Zero Experience in Piano - Need recommendation on books.

[fnel]

Hi Everyone!

I'm Alan and I'm new to this forum, hoping that I can get recommendations or advice from experts and pros. I recently started playing piano and am currently trying to teach myself. I was wondering what are some books that you can recommend me to purchase through Amazon. If you have any book title/author/link that you can provide that'll be great! I look forward to learning from this community. Thanks!

[lostinidlewonder]

Personally I think that reading too much literature on piano playing and learning is a waste of time and simply confusing to start out with if you are at a beginner/intermediate skill level. When you have developed somewhat and experimented with actual piano playing then reading books can enhance your understanding and refine what you look at.

The aim should be to learn many small manageable pieces to build your experience base in playing your instrument and learning how to read and experience the many ways memorizing music works. The internet is a great place to find easy sheet music to build your experience, it does give you the challenge to find an appropriate level to learn efficiently and it's a good idea if self learning to start very very simple and build from there, don't jump in too deep. This is not to say to avoid learning pieces you love (even if they are too difficult for your ability level) but the problem with constantly studying pieces you love is that you can waste a whole lot of practice time. I see it often, people wasting months on a single piece where they could have experienced 10 smaller pieces in the meantime and benefit their abilities a whole lot more.

[pianocat3]

I am not an expert. I am an early advanced student.  I think it is generally speaking, a mistake to self-teach piano. There are so many things to keep track of and it's easy to learn bad habits.  If you cannot find a teacher, do you have a friend who can help you? There is posture, the way you move your hands, are you holding notes for their full time value, are you keeping an even beat, you are looking at your hands too much, the music will sound better if you play the first and third beats a little louder, bring out the right hand melody a little louder because the left hand is drowning it out, you need to count the beats here to get it right, in fact why don't you count all the time,  and so on.  You have to get regular feedback. Really. Somehow. I know there are all sorts of reasons people can't get lessons, but somehow, if you really want to play, find a way (or have a musician friend give feedback, or maybe you can upload videos someplace and get feedback). I self teach a lot of stuff and this is one of those things where you just can't. My music teacher is more of a coach is the way it feels to me. A piano coach. Very customized instruction.

I find there is so much free stuff - I am amazed!!! There are tips on piano teacher websites on things like bad habits to avoid, some free sheet music rated as to difficulty etc.  Maybe get a method book - I think people (music teachers) like Faber and Faber. I did Alfred Adult method but the left hand work was weak and that was a problem when I started in on classical music but at least I always played a little bit of classical music beginner stuff on the side or it would have been a terrible shock to me.  Without a music teacher, you almost need a method book imo or one of those online courses which I dunno how good those are. Some stuff, the copyright is so heavily defended you have no choice but to buy a book if you want to play that. So if you are lagging in effort for awhile, maybe a collection of easy piano pop tunes will cheer you up and keep you playing until you get over the hump. Christmas music really helps me this way, but of course there is so much of that online now for free, it's just wonderful. Oh and my teacher has loaned me a book of scales, chords, etc from Alfred and that's useful as anything when learning your scales. But you can get it online someplace for free I am sure. music for music teachers seems to be a good website with a lot of stuff.

I agree with the other person. Most of piano, you learn by doing. It's only now that I've moved along a ways that I am reading about theory a lot. It's more like sports than academia, imo. Even if you were already a proficient musician on another instrument, it takes time to get the control - that is some kind of brain development and you build muscles too. My first trills, I knew exactly what I wanted to do but just could not do it and I am still not doing them as pretty as I want.

Another free resource that really helped me was the University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy videos on Youtube.  There is some beginner stuff on there and then you can hear someone play it very beautifully.  Alan Chan puts stuff on Youtube but he plays it really bad. But it takes skill to listen to yourself play and a beginner won't have that skill. Recording and playback may help there. But at some point, you need a teacher imo.

[adodd81802]

If self teaching is your only options, videos are the next best thing

https://www.pianolessons.com/piano-lessons/learn-to-play-piano.php

Something like that, or along them lines. I wouldn't recommend books for a beginner, whether on piano theory or to physically learn the piano, if you were to do full lessons with exams, your only theory exam starts on grade 5 - technically 5 years into piano practice.