing.

Offline keypeg

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double post

Offline joytunes

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Fair enough - I added my contact details knowing that some (not all) would be more comfortable sharing their experience privately. (If anyone feels more comfortable sharing their experiences that way, please feel free to contact me  :) ).

Here are the things I'm most curious about:
  • Why did you wish to start studying the piano in the first place? Why did you choose to do it without a teacher?
  • Did you have any goals in mind when you started learning?
  • What was your learning process? Practice routine?
  • Did you teach yourself using the Internet? Videos? Software? Books? With the help of friends?
  • What were the biggest challenges you ran into while studying?
  • Was there a moment where you told yourself "I can truly play the piano!"? If so, please share :) .

Thanks!

Offline j_menz

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Since this is a commercial venture, are you paying for the input?
"What the world needs is more geniuses with humility. There are so few of us left" -- Oscar Levant

Offline Bob

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I don't think people get very far at first when they learn on their own.  But those people will buy the book or app.  I'd like to see something that goes beyond initial stages.
Favorite new teacher quote -- "You found the only possible wrong answer."

Offline keypeg

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  • Was there a moment where you told yourself "I can truly play the piano!"? If so, please share :) .
I don't think that when I was 8 or 9 years old I ever worried about whether I could play the piano.  Does a child wonder whether he can ride a bicycle and one day say "I can truly ride a bicycle" - or throw a ball - or draw?  You just do.  I would rather say that decades later I saw that there were many things that I could not do well.  Most of those lay in the physical, in technique, as I already wrote.

  • Did you teach yourself using the Internet? Videos? Software? Books? With the help of friends?
In the 1960's there was no Internet, lol.  No computers, no software, no videos.

  • What were the biggest challenges you ran into while studying?
As children, I don't know if we think about challenges.  We just try different ways of doing things until we can do them.

  • Did you have any goals in mind when you started learning?
When you are a child, you just do.  Somebody gives you a book, and you start to explore what is in it.  In the process, you hear an interesting sound, so you play with it.  You discover intervals but don't know they have names.  Your imagination gets fired up and you invent something with it.

  • Why did you wish to start studying the piano in the first place? Why did you choose to do it without a teacher?
Does a child choose to go without a teacher?  You're given the piano, so you try to play.  I don't know if I even knew that there were teachers giving private lessons in piano.  For that matter, a large proportion of people can't have teachers because they can't afford them, or their parents can't or won't.  They are not choosing.
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