How does a poor piano learner learn the piano without paying hefty school fees

[yie]

Hi, I started learning the piano as a matured adult. Due to the hefty fees I am paying to the music school for a mere 30 minutes lesson per week, I stopped attending lessons and  pursuing other non piano interests. Recently, after a hiatus of 5 years and realising that I am still interested in the piano, decided to once again return to learn the instrument. So in order to get a proper guidance, I think of returning to the music school for a formal training. To my disappointment, the school fees have risen so high that I think twice about taking up formal lessons. My aim for enrolling in a music school is that I can also opt for a music exam and make my learning journey much more challenging. The original music center I once learnt in has the cheapest rates in town but it too has revised its fees. OMG.


Has any student who is financially poor managed to work their way round to get a proper training and move on to get the music certifications ?

[ranjit]

Find the best teacher you can, explain your predicament, and try to see if you can have one lesson every two weeks, or even every month. Max out all possible freely available online resources, watch Graham Fitch, Denis Zhdanov etc. on YouTube. Read some books on piano and piano technique. Watch master pianists play online to get an idea of their hand movements and see if you can learn hand and body posture by imitation (watching explanations is a very important step but piano playing is dynamic and you need to observe how things work in a wide variety of scenarios to be able to get a feel for it). I've watched pianists' hands on YouTube for hundreds of hours. It's a (very) hard and frustrating path if you want to get good. Though I would contend not impossible.

Teach yourself music theory. All you need to do is hit the books and watch online lecture videos. This to me, like your average college subject, seems like something you can pretty much teach yourself provided you put in the effort. An instructor is not critical.

So yeah, I just taught myself for a few years. But there's no way you can get "proper" training without feedback if you're talking at the level of getting a diploma/degree in piano performance from anywhere halfway reputable. I had to learn this the hard way and am still a bit peeved about it. Lower grades may be doable but I never cared that much for them anyway.