If you’re scared of learning to read music, don’t be. It’s really not that hard. But whatever you do, don’t open up a piece of sheet music with complicated piano parts. That will scare you. The hardest thing a pianist has to do is read both the bass clef and treble clef at the same time. Bass clef is usually played with the left hand and treble clef the right. If you don’t even know what I’m talking about when I say “clef” don’t worry about it. I had no idea how to read music or what a clef was when I started either.
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So learning to play the piano is actually learning music in general as well. But don’t get overwhelmed. Baby steps, remember?
So, once you’ve mastered those nursery songs in your beginner’s music book, it will be time to start learning some chords. You will need to practice every day so that each chord imprints itself into your mind and your muscle memory. If you practice every day you will be able to play any chord in your sleep.
Learning chords has a lot of benefits which will be expanded on later as you learn more complicated songs.
Generally speaking, chords are played with the left hand and the melody is played with the right. This doesn’t fit every song, by far, but usually that is the case. Still, both of your hands will benefit from your learning chords, because lots of melodies use chords as their base. Melodies have the tendency to follow chords in a certain pattern that may or may not be slightly varied in some way.
After chords, you will need to learn octaves and chromatic scales. Once you master these, you start to become an actual musician. The secret to an awesome piano solo is really the chromatic scale. Experienced pianists can sit down and play a completely on-the-spot piano solo simply by knowing what key the rest of the song is in. They don’t write the solo beforehand and then memorize it, they use the chromatic scale and combine it with their knowledge of chords and octaves to create unique and beautiful solos without any rehearsal. All they need to know is the key.
This is the point that is truly the most enjoyable about playing the piano, or any instrument for that matter. This is when you will be actually making music, rather than performing from rote memory. You can do this too, if you follow the small steps, if you have the determination to do the boring things like learn chords and scales, and if you have the tenacity to learn to read music.
See why that practice schedule is so important?
My inspirational picture of Fats Domino helped me get to where I am today. Even though I never had any desire to be a rock star or famous musician (I still have my same old day job) I can rightfully call myself a musician because I can make music come right out of my hands with the piano.
In my opinion there is no instrument that is more rewarding to play. It was a long road to get here, but it’s not impossible. Just keep at it, and you can be here too. Let me tell you, it was all worth it.
