If you are looking to play the piano easily and effortlessly then the easiest way to learn is the piano play along technique, where you listen to songs that you like and then play them back. In many ways this runs counter to traditional piano instruction where they have you learning endless chords and musical theory and notation, but not actually doing much in the way of playing songs on the piano that you like!
I came across this method when I decided to learn how to play the piano a little later in life, and realised that most of the piano courses seemed to be aimed at boring the pants of the students trying to learn to play the piano! I wanted to learn by playing along to songs that I like, a ‘piano play along’ technique if you will. But it wasn’t until I came across this piano course that everything really fell into place for me. At last! Piano lessons that are actually fun! What a concept!
This is unfortunate, because learning the piano is a a great thing to do if you have the right instructor and approach it in the right way, but it can be very off-putting if you start out by trying to learn the piano in a way that leaves you feeling frustrated, and not actually doing the thing that is the reason you are learning to play, namely sit down at the piano or the keyboard and be able to relax by playing the songs that you like.
Instead, you should do this >>
How To Learn The Piano Play Along Method
It used to be the case that in order to learn to play the piano you would have to find a local piano teacher. Which could end up being very much of a lottery in terms of how good they were at teaching. If they were very passionate and enthused to teach, then that would certainly help. But the fact remains that good pianists, even passionate pianists, don’t necessarily make the best teachers.
I discovered this as I went along. But, because learning the piano is a gradual process that you build on day by day, it is very important that in the early days of learning your enthusiasm isn’t snuffed out by endless chord progressions, having to play scales or playing 3 blind mice over and over again until you might physically explode if you ever saw a blind mouse for real!
A better way is to use piano play along techniques that involve you more in playing songs that you actually like, and that you can play along with (I discuss more about piano play along lessons in this article). It is this approach that lies at the heart of many of the new breed of piano lessons that you can find online, because the internet has literally revolutionised the way that music can be taught.
Click here to see how I learned to play the piano and still enjoy it >>
It is no longer necessary to only see one version of how you should play a song. You can literally see dozens if you look for them online, and online piano instruction now very much takes that approach to heart by utilising piano play along techniques where you play along with your favourite songs from the very start, and also actually learn to play sings that you genuinely like.
The Piano Play Along Formula…
The piano play along formula is quite easy to learn and enjoyable to play along with. Start by playing along with songs you like. Don’t waste time on spending hours learning chords, instead learn them as you need to use them, and thirdly practice little but often so that some kind of piano practice becomes a daily ritual for you. The irony of doing things in this step by step fashion, rather than bombarding you with theory, is that you will then stick with the piano, and end up learning to read sheet music and all that other ‘music theory’ in any case, because you will be more enthused to learn. Its simply that it won’t come at the expense of actually sitting down at a piano and enjoying playing for fun.
The piano course I like can be found here. You can even get 6 FREE piano lessons straight away, to test it out, that will teach you how to play Amazing Grace using this method.
Learning piano really should be lots of fun, so don’t be put off by thoughts of metronomes, or chord scales or frosty piano teachers. It is now much easier then ever to learn the piano, and if you choose the right way to learn then it can bring a smile to your face every single day.