Piano Forum

If you're attempting to learn advanced repertoire, your focus shouldn't really be on speed and accuracy, especially at the beginning. If you can afford it and can find one, getting a good teacher would help. However, assuming you do not wish to, and really want to embark on this ridiculously difficult challenge -- here's my advice as someone who has been self-teaching piano for a few years. This is roughly what I did, and while I have been reasonably successful, I am nowhere close to playing La Campanella. I will try and roughly lay out a plan. Since there's precious little information out there about how to self-teach piano "properly", I think other people might also find this interesting. I've seldom seen good resources on how to self-teach piano elsewhere on the internet. It would be great if the more experienced posters here could come up with suggestions.

Focus on getting the movements right. This is especially true if you're tackling something difficult: poor hand movements can cause injury, especially when attempting advanced pieces. As a rule of thumb, if you're planning to learn anything beyond ~grade 5 material, technique should really be your main priority. If done right, playing the piano should feel really effortless. It is possible to play demanding repertoire for several hours straight, and not feel any sense of tiredness at all. I know it because I've experienced it firsthand. If you're getting any muscle pain or joint aches etc., you're doing it wrong. Period. Figure out how to fix it.

On how to acquire "technique": There are several things to be noted here.
- You should increasingly learn to notice tension developing in any part of the body. Try and be aware of anatomy as well -- fingers DO NOT have muscles, the muscles that power movements of the fingers are in the palms and forearms. Body weight and strength from the forearm, back, shoulders, etc. is transferred via the fingers, and the fingers just act kind of like the 'medium' to transfer the energy: they are not supposed to take a beating. You should feel no strain on the fingers even after playing difficult passages for hours straight. The wrist and forearm should typically be kept level with the keys. Look up videos on piano posture on Youtube.

- Read up whatever you can on Pianostreet about technique (bernhard's posts are quite good). Also watch all the videos on Youtube about technique you can find (look up pianocareer, Graham Fitch, cedarvillemusic and Josh Wright). Observe videos of pianists with good technique, and see how their hand position looks (arching fingers, etc.) and how they are transferring weight. Try and imitate that. It's naturally tricky to communicate piano technique without a teacher, and in my experience, this is about the best you can do using online resources.

- 90% of piano teaching resources available online are bs, especially if your aim is to play classical piano properly. Be wary of online resources -- be intensely skeptical of anything you read of watch online. Virtually none of the online "self-teaching piano courses" I've seen (and I've searched far and wide) will get you beyond a ~grade 5 level. They're mostly designed for people who want a comfortable, slow learning pace, and want to play their favorite songs, which are typically quite easy. Also, they usually don't focus much on technique at all. They assume you'll get away with poor technique since you won't be needing great technique anyway to play easy pieces. However, if you're attempting to play La Campanella in a year, you're very much drinking from the fire hose. It's like starting from zero to finishing a degree in six months. I would still say it may be possible, but realize what you're up against, and that the way you approach it should reflect that reality.

* Note: What I'm suggesting isn't to do a bunch of technical exercises (in fact, I'd advise not doing them without a teacher, since it's not the sheer repetition of technical exercises which improves technique, but rather the critical eye of a teacher who can keep making corrections as you gain muscle memory, so that you converge to the proper technique eventually). Rather, it's to seriously think about how to minimize tension, to be constantly aware of everything you're doing, to practice hands separate and keep trying new ways to move on the piano, and to read, watch, and critically analyze all the material you can come across online or in books, until you figure out what works best for you.

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I would suggest looking at the piece you're learning (here, La Campanella), and figuring out the underlying techniques involved. Observe patterns and "chunk" the music as much as possible. For example, La Campanella starts with Eb octaves. Then, you have a descending melodic figure along with leaps in the right hand, and rolled tenths in your left hand. Now, figure out how to play these properly.

Start from the assumption that there exists a way to play it which does not involve any tension. You will probably feel tense trying to play the right hand at the beginning, most probably because you will be stretching the right hand to play the high Eb note. How do you avoid that? Experiment, and look up videos of people playing (slow them down if you have to). See how they move the hand in an "arc", how they don't stretch the hand, but reach the upper note in this continuous motion, and then practice that motion. If you aren't able to do it initially, don't revert back to inefficient movements (it's kind of like how people doing a particular exercise in a gym shouldn't resort to poor form even if it allows them to get in a few extra repetitions). After a period of (hopefully) weeks or months, the movement will become second nature. Figure out all the movements/techniques like these you need to learn in order to eventually be able to play the piece (major scales, chromatic scales, arpeggios, chords, etc.). Slowly begin to coordinate all of it.

If you don't understand some of these terms, look them up. I'd advise going through all the pages on musictheory.net and understand them properly.

The point is to try and learn as assiduously as you would with a good teacher, on your own. I would think it's probably not impossible to self-teach up to that level. But realize that the way to get there isn't about remembering the notes, it's about understanding the deeper underlying concepts in fingering, technique, coordination, musicality, etc. I personally strongly believe in self-teaching in general, and wanted to put this out there. I wish you luck.