Are these strip things worth buying to learn piano?

[mhog]

Hi, I'm trying to teach my son piano (I don't play anything myself) but I can't afford to pay for a piano teacher.

Alas, I think the only way to teach a kid piano is to be a piano teacher. The main reasons are: (1) discipline; (2) posture (hands, fingers, back); (3) sight readining; (4) relations among notes (intervals and transpositions) and semitones. (5) two hands playing.

Without the supervision of a teacher your kid could acquire bad postures, or strange finger positions playing scales or intervals, which are very difficult to abandon once got used to them.

How to learn notes on a piano keyboard? Very simple: just sing them while playing them (... but if you play them with the wrong fingers, or in a wrong posture, everything is rather useless, unless you just want your kid to learn notes?)

[dea-man]

Talk to your piano gently, and ask it how it feels about being played.

Ask your piano what "it", would like its keys/notes, to be called.

Do not have sex (right away, anyways) with your piano.

[JumpingJackFlash]

Alas, I think the only way to teach a kid piano is to be a piano teacher. The main reasons are: (1) discipline; (2) posture (hands, fingers, back); (3) sight readining; (4) relations among notes (intervals and transpositions) and semitones. (5) two hands playing.

Without the supervision of a teacher your kid could acquire bad postures, or strange finger positions playing scales or intervals, which are very difficult to abandon once got used to them.

How to learn notes on a piano keyboard? Very simple: just sing them while playing them (... but if you play them with the wrong fingers, or in a wrong posture, everything is rather useless, unless you just want your kid to learn notes?)

I agree.

People tend to assume playing the piano is easy because you've got all the keys laid out in front of you and you don't have to worry about embouchure and breathing and whatnot. But the crucial thing about piano is fingering; and it's a lot harder than it looks. If you ever want to be "good" at the piano, then it is absolutely essential to master fingering. If you don't, you're just going to keep tripping over yourself.

And in order to get a good technique, it is necessary to start right from day one. If you learn bad habits, it is extremely difficult to correct them later.

[pathworker]

I am inclined to go with the general concensus( did i spell that right?) of NOT using them strips is good advice. There are a couple of reasons for this,

1) I think they have the potential to encourage laziness

2) there is the tendency to keep looking down at the keys frequently which potentially slows down the learning process,

Perhapse a better way, as suggested earlier is to encourage your son to recognize where the C and F key are and gradually fill in the gaps from there

C is to the left of the two black keys

F is to the left of the three black keys

eventually if he practices consistently usijg a logical learning process he will got to know by feel alone whether or not he is on the right key before he even hears the note..

When I learned piano as a kid my piano teacher used marker to indicate the position of Middle C but I found it distracting so I removed it at the first opportunity.

[TheTZeds]

Rather than the strips, have him note that the area with two black keys is the C to F part, and the area with the three black keys is F to C. Fill in the blanks. Stupider people have managed it.
I think a crutch like that is never a good idea.

In my worst obi wan kenobi impression "This is the answer you are looking for."

[Nickel Smith]

There is nothing in the world - and I mean nothing - that can replace a teacher.

[hyperscientist]

@robcottam:

Lot’s of decent advise here, but the fact is:

You do not need a teacher to learn to play piano.

(But to have one is a bloody good thing.)

Things that people here focus on are trivial and not necessarily an issues.

Posture?

It’s simply about being relaxed and at such a distance (vertically and horizontally) from the keyboard so it does not prevent your hands from moving freely. All your joints should be at such angle so they do not create tension, because tension can lead to injury (if you practice A LOT) and again: it prevents’ your fingers from moving freely and accurately.

Glenn Gould or Horowitz could learn a lot from some piano lessons about posture and yet it didn’t stop them from becoming some of the greatest pianists of their time:



Not to mention all the amazing jazz pianists… I am yet to see ONE with “correct” posture and playing technique.

Fingerings?

It’s personal, also lot’s of sheet music comes with fingering cues.

Sight reading?

Nobody is sight reading while playing live - not how you probably think they do. Every music needs to be learned and practiced before it can be performed. And then you still use you sheet music, but it mostly helps you anticipate what comes next but not on a “per note” basis but rather “per musical phrase”, because notes are something you already know. So basically: nobody cares how long it takes your son to find an D-flat on a keyboard because it is only an issue during early practice - soon after he will just learn the order of keys he is supposed to press.

Music theory? (intervals, functions etc.)

It’s the thing where you need your teacher the least if you have a good source (book, video, Coursera). It’s just a theory - just sit down and learn it.

And then there are things that people here do not talk about, but that are actually the most important…

Ear training

A life-long learning process. You start by learning the theory and then listen to the music critically, practice on the keyboard, practice by singing to actually match the theory with what you hear. Sounds simple, but it's a terribly challenging thing to do. There's some great software that can help, but to be fair: a teach would do best

Expression

Something you first learn by imitating others. You learn basic techniques (staccato, legato etc.) and then you listen how professionals play pieces you currently learn. You listen a lot and very closely. You try to imitate them on the piano. And then you just do your best to make sure that what you play isn’t flat and boring

[hyperscientist]

To summarise: You are able to learn piano by yourself, but it will be a lot more challenging - you will have to do a lot of research on your own: watch videos, read articles and books, ask on forums etc. I've already seen some really great YouTube links in this topic - watch it. Maybe read "Fundamentals of Piano Practice". You will need to do a lot of homework for and with your son

Also, once in a while... Maybe once a month... Send him to a teacher for 1.5-2h - if you will find a good one it will be worth it

[hyperscientist]

And last but not last: I didn't want to scare you with the amount of things to comprehend and practice. It all depends on your goals. You won't need that much music theory and ear training if you do not want to compose or perform in front of audiences. You don't need to practice endless arpeggios if you don't want to play classic music. If you want to play jazz however you will have to learn improvisation language and ideally a lot of theory

Or just practice A LOT. Because everything and I mean EVERYTHING (be it posture, technique, paralysis in your right hand, lack of music theory etc.) can be overcome with patience and practice.

So... It is all in your hands. If your son really loves music he will learn to play it.


David Matthews (has a paralysed hand) here:

[bluedad]

take a marker out and let him write them on there.

Please don't take this advice; marker is hard to get off and sometimes impossible. If you have to mark on keys,
put a piece of masking tape on the key and mark on it.
But I don't think these things really work; jancivil's advice is spot on.

[AnalogGuy1]

I'll chime in too, with personal experience. I know it is possible to learn the piano, well, without a teacher. I've seen some people do it. Very, very few however. I thought with a lot of hard work I would be one, but after two years I could play some pieces I memorized (and learning note names and simple sight reading just sort of happened automatically during those two years) but I was hitting roadblock after roadblock which was making practice less productive every day.

Then I broke down and found a teacher. If funds are limited, you don't need to buy your son lessons every week - once every other week or even once a month would work if he is disciplined. Once I did, the roadblocks started lifting. Doing things that seemed totally counterintuitive, like playing scales in 4 octaves, started making me somehow see the right notes to use which helped hugely in learning to improvise. Counterintuitive fingering started becoming intuitive and suddenly my left hand could comp while playing a solo in the right. I'm not saying some people could not figure it out on their own, but I don't think I'd ever have been able to without some guided practice. On my own I just assumed if you want to play songs x,y,z you practice songs x,y,z and while that works well for simple pop/rock stuff ("Gold on the Ceiling" by The Black Keys, say), most people won't be able to progress beyond to handle anything by Billy Powell, for instance, no matter how much they practice the specific song. And I suspect most will give up long before making that concerted effort because they will feel they aren't getting anywhere.

Just saying - for perhaps one $30 lesson a month you can really start him off right.