What is the best way to learn a new song?

[Chad]

I am new to the piano and I am teaching myself.  I know a few pieces but they take me a while to learn.  I cant sight read music so before I start to learn the piece I will take the sheet music and write out all the notes above the music.  I know all the keys on the piano so this helps me.

The way I learn a new piece is I memorize a portion at a time and I usually also learn to play that part well before going further.  This is probably not the best option.  How do you recommend to learn a new piece?
I wanted to take lessons but all the teachers around this town are full

Anyone have a suggestion for me to help me learn songs quicker?

[sel]

You really should try to learn notes first of all, that makes learning new pieces considerably easier. It sounds like you are really motivated, if i had to do all that i'd probably be too lazy to even learn any new pieces

In any case, what I do is usually play the piece through some times (which once again is made very much easier if you know the music, but works if you write it out in advance as well). that somehow gives me a feeling for the structure of the piece and also makes me realize whether i can in fact play all the parts of one piece at my current technical level (some scared me away at this point, like brahms' paganini variations).

Sometimes pieces can have very varying difficulty at different points and it feels rather annoying to reach the end of a piece to realize that the e.g. coda is too difficult for you (chopin's 1st ballade for instance has a more difficult coda than anything preceeding it).

After I play the piece through a few times from the page (where difficult pieces are concerned, very badly) i try to detect the parts where i struggle the most. For instance, do i experience slowdowns and bad notes at a point in the piece where there is a chromatic run? Then i take that part and practice it over and over again, maybe doing some corresponding technical exercises with chromatic scales.

I also tend to play the same passage with one hand at a time and learn them separately, as well as play the right hand part with the left and vice versa to really remember it. after i ironed out all the real problems i mainly play the whole piece through over and over again until i remember it properly.

If you know musical theory (i know you might not, but i'm just writing this for anyone reading), it can often help to analyze the harmonies, e.g. if you're in the key of c (and deal with tonal music) you can often assume that the piece will be "drawn back" towards c, e.g. through a dominant 7th g chord. if you know these relations you can sort of "know" how the composer thought when he composed a piece, and thus instinctively avoid chords that would not fit in with a certain key etc, making wrong notes less common. In pieces with simple melody and accompaniment, try to convert the left hand accompaniment (e.g. alberti bass) to solid chords and practice them together with the right hand part.

[bachopoven]

Yes, I also recommend learning to sight read first. But that is not realistic in most cases because sight reading takes 1-2 years for a dedicated student. If you're playing for fun, it takes longer.

If you can read music, you can play a hundrd new pieces a day. And you can play them over and over until you have memorized them. But if you can't read, well, you know how it goes. I can't read well myslef, but find that every day of sight reading is helping a lot.

Learning to sight read is the most useful and at the same time the most painful part of beginning the piano, in my experience.


So people like me try to memorize pieces bar by bar and play pieces to keep the fun in learning. And in doing so, you develop some technique.

Anyway, I strongly recommend sight reading on a regular basis. And try not to get temped to look at the keyboard, and always read new pieces. Hope that helps.

[Chad]

Thanks for the replies.  I think you are right about needing to know all the notes.  I do know them and when I write out all the notes I can do them from memory but I cant even start to play a piece just be sight reading.  I have to have a second to think about each note  

I want to also practice scales but I dont know any scales on the piano.  For me  practice is trying to learn a new piece, I dont really know what to practice other than sheet music

 Right now I am trying to learn Polonaise by Chopin.  It is taking me forever just to get the first few bars down     I may be getting in over my head on this one but I really love Chopin's music.

Thanks again for the help

[allchopin]

whoa whoa hold it.   Anyone who is writing the note names above notes should not be starting off with Chopin's Polonaises, as they are long and hard.  If you love Chopin, play his mazurkas, perfect pieces for beginners and they are shorter.  

[Chad]

whoa whoa hold it.   Anyone who is writing the note names above notes should not be starting off with Chopin's Polonaises, as they are long and hard.  If you love Chopin, play his mazurkas, perfect pieces for beginners and they are shorter.  

I think it is just an arrangement for beginner
Actually the title and the actual piece has me quite confused, I have a topic in misc about the title of the piece if you wanna check it out    

[bachopoven]

I don't recommend beginner's arrangements because you will have to relearn the whole piece sometime later when you're ready to learn the original score. Beginner arrangements don't sound even close to the original score. There are EASY ORIGINAL pieces that are easy to learn and are very beautiful. I would learn those at beginner stage and learn the original scores of your favorite pieces when you're ready for them.

You can keep learning the polanaise just for the fun of learning a favorite piece, but I would spend more time on reading practice (new pieces every day) and technical exercises - Hanon, etc. Do it step by step.

[sel]

Just wanted to say that i agree with what is said above about beginner's pieces, it is seldom worth it since they usually lack most resemblance to the original score. Not to mention it can be really hard to "unlearn" an easy arrangement when you want to learn the real piece. Once when i was about 8 i learned a very easy arrangement of beethoven's moonlight sonata (first movement) where the left hand played the accompaniment. When i tried to learn the real thing about 4 years later, the left hand kept trying to play the triplets even when i didnt want it to.

[bachopoven]

BTW, piano music without words is called a piece. If there are words, it's a song. Good luck

[rachfan]

I was going to say, if you want the learn a song the best thing would be to find a good voice teacher.